Whew. I’ve been meaning to read this for years ever since we read an excerpt in one of my urban planning classes. I finally decided to do it, and it is indeed as great as everyone says. The subject matter is amazing and the writing is excellent. It took me a couple of chapters to get into the book, but once I did, I did not get bored for the entire remainder of the 1100 pages.| Ben Kettle
Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities abstracts cities to what Alain Bertaud claims is their fundamental purpose: a market for labor. Using this abstraction, the book explores land use, transportation, jobs, housing, and more in the context of markets. In this analysis, Bertaud draws on his years of experience as a city planner across the world to vividly describe the various forces that built everything from informal slums in Mumbai—the inevitable result, he argues, of regulations...| Ben Kettle