Streetfight
Handbook for an Urban Revolution
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Narrated by:
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Suzie Althens
About this listen
As New York City's transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world's greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that's already there.
Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates how to rewrite the underlying "source code" of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn't easy, and Streetfight pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. She includes examples of how this new way to read the streets has already made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco.
©2016 Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.
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Great listen
- By CKerb on 11-09-21
By: Tom Standage
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Sun, Sin, Suburbia
- The History of Modern Las Vegas Revised and Expanded
- By: Geoff Schumacher
- Narrated by: Douglas R. Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Las Vegas is gambling's mecca - Sin City the Entertainment Capital of the World with 40 million visitors a year. But that's just part of the story. This carefully documented history tracks the rise of Las Vegas from its vital role in World War II, of the Rat Pack era of the 50s, the explosive growth of the 90s, and it's colossal collapse in the post 2008 real-estate crash. It offers a history of the iconic Strip, but also profiles the neighborhoods where over 2 million people live.
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Good History of Vegas - old, modern and mundane
- By Amazon Customer on 06-13-14
By: Geoff Schumacher
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Divided Highways
- Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life
- By: Tom Lewis
- Narrated by: Jim D. Johnston
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In Divided Highways, Tom Lewis offers an encompassing account of highway development in the United States. In the early twentieth century Congress created the Bureau of Public Roads to improve roads and the lives of rural Americans. The Bureau was the forerunner of the Interstate Highway System of 1956, which promoted a technocratic approach to modern road building sometimes at the expense of individual lives, regional characteristics, and the landscape.
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Lots of interesting facts. Poor narration
- By Richard on 06-01-21
By: Tom Lewis
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The End of the Suburbs
- Where the American Dream is Moving
- By: Leigh Gallagher
- Narrated by: Jessica Geffen
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
For nearly 70 years, the suburbs were as American as apple pie. But in recent years things have started to change. An epic housing crisis revealed existing problems with this unique pattern of development, while the steady pull of long-simmering economic, societal and demographic forces has culminated in a Perfect Storm that has led to a profound shift in the way we desire to live. In The End of the Suburbs journalist Leigh Gallagher traces the rise and fall of American suburbia from the stately railroad suburbs that sprung up outside American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries to current-day sprawling exurbs.
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Informative, but the title is a lie
- By Marie on 08-27-13
By: Leigh Gallagher
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein - introduction
- Narrated by: Donna Rawlins
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."
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Fantastic text, dull on audio
- By Meghan on 02-13-15
By: Jane Jacobs, and others
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis
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Autonomy
- The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—and How It Will Reshape Our World
- By: Lawrence D. Burns, Christopher Shulgan
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In Autonomy, former GM executive and current advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car project Lawrence Burns offers a sweeping history of the race to make the driverless car a reality. In the past decade, Silicon Valley companies like Google, Tesla and Uber have positioned themselves to revolutionize the way we move around by developing driverless vehicles while traditional auto companies like General Motors, Ford, and Daimler have been fighting back by partnering by with new tech start-ups.
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Easy listen, non-technical perspective
- By James S. on 09-14-18
By: Lawrence D. Burns, and others
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Crabgrass Frontier
- The Suburbanization of the United States
- By: Kenneth T. Jackson
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.
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There is so much to think about here.
- By Richard McKown on 06-25-23
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New York, New York, New York
- Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation
- By: Thomas Dyja
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Thomas Dyja - introduction
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble; New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it became a different place - kinder and meaner, richer and poorer, more like America and less like what it had always been.
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OMG...right on 👍👍👍👍👍
- By howie wine on 04-04-21
By: Thomas Dyja
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Triumph of the City
- How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
- By: Edward Glaeser
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the three percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly. Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live.
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Urbanophile Brain Candy
- By Clay Downing on 12-18-15
By: Edward Glaeser
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Americans Against the City
- Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century
- By: Steven Conn
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
An aversion to urban density and all that it contributes to urban life, and a perception that the city was the place where "big government" first took root in America fostered what historian Steven Conn terms the "anti-urban impulse." In this provocative and sweeping audiobook, Conn explores the anti-urban impulse across the 20th century, examining how the ideas born of it have shaped both the places in which Americans live and work, and the anti-government politics so strong today.
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Excellent book
- By M. M. Conroy on 09-19-20
By: Steven Conn
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Great book-terrible narrator
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Fantastic text, dull on audio
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Strong Towns
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Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he cofounded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem.
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Where are the peer-reviewed sources and studies?
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Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that’s easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick.
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Interesting topic and thoughtful insight, subpar recording.
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Escaping the Housing Trap
- The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis
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Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.
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A timely book about being a part of local change for the better
- By Daniel A Weisler on 10-01-24
By: Charles L. Marohn Jr., and others
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Arbitrary Lines
- How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
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- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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The arbitrary lines of zoning maps across the country have come to dictate where Americans may live and work, forcing cities into a pattern of growth that is segregated and sprawling. The good news is that reform is in the air, with states across the country critically reevaluating zoning. In cities as diverse as Minneapolis, Fayetteville, and Hartford, the key pillars of zoning are under fire, with apartment bans being scrapped, minimum lot sizes dropping, and off-street parking requirements disappearing altogether.
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End Zoning
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Happy City
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Great book-terrible narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-19
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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- Length: 18 hrs
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Fantastic text, dull on audio
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Strong Towns
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Where are the peer-reviewed sources and studies?
- By Amazon Customer on 07-20-21
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Walkable City
- How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
- By: Jeff Speck
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Interesting topic and thoughtful insight, subpar recording.
- By Andrew Nicks on 05-12-18
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Escaping the Housing Trap
- The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis
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- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
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Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.
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A timely book about being a part of local change for the better
- By Daniel A Weisler on 10-01-24
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Arbitrary Lines
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The arbitrary lines of zoning maps across the country have come to dictate where Americans may live and work, forcing cities into a pattern of growth that is segregated and sprawling. The good news is that reform is in the air, with states across the country critically reevaluating zoning. In cities as diverse as Minneapolis, Fayetteville, and Hartford, the key pillars of zoning are under fire, with apartment bans being scrapped, minimum lot sizes dropping, and off-street parking requirements disappearing altogether.
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What listeners say about Streetfight
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jacob
- 05-19-23
Is road design interesting now?
it's crazy to think that I bought a book on streets, roads, and bike paths and found that it was the most interesting book in human behavior I've read this year. I highly recommend this to anybody who is interested in how cities are made and designed and anybody who is interested in being a little nerdy about traffic.
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