在欧洲，城市广场是一种古老的文化；在中国，城市广场是城市建设中广受关注的问题。
本书以对国外(从古希腊至现代)的40个典型城市广场的观察、分析为线索，阐明城市广场发生、发展的社会动力，力图从社会学和建筑学的双重视角建构城市广场的整体轮廓，认为城市广场的综合品质应是空间品质和社会品质的有机统一，并尝试将其进行量化研究，提出一种城市广场品质的客观评价体系。
按照这个体系，对我国典型城市广场(从近代至今14个城市的18个城市广场)的建设历史与现状进行梳理，分析中国传统城市的空间特征及其社会动力，指出传统的中国城市缺少城市广场这一空间元素，中国城市广场的出现来自于西方城市文化的影响，而当今中国的城市广场大多只是一种展示性元素，缺少与城市及市民生活的关联。
书中史料剖析部分图文资料详实，脉络清晰；对广场品质的分析、评价客观明晰，尤其是细分出各影响因素，颇具可操作性，适于在设计中应用。
本书可供建筑设计、城市设计、城市规划、城市管理以及相关领域的研习、实践者阅读参考。

《明日之城市》一书，是世界著名建筑与城市规划大师勒·柯布西耶的一部经典著作。在该书中，柯布通过对20世纪初的城市发展规律和城市社会问题的关注、思考和研究，提出关于未来城市发展模式的设想，即“现代城市”理想，希望通过对现存城市尤其是大城市本身的内部改造，使其能够适应未来发展的需要。柯布主张关于城市改造的4个原则是：减少市中心的拥堵、提高市中心的密度、增加交通运输的方式、增加城市的植被绿化；基于这些最基本的原则，柯布以巴黎市中心为实例进行了300万人的“现代城市”的规划设计。

彼得•霍尔影响广泛的《明日之城》仍然是针对规划理论与实践的历史，针对其所缘起的社会经济问题和机遇的绝世阐述。这部经典文献由城市规划设计领域最受尊敬的人物所撰写，为读者呈现了发生于20世纪全球范围内的重要城市规划与城市设计史。
此次经过全面修订的第四版涵盖了过去十年间所发表的众多新成果，借鉴了来自全球范围的案例。霍尔在讨论中涉及的城市内容广泛，并将他自己多彩的经验融入到这部权威性的城市发展史之中。

《城市读本(中文版)》广泛收录了关于城市研究和城市规划方面的经典和最新的文献共计54篇，其中37篇翻译来自“城市读本”（英文版）第五版，17篇为新收录。为了便于读者学习，《城市读本(中文版)》的特色是：提供了全书的导演、每个部分的引言及每篇文章的编者导读，还翻译、更新了《城市读本(中文版)》的部分框图，并且新加了14张与中国城市有关的框图。

在这本有关城市形态的著作中，作者里克沃特断言，一个城镇的理念必须足够坚实，才能在不可避免的纷乱更迭的城市体验中存活下来。当现在的城市变得只关注建筑单体、只关注城市的物质要素和市场运作的时候，人们不该忘记，城市形态的可识别性和质感、开放性的公共空间、醒目的公共建筑仍然可以丰富我们的城市。此书已经再版多次，并被译成多种文字出版，并被许多国家列为建筑学课程的教材。

本书基于上海市城市规划设计研究院与同济大学建筑与城市空间研究所“亚洲城市论坛”合作研究成果，精选18座亚洲城市，梳理其发展脉络，剖析规划要点，为读者展现亚洲本土城市的规划与发展概况。
本书视野独特，精准聚焦亚洲本土城市。其中，有4座中国城市，即北京、上海、香港和台北；其余14座城市则分布于亚洲各个地区，包括东亚、东南亚、南亚、中亚、中东。在这些城市中，既有当前城市规划领域研究成果较为丰富的城市（如日本东京、新加坡等），亦有所受关注较少的城市（如斯里兰卡的科伦坡、哈萨克斯坦的阿斯塔纳等）。这些亚洲城市各自不同的规划发展经验对应不同规模等级的中国城市，具有很高的学习、研究价值。

In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.
Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly’s Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly’s legacy.
Summary: This book is great
Rating: 5
I read this book for school... but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. (Reading it, I was always wandering around talking to friends and family about it). The book is short, but there is a lot to think about. :)
Summary: How urban areas work
Rating: 5
Years ago I watched an episode of NOVA on PBS on William H. Whyte that explained the background and purpose and accomplishments of his project to study what makes urban spaces in cities work. I sat there riveted, as he methodically and carefully unveiled a vast range of urban phenomena of which I had hitherto been unaware.
The background to his study was this: following the enormous success of the plaza of Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York in the mid-1950s, the city began to give tax breaks to new buildings that included plazas as part of their design. At the Seagram, people found in the heart of the city a marvelous space in which to congregate, to eat lunch, to sit and talk, and just enjoy a few minutes away from the office. While the idea of providing an incentive to new plaza development was unquestionably a great aim, a small problem developed: many of the new plazas were, unlike that of the Seagram, just dreadful. Cold, austere, people unfriendly, unwelcoming, many of them seemed designed more to keep people away than give them a place to enjoy themselves. This is where Whyte comes in. New York City was concerned with codifying what made a successful plaza, and giving tax breaks based more on the kind of plaza being built, rather than any kind of plaza at all. So, Whyte was charged with discovering precisely what goes into a successful urban space. The results of his exhaustive study are summed up in this brilliant monograph.
Whyte took cameras and began filming all kinds of urban spots in plazas and parks, and on regular sidewalks. As a result of this study, he was able first to analyze how urban spaces work, and secondly on the basis of this make, to make suggestions as to how to make successful spaces. He discusses the enormous value and utility of using fountains or falling water both to provide aesthetic benefits and to create a barrier of white noise between an urban space and the street. He shows the value of having a variety of steps and levels in providing fun places to sit. He allays the fears of those who are afraid that a plaza will attract undesirables by showing that the homeless tend to go where other people are not. He displays the patterns of traffic on sidewalks and the function that street food can play. Whyte comes across not merely as a sophisticated urban planner and social scientist: he is revealed as a visionary.
I think that this ought to be a must-read for anyone with any curiosity about cities and the potential they possess for a vibrant and exciting social life. Here in my own city of Chicago, I constantly lament that Whyte's lessons go unheeded and unlearned. We Chicagoans take pride in how clean our downtown area is, but we possess very, very few plazas, instead having virtually all of our buildings coming all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. I lament that there are so few places in the Loop and the near North to sit at lunch, that so very, very little has been done along the river to make it people friendly, and that there are so few places to congregate. We have a gorgeous, inpirational skyline, but on the sidewalk level, things are different. I wish our city planners had more of Whyte's view of things.
Summary: A classic case study for urban design professionals
Rating: 5
Although the photographs are dated, the material is classic. This book is a must for anyone who is involved with design or review of open spaces. It shows how people use open space and identifies the common elements of successful spaces. While the elements all seem logical, the book shows how we often fly in the face of logic when using these spaces. The book focuses primarily on plazas and small parks in New York City, but includes a section for smaller cities with low rise buildings. The information can also be applied to parks in any size town. This book is a facinating case study in social ecology.

Jeff Speck has spent his career determining what makes a city work, and he has boiled it down to one essential factor: walkability. For urban life to thrive, cities must prioritize pedestrians over cars. Six-lane highways tearing through downtown must give way to crossable streets, massive parking lots must give way to pedestrian plazas, architecture designed to be appreciated from afar must give way to welcoming buildings. Making all of this happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing what needs to be done is the trick. Speck can show us the invisible workings underneath the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can make the right decisions for our cities. Cities have been recognized as the key to sustainable living. But New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C. - these are not the next great American cities, and they are not where the future of urban life will be formed. Most Americans live in midsize cities - Lowell, Massachusetts; Tacoma, Washington; Grand Rapids, Michigan - that need downtowns that are vibrant and appealing; they need to feel like the urban hubs that they are. They need walkability. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight to what urban planners actually do and how cities can and do change, "Walkable City" lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our American cities work.

这本书分城市广场、邻里公园、小型公园和袖珍公园、大学校园户外空间、老年住宅区户外空间等部分，系统地阐述了城市空间设计的理论与实践。作者认为美学目标必须与生态需要、文脉目标和使用者三方面取得平衡并相互融合。

《明日之城》是一部关于20世纪城市规划的理论与实践的历史，也是一部关于引导城市规划形成的社会经济问题和机遇的历史。它文锋犀利，洞察力强，涉及全球，无与伦比地记述了书中极其重要的主题。
《明日之城》的第三版是在它初版之后，考虑到最新出版文献的丰富性，并以历史视角来看待1990年代，从而进行了一次综合性修订。这是回顾了整个20世纪现代城市规划运动的发展修订而成的完整版本。

刘易斯·芒福德是西方人文科学与城市－区域理论界一位久负盛誉的学者，也是世界规划界和建筑界极受尊敬的大师。他一生著述颇多，涉及的领域很广，本书即是从他30多部专著和上千篇论文中精选出来的，所选内容既囊括了每一个主要的专业领域，同时又在时间顺序和逻辑层次上，展现了这个思想家的成长脉络。本书共七章，首章讲述作者立志；继而分别讨论建筑、城市文明、城市及区域的未来、美国研究、技术与文明，最后以作者1979年获奖答谢演讲结束全书。本书可以使人们不必花费太多的时间，就能了解这位大学者思想的精华所在。

分上下册

《分形城市系统:标度•对称•空间复杂性》的主要内容是基于对称思想和标度概念建立城市系统的理论模型，以期反映城市演化及其时空结构的一般规律。根据维数与空间的对应性，从时间、空间和等级三个角度将地理空间分为三种类型。基于三类空间，从宏观城市层面发展了刻画城市系统的标度定律，揭示城市系统演化现象背后的简单与复杂的数学联系和物理本质。
城市和城市体系是复杂的空间系统，分形是探索复杂性的有效工具。运用分形思想探索城市系统的空间复杂性具有重要的理论意义和实践价值。

这本书以街道的视觉秩序的创造作为建筑平面布局形成设计的出发点，分别从街道的自然特征，美学规律，人文特色出发由浅至深论述如何发掘建筑平面布局形成设计中的视觉秩序规律。
现代西方建筑理论众说纷纭，其中虽不乏真知灼见，不过这些理论的研究者却未必都具有建筑创作实际体验，故虽言之凿凿却不着痛处，难以指导设计实践。更有甚者，唯恐其理论不够“深奥”，乃一味旁征博引，玄之又玄，再加文字晦涩，读后令人如坠五里雾中。
芦原义信这部《街道的美学》和《续街道的美学》则一扫上述弊端。作者把当代许多建筑理论、丰富的知识寓于通俗易懂的流畅文字中，通俗而不浅薄。并且，作者又把这些理论应用于自己的建筑创作，通过自己的大量作品说明这些理论，故理论性强但又不脱离实践。

《外部空间的设计》是日本著名建筑师芦原义信的作品，1975年由日本彰国社出版。芦原义信1942年毕业于东京大学，现任东京大学教授，并开设有芦原义信建筑研究所。他曾主持设计了1967年蒙特利尔国际博览会日本馆、驹泽公园奥林匹克体育馆等建筑。1960年起，他即开始研究外部空间问题，为此曾两度到意大利考察。作者在书中通过对比，分析意大利和日本的外部空间，提出了积极空间、消极空间、加法空间、减法空间等一系列饶有兴味的概念；并结合建筑实例，对庭园、广场等外部空间的设计提出了一些独到的见解。全书共四章。

自1961年出版以来，这本书即成为城市研究和城市规划领域的经典名作，对当时美国有关都市复兴和城市未来的争论产生了持久而深刻的影响。作者以纽约、芝加哥等美国大城市为例，深入考察了都市结构的基本元素以及它们在城市生活中发挥功能的方式，挑战了传统的城市规划理论，使我们对城市的复杂性和城市应有的发展取向加深了理解，也为评估城市的活力提供了一个基本框架。

《交往与空间》这本书着重从人及其活动对物质环境的要求这一角度来研究和评价城市和居住区中公共空间的质量，在从住宅到城市的所有空间层次上详尽地分析了吸引人们到公共空间中散步、小憩、驻足、游戏，从而促成人们的社会交往的方法，提出了许多独到的见解。
《交往与空间》在1971年出版后，对斯堪的纳维亚及欧美其他地区的城市及居住区的规划设计产生了广泛的影响。先后被译成多种文字，在许多国家被列为建筑学及城市规划设计专业学生的必读书目。

本书覆盖了相关学科全部领域，例如交通规划、生物区域划分、暴雨处理、停车、总体设计、城市声学和平面造型。它是城市设计和包括社会、环境和经济数据的城市自然规划的重要参考文献的惟一来源。

《城市发展史》(起源演变和前景)是美国著名的城市理论家、社会哲学家刘易斯·芒福德的重要理论著作之一，它着重从人文科学的角度系统地阐述了城市的起源和发展，并展望了远景。《城市发展史》(起源演变和前景)史料丰富，为提高实用性，书后编了中文索引，便于读者检索。