The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary

Written by Dhiru A. Thadani, Foreword by Leon Krier, Introduction by Andres Duany

Pub Date: November 16, 2010

Format: Hardcover
Category: Architecture - Planning
Publisher: Rizzoli
Trim Size: 10 x 10
US Price: $95.00
CAN Price: $112.00
ISBN: 978-0-8478-3486-0
About This Book

The final word on the language of urban planning and design. The Language of Towns & Cities is a landmark publication that clarifies the language by which we
talk about urban planning and design. Everyday words such as "avenue," "boulevard," "park," and "district," as well as less commonly used words and terms such
as "sustainability," "carbon-neutral," or "Bilbao Effect" are used with a great variety of meanings, causing confusion among citizens, city officials, and other
decision-makers when trying to design viable neighborhoods, towns, and cities. This magnificent volume is the fruit of more than a decade of research and writing
in an effort to ameliorate this situation. Abundantly illustrated with over 2,500 photographs, drawings, and charts, The Language of Towns & Cities is both a richly
detailed glossary of more than seven hundred words and terms commonly used in architecture and urban planning, and a compendium of great visual interest.
From "A" and "B" streets to Zero Lot and Zeitgeist, the book is at once comprehensive and accessible. An essential work for architects, urban planners, students of
design, and all those interested in the future of towns and cities, this is destined to become a classic in its field.
About the Author

Dhiru A. Thadani is a practicing architect and teacher who has worked in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, in urban design, town planning,
architectural design, landscape design, and construction management.

Lon Krier is a renowned architect who has taught architecture and town planning at the Royal College of Art, London; Princeton University; Yale University;
and the University of Virginia.

Andrs Duany is one of Americas most influential architects and town planners.

Dhiru Thadani's astonishing 'encyclodictionary'

The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary

New Urban Network

By Dhiru A. Thadani
Rizzoli, 804 pp., 2010, $95 hardcover
In a foreword, Leon Krier calls this book an encyclodictionary an apt term, it seems to me, for a volume that defines hundreds of words and phrases
and provides beautifully illustrated explanations of how the concepts represented by many of these words are applied to the built environment.
Krier also calls The Language of Towns & Cities a tome surely the right description for a book that runs to 804 pages, contains 2,500 (!) color
illustrations, and weighs in, according to my bathroom scale, at nine pounds.

Its amazing that such a book could be published today. Who buys print encyclopedias any more? Reference volumes are supposed to be migrating to
the Web. The cost of producing Towns & Cities, on paper with enough gloss to make the photographs shine, must have been enormous, and highly
subsidized.
Author Dhiru Thadani says the publication received financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Richard H. Driehaus
Charitable Lead Trust, and the Center for Applied Transect Studies. How much each of those sources gave is not revealed, but clearly, at a list price of
$95, this super-hefty hardcover is a bargain. Buy it while it can still be had for what amounts to less than 4 cents per illustration.
I had known for quite a while that Thadani, a Washington, DC, architect born in Bombay (Mumbai), was assembling a big reference book. I had also
known Thadani to be exceptionally hard-working and meticulous; a few years ago he catalogued every public space in the nations capital. Even so, I am
in awe of what he has accomplished. Towns & Cities distills nearly everything thats crucial to New Urbanism, plus a great deal about important aspects
of architecture, planning, and urban design that are beyond New Urbanisms scope but well worth knowing.
In this alphabetized production, Thadani requires 56 pages just to define and comment on the entries under A. They begin with A and B Streets
and run through accessibility, affordable housing, agricultural urbanism, alle, alley, ancillary/accessory unit, arcade, arterial, avant-garde, avenue,
awning, and 20 other terms before concluding with axial. Reading them is like taking a very enjoyable short course in urban design.
Some entries are two or three paragraphs with an image or two. Others are several paragraphs followed by a generous array of photos and drawings.
Arcade includes a dozen section views showing the dimensions and proportions of arcades. Those are supplemented by three additional diagrams
showing how arcades span the sidewalks to create a strong urban frontage; plus two more diagrams contrasting the additive arcade and the integrated
arcade; plus 11 photos of arcades in Bologna, Bombay, Washington, and New Orleans. You learn a tremendous amount from the resulting three-page
spread.
The books very first entry says the idea of A streets and B streets was invented by new urbanists to help determine which of a communitys streets could
offer a superior pedestrian experience, one that entertains, informs, and is visually stimulating, and which streets would have to accommodate gas
stations, drive-thru businesses, access to parking lots, and other automotive components, which make walking less comfortable. The A street-B street
dichotomy helps a designer know where and how to concentrate the best place-making.
Avenue, a thoroughfare of high vehicular capacity and low-to-moderate vehicular speed, starting and ending at terminated vistas (unlike a
boulevard, which lacks terminated vistas), is introduced in two quick paragraphs and two photos a single page. But this is followed by a page on the
Champs-lyses, often referred to as the most beautiful avenue in the world (and thus an instructive example) and then two full pages examining
Washingtons Massachusetts Avenue and the particularities of the 11 public spaces (eight circles, two parks, one square) along its 10-mile course.
In LEnfants plan the avenue shifted direction at each of these spaces, so that the avenue did not appear to continue, but rather appeared to terminate
at the public space, Thadani points out. When [Andrew] Ellicott redrew LEnfants plan, Massachusetts Avenue was straightened and the subtlety of
the terminated vistas was eliminated. Thadani is wonderfully alert to subtleties. This should make the book a great resource for designers operating at
every scale from the building to the city, to the region.
Partly because of Thadanis experience in India and other parts of the world but also partly because he lined up help from 52 contributors, among them
many of New Urbanisms leading figures (including Andrs Duany, who wrote the introduction), the book contains a considerable number of surprises.
How many readers have ever heard of Auroville, India? That community, Thadani tells us, was conceived as an ideal township for fifty thousand
inhabitants, devoted to an experiment in human unity. Inaugurated in 1968 with delegates from 124 nations and all the states of India, each of whom
brought soil from his or her homeland, Auroville sought to establish a complementary relationship between the urban rural areas, the book relates.
Over two million trees have been planted there. An aerial photo reveals that Auroville resembles the eye of a hurricane, with development curving
outward from the roughly circular green space at its center. You wont find many sightings of this sort in a standard urbanism text.
While some entries stick to the facts, others mount a lively argument. The entry for Big Box lays out the pros and cons of large, auto-oriented stores
with admirable fairmindedness. Yet there is never any question that this is a book for those who love towns and cities, and who are willing to impose
useful restraints on the impact of the automobile.
There are occasional misspellings and factual errors Howard Roark is rendered as Howard Roake. But mistakes seem remarkably few for a book
covering so much territory.

Explaining the books reason for being, Thadani writes: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world is experiencing many interrelated
emergencies. The economic meltdown, climate change, peak oil, and public health are interdependent and have a direct relationship to the way cities
have been designed. The reformation of urban design will play an increasingly important role in the recovery process.
The fundamental principles of urbanism are the natural solution to the worlds crisis, he declares. This book aspires to define the elements that form
urbanism, for it is these very fundamentals that will allow us to revitalize our cities as well as create enduring new places of value and beauty.
The Language of Towns & Cities is an enormous gift to New Urbanism. Dont pass it by.

A Challenge to Today's Urbanists

The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary
by Dhiru A. Thadani
Rizzoli, New York, NY; 2010
804 pp; hardcover; more than 2,500 photos, drawings & charts; $95
ISBN 978-0-8478-3486-0

Reviewed by Eric R. Osth, AIA, LEED AP

From the moment Dhiru Thadani's book, The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary, landed on my desk, I have been enjoying it immensely and making use
of it regularly. It really did 'land' there all 804 pages and 8 pounds, 11.5 ounces of it. The book is nothing short of a life's work, with an inspiring forward by Leon
Krier, and an introduction by Andrs Duany. The lavish praise it has received thus far is well deserved. So my question for my fellow practitioners is: Now what?

This book is very well organized for simple and easy use. The 'encyclopedic' format allows it to serve as a quick research guide (how many times do you recall paging
through the index of Hegemann and Peets' American Vitruvius?) with clear illustrations, photographs and descriptions of towns and cities. It is a pleasure to have
access to such a wealth of basic, practical, and even unexpected information within a single book.

The book is organized into 544 comprehensive entries that include: the fun: "Noise and Nostalgia;" the details: "Site Walls" and "Signage;" the practical: "Recycling"
and "Roof Forms;" and the basics: "Regulating Plans" and "Rail Transit." Beyond practice-based information, there is also historical information on some of our favorite
people in the profession including Jefferson and Jacobs, and documentation of some of our favorite cities like Paris and Rome (what a nice reminder of my semester
abroad!).

This book illustrates how the field of urbanism has matured in recent decades. Prior to World War II, there were many books of this type. In the years following the war,
symmetrical with a lack of interest in city-building, effective books on urbanism disappeared as well. In the last two decades, urbanists have restored their thirst for
documentation and the dissemination of information by producing precedent-based, practical books again.

However, because effective master planning takes years to implement, and because the rebirth of cities has just begun over the past two decades, many recent books
in the field are largely comprised of visions for the future. Dhiru's book is especially refreshing because it includes a great body of recently built work, which takes the
manual beyond theory and makes it valuable to urban design practitioners working with even the most adventurous clients.

Urban design practitioners endeavor to restore urban environments in the face of incredible obstacles. Design proposals weave competing political, social, aesthetic,
financial and environmental interests into a seamless fabric. The best solutions to design challenges are often bold, and having the appropriate information on hand at
the right moment is critical to moving forward. We rely on precedent examples to learn, leverage, educate and eventually implement these bold solutions. This book will
prove to be an outstanding tool at the core of these efforts.

As I page through the book over and over again, I am reminded of a quote in the introduction to Charles Correa's book Housing and Urbanisation: "As Jaque Robertson
has so brilliantly pointed out, you can't design a spare part without understanding what the machine should look like, and you can't conceptualise the overall machine if
you can't design a spare part and that American downtowns (being imported indiscriminately all around the world) is just a bunch of spare parts with no one
responsible for the whole machine."

It is true: here in the United States, we are living amongst a bunch of spare parts. And here, in this book, we have a wonderful set of tools to help us understand the
machine. Dhiru has provided us with a challenge to use this document to its best effect. So, thank you to Dhiru and your colleagues. The rest is up to us.

TB