Urbanism Without Effort

"...a book of inspiration and aspiration. It makes the reader yearn for places with soul."--Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "Better Cities & Towns" "...a great ground-level look at how neighborhoods and communities can foster flourishing life in the city."--Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "Can't Catch My Breath" "A plea for a renewed commitment to authentic urbanism and an invitation to learn from history as our cities enter a future of unprecedented change."--Alex Steffen, author of Carbon Zero: Imagining Cities that Can Save the Planet "Readers will come away motivated to find, experience and document their own favourite places and find ways to apply effortless urbanism in their own neighbourhood."--Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "Spacing" "Wolfe provides something rare in contemporary urbanist writing--rich illustrations and examples from real life--both historical and current. His writing about the past and the future of urban form offers readers inspiration, historical context, and a better understanding of how a sustainable, inviting urban environment is created."--Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "Eco-Libris" "Chuck's work is what happens when art meets science in placemaking. His talent for capturing places being themselves is so important in the placemaker's toolkit, yet can be missed if we are not paying attention. Lucky for us, Chuck is always paying attention and this book is the proof."--Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "One of Chuck Wolfe's great gifts is an extraordinary photographer's eye for capturing visual images of everyday, but evocative, city life. Another is an uncommonly strong intellectual grounding in urban planning theory. In Urbanism Without Effort, he combines the two in unique fashion to show us how unplanned places can often teach us more about great placemaking than planned ones."--Kaid Benfield, senior counsel, environmental strategies at PlaceMakers, LLC, and former director for sustainable communities, NRDC

Charles R. Wolfe provides a unique perspective about cities as a London and Seattle-based urbanist writer, photographer, land use consultant and attorney. He is a Visiting Scholar at KTH University (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, and a long-time Affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, where he teaches land-use law at the graduate level. Wolfe is author of Urbanism Without Effort and Seeing the Better City, which informed his work as a Fulbright Specialist in Cairns and Townsville, Australia. He has contributed regularly on urban development topics to several publications, including CityLab, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, CityMetric, Governing, and Planetizen. He blogs at myurbanist.com.

Introduction Chapter 1. The Dynamic Potential of Urbanism Without Effort Chapter 2. Observing Urbanism Without Effort at Work, The Human Experience Chapter 3. Capturing the Best Urban Diary Examples Chapter 4. Lessons Learned, Collecting the Diaries Closing Sources Acknowledgements About the Author Further Reading