Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Out Cities

In Urban Alchemy, Mindy Fullilove brings together the fields of public health and public planning to propose a new way of healing broken cities.Her use of case studies brings to life the application of planning to create communities that are connected physically - through bridges, sightlines, high points, historical elements - and emotionally - through involving community residents in the planning, the place-making, the re-emergence of the community out of broken neighborhoods. It makes so much sense.As Michel Cantal-Dupart said in a workshop I attended, a city is like a human body - each part connected to the other parts and therefore affected. So Urban Alchemy proposes that healing one part of a city helps heal the rest. It just makes so much sense.And Dr. Fullilove writes so eloquently and accessibly, the book is a pleasure to read.I urge anyone who cares about cities small and large to read it and apply its lessons - if not to heal, then to maintain civic health.

Great book! The author gives an excellent parallel of school segregation for readers to understand segregation of communities. Immediately, I was able to identify the many divides in my city. She gives great examples on how to move your city forward and bridge the communities. As you're reading, I found myself cross-referencing a lot to understand more about mentioned landmark cases, movements, or other things or terms that were unfamiliar in order to comprehend the direction the author was taking me. The chapters are long, could have been split in two but overall, it's an excellent read and should be adopted in school curriculum in 9-12 and college level.

Dr. Fulilove, a psychiatrist, has focused her career on analyzing sick neighborhoods. As with all good doctors, she soon realized that no neighborhood thrives or fails in a vacuum. It is part of a city, a state, a nation and its connections to the larger world will profoundly affect it.Her book is readable, both as a study of how people live in real cities, and as a memoir of a life spent - and still being spent - on solving a knotty problem, one neighborhood at a time.If you despair of fixing your little piece of the world, I urge you to read this book for a fresh perspective.

The best thing about this book is that it tackles a complex and vexing set of issues in an accessible way that leaves this reader, at least, feeling hopeful about the seemingly intractable problems of our cities. Dr. Fullilove has an engaging voice that makes this journey through her nine alchemical elements of urban restoration engaging and in-spirit-ing. I'm a reader with a strong preference for fiction over nonfiction, so if you want to teach me something, you'd better tell me a story. This book does--and I learned a lot in the process.

One of the best books I have read on Urban Restoration in years. I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking to make transformation in our sorted out cities. The It Girl of Urban Alchemy 360

When it's not heartbreaking. The stories of damage to communities and the surprising fixes have global implications and are a harbinger of things to come as the world becomes both more urban and more prone to dislocation. This is an important book for anyone working in planning and public health.

Excellent book about how we can improve our neighborhoods and communities! This book lights a fire in you!

This was an excellent introduction to sorted-out cities. The book was informative yet approachable. I was able to find some great solutions to my own cities problems. It motivated me to get more involved in my own neighborhood. Great Job!

La démarche et la méthode de cette Directrice de l'Ecole de santé publique de la Columbia University est un bon travail que tout élu ou professionnel de l'aménagement se devrait de lire.