City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. Whyte

City: Rediscovering the Center Reviews

• 
  David

  Most of the books I read are either science fiction or in the physical sciences. And I'm involved in "hard science fiction" (SF that tries to be consistent with known science). However, my college degree was in the social sciences and social issues concern me.
  
  Many people interested in hard SF tend to assume the social sciences can't be "hard sciences". The social sciences are subject to such chaos factors that it's difficult to be precise as in physics - but the same is true of physical sciences such as meteorology, ecology and climatology.
  
  The book City is mainly about urban planning, but from the perspective of those who wanted to optimize a city's physical structures to facilitate human social needs. In that sense, at least part of City is about social behavior. The urban planners involved in these projects were true to science. They had hypotheses on what social behaviors there were and what city planning might facilitate that, but they would always check to see what was really happening in the real world.
  
  In one example that has stuck in my mind, they already thought they knew what would be helpful. Then they put up video cameras outside to see what people really did. People did not do as they expected. The urban planners accepted the evidence and changed their concepts.
  
  This isn't the social sciences on a grand, society-wide scale being presented as a hard science, but it does at least give an idea of a hard science approach in matters involving the social sciences. From such beginnings perhaps one day a hard social sciences can be built.
  
• 
  Nathan Storring

  City: Rediscovering the Center takes the reader on a tour of William H. Whyte's 25+ years of observing and writing about the built environment. While it focuses primarily on 16 years of research conducted on urban public spaces, it echoes the ideas and concerns of many of his other works, including The Last Landscape (1968) and The Organization Man (1956).
  
  To that end, the book can feel a bit disjointed at times. The first two thirds of the book is essentially an expanded version of his earlier "pre-book" The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980), while the final third diverges into issues of suburban sprawl, the corporate exodus, open space policies, cluster development, gentrification, and more. The organizing idea of the book—that cities must have a center, and planners are now remembering this—is not always strong enough to bring Whyte's brilliant individual insights together comfortably into one book. But if one accepts that it reads more like a collection of articles, they will find that City is an indispensable retrospective of Whyte's unique contributions to the study of cities.
• 
  Greg Brown

  This book was sort of a micro-level sequel to the macro-level of
  Jane Jacobs'
  The Death and Life of Great American Cities, more focused on the elements like ledges, walls, and sunlight that made up excellent public spaces. Whyte also takes a much more methodologically-exacting approach, formally researching and recording behaviors for over a decade, and peppering his book with photos, diagrams, and exact accounts of which policies were the most successful.
  
  Also unlike Jacobs, Whyte had some level of buy-in with many of the associations and governments he consulted with. As a result, you get a much better sense of the trial-and-error that accompanied his efforts—as well as evidence of the dramatic results with a handful of modifications. Jacobs' book is more an account and critique of two philosophies, as well as stories about how Robert Moses' planning has scarred or destroyed countless neighborhoods.
  
  This comparison to Jacobs is not meant to impoverish Whyte, as his aim is slightly different. I really appreciated the "concrete" details he was able to provide, as well as the lively anecdotes about how surprising and wonderful public life could be in a city. The stories can be repetitive—and that was my main bone to pick with the book—but they're wonderful enough that you won't be annoyed when he shares them again. It's been six months since I moved away from Chicago, and I miss it dearly for many of the same reasons.
  
  But this book is also a snapshot of an era: New York beginning to climb out of the hole before Giuliani came along to take all the credit, parking spaces increasingly demanding more and more land-area, and cities destroying their urban cores through poorly managed policies and the legacy of white flight. It's fascinating to see what concerns are shared with today's cities, as well the generational differences in how cities are viewed now—my parents' generation was still attracted by the suburbs, while I see my own generation drawn to Chicago, NYC, Boston, San Francisco even as they are harder to afford than the alternative.
  
  I wish I could say that things were getting better, even as the momentum that he describes for suburbs has petered out somewhat, but cities are unique when it comes to public policy. Our urban planning decisions aren't quite set in stone, but concrete is almost as permanent. Once sprawl happens it can't be undone without a tremendous amount of pain, as Detroit would attest to. Even as more people flee rural areas to live in metropolitan ones, it can't be said that will necessarily redound to the urban core's benefit.
  
  Raleigh, NC, where I live now, is a great example of how prosperity can be deeply unequal and harmful to cities. The area has a tremendous number of white-collar jobs, and one of the better growth-rates in the US. But all that growth is being applied to sprawl. People here love the trees, so much that they leave many up. But they're a false rurality, and all they do is contribute to a placelessness, where you can't see far and don't know how the different areas interrelate. Everyone drives everywhere, and new roads are constantly being constructed to house them all. People would rather be surrounded by space than by people, and fare lengthy commutes to do so. It's an atrocious area, and because of the bad decisions being perpetuated today, will likely stay that way even as the boom ends and people start to drift away and a city begins to rot because it didn't have any sense of itself.
• 
  Paul Signorelli

  Every once in a while, we need to step back from newly released books and return to those which have been around for a decade or two--if not much longer. If we’re interested in themes such as collaboration and community, we find works including Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (1961) and Christopher Alexander’s "A Pattern Language: Towns – Buildings – Construction" (1977), "The Timeless Way of Building" (1979), and just about everything he has written since then to be essential reminders that certain ideas remain consistent and worthy of our attention. William Whyte's "City: Rediscovering the Center" (1988) is another of those gems, and not just for students and lovers of architecture and city streets--and the way we use them. Whyte's dynamic work, drawn from 16 years of filming life on the streets of New York, is, ostensibly, a study of what makes cities work; it actually is far more than that. In exploring simple themes including how pedestrians in crowded urban spaces manage to navigate sidewalks and streets without continually bumping into each other, he highlights the larger, more intriguing issue of how we learn to collaborate almost wordlessly and effortlessly with one another. When he explores the importance of well maintained trash receptacles (pp. 90-92) and well placed drinking fountains (p. 87) in making communities attractive to residents and visitors, he reminds all of us to not overlook the elements that make our homes, communities, workplaces, and social gathering sites compellingly attractive. When he suggests that stakeholders in business districts might benefit from actively seeking new proprietors to provide what is currently missing from those centers (p. 323), he is also subliminally reminding us to actively seek to fill the gaps in what each of us does and provides in our own personal, social, and professional lives. "It is the asking of [questions] that is the critical step." he suggests at one point (p. 270), and it is with that simple yet profound reminder that Whyte makes us not only look at the communities we inhabit, but makes us want to question why they are the way they are--and what we can do to make them even better, regardless of whether they are physical or virtual.
• 
  Individualfrog

  "But they do not."
  
  That's Whyte's favorite phrase. With variations, it occurs all throughout this book. He'll describe some predicted behavior by people in the city, something logical, or common-sensical, or assumed by planners, and then explain that he and his team observed to see if they follow this prediction: "but they do not." Or he'll explain how if planners, developers, governments, etc, were wise, rational, scientific, they would do the following thing: "but they do not." The observations are frequently fascinating and often hilarious: the tendency of people having a conversation on the sidewalk to move, not out of the stream of traffic, but as deep into the middle of it as possible, obstructing the way for everyone, for example. Nobody could predict it, it makes no sense, but that's what they do.
  
  The rest is not as delightful. Whyte and I are on the same side of the walkable-city VS automobile-suburbia debate, so it's easy to cheer, but I've heard it all before. (Really you can get everything good about this book in a fraction of the time and twice the fun by watching Whyte's
  The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.) Considering this book was written in the mid-80s, and almost everything is absolutely relevant to contemporary planning debate, the feeling is not 'hooray someone said it' as it might have been then, but rather, 'why have we gotten nowhere at all?' We still do all the terrible car-first planning and design, make assumptions based on what we think rather than what is true, and so on. The only thing that has changed is New York: there aren't any sleazy parts anymore. Whyte, to his credit, understood the sleaze to be an important part of the urban fabric, enlivening the space, even if the busybodies don't like it. He probably assumed it was eternal, and the three-card monte dealers, porno handbill passers, and shifty dope dealers would remain on Lexington Avenue forever. But they do not.
• 
  Kristie Helms

  I adored this book... a wonderful exploration of what makes public space successful. And thanks to Whyte, every time I see a building with multiple doors... one of which is open... I think about his observation that an open door “is enormously attracting.”
  
  He goes on to write: "Given a choice, people will head for the door that is already open, or that is about to be opened by somebody else. Some people are natural door openers. But most are not; often they will queue up three and four deep behind an open door rather than strike out on their own."
  
  You know what? He's totally right. People WILL go through an open door...
• 
  Taylor Ellwood

  In my opinion, part of being a successful business owner is learning about how your business is impacted by different influences. In City, Whyte discusses urban renewal and development and what is effective vs ineffective urban development as well as the impact it has on businesses. I learned a lot from this book and was able to apply some of it to a recent class on leadership that dealt with economic development. Economic development is definitely tied into urban development. This book explains a lot of that and also provides insights into the social life on the streets of any city.
• 
  Diana

  Very interesting data and discussion about the uses of city streets and urban areas, encompassing the use of public squares, pedestrian flows, interactions on street corners, architecture and development and incentive zoning in cities for the years between 1972 and 1988. Made me wish very much what Whyte and his graduate students would uncover filming and observing city life in the age of cell phones, telecommuting, and the fall-off of pedestrian movement in the last twenty years.
• 
  Greg

  This is an impressive guide to the necessary elements of functional public space and the roles of public spaces within communities. Whyte not only challenges conventional thinking, but does it convincingly with detailed study. Because it focuses on the basic elements of public space and community life, this book will be relevant as long as there is civilization.
• 
  James Smyth

  Classic!
  很棒的城市規劃書！這位博士根據他幾十年的研究（包括徹底的紐約路上錄像）說明怎麼用城市規劃讓城市更溫暖、更有社交性，人文規劃城市何以培養團結以及創意。
  The author, based on his decades of experience (including exhaustive video-recordings from the streets of New York), explains how to use public spaces to make cities warmer and more social and how humanistic city design cultivates solidarity between citizens and creativity.
• 
  Lioness

  An interesting study of what makes cities work. Although the book is now 20 years old, and some of the research 10 years older than that, human behaviour doesn't change. What makes a city work in 1976 is still true today. Just the clothes and the hairstyles would have changed in the pictures. ;)
• 
  Kevin

  I found the author's obsessive studies of pedestrian habits and habitats amusing and interesting. Also interesting was the insider view of NYC (and other city) planning commissions and their efforts (and oft-times failures) to create vibrant spaces in cities.
• 
  DJ

  newsweek 50 books for our times list
• 
  Adam

  Amusing, insightful and fascinating. Perfect reading when you are in view of a downtown intersection.
• 
  Jeramey

  A bit dated in references, but not in concepts. A fascinating look at what makes streets work.
• 
  Scott Fuchs

  A great layman's [that's me] guide to the myriad aspects of city planning.
  Written in 1988; would that an update version were possible
  I own the hardcover edition
• 
  Art

  William H Whyte keeps coming up, currently in the book On Looking, about walking in the city from different perspectives. Time to read some W Whyte.
• 
  Lindig

  Exacting analysis of public space, how it is used, who uses it, and why it's important.