Best Civil Engineering & Urban Planning Books

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I've been in the civil engineering industry on the non-technical corporate side for almost a decade. Over this time, I've been reading books about civil engineering projects and urban planning history/theory, mostly out of genuine interest, but partly to get a better understanding of what the firms I've worked for actually do... as a layman, the more I know about this, the better it is for me from a career standpoint.

I'm always on the lookout for more to read, so I thought I'd start a thread, my hope is that this could be a resource for like-minded folks here. Would love to get some suggestions to put on my reading list.

Some of favorites of mine:
  • David McCullough's Path Between the Seas, about the digging of the Panama Canal
  • Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like it in the World, about the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad
  • Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a critique of '50s urban renewal projects
  • Earl Swift's The Big Roads, about the design and construction of the US's National Highway System
  • Thomas O'Connor's Building a New Boston, about the city's urban renewal in the 60s, including the much-maligned razing of Scollay Square and the West End to build Government Center
I'm currently reading Ethan Elkind's Railtown: The fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the Future of the City, which has been pretty good so far. Next up is Lizabeth's Cohen's Saving America's Cities, about Ed Logue.

Given my interests and where I live, I'd love to read a comprehensive book about The Big Dig, but none exist, apparently.
 
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Some things that I like - they tend away from pure civil engineering, to politics and policy supportive of transit and opposing urban freeways
  • Crockett has a great history of Bos-Camb anti-freeway activism in People before Highways.
  • Elkind's Railtown is good for a Califa-phile and a history of coalition building; so that's a +1 for me
  • Higashide's Better Buses, Better Cities give you the language to talk about the why of bus improvements
  • Walker's Human Transit is great for the language around the basics of bus service planning (though, you can also take the same principles to rail-based transit too)
  • Spieler's Trains, Buses, People is actually really good for its atlas pages -- they really speak to the job and housing densities needed to support high-ridership bus networks
I want someone to do the Big Dig history, too!
 
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Another book that I just remembered was really a wonderful read with thoughts about how people think about cities:

Kevin Lynch's Image of the City. I really enjoyed reading it. It *is* theoretical and planning and design focused. But, I think it provides a useful framework if you're trying to talk to others about what changes you would like to see in a city and you just don't have a common language around your experiences. It gives you a place to start to build some understanding between people who have very different images of the same city.
 
Some books on some of the wide variety of topics that is relevant here
On Boston/the region:
Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools
The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston
Burn Boston Burn: 'The Story of the Largest Arson Case in the History of the Country'
A People's History of the New Boston
A People's Guide to Greater Boston
The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions
Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston 1870-1940
Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts
King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty
Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England
Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston
Mapping Boston
Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings

On general topics:
The Color of Law
How to Kill a City
The Feminist City
Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
From Urbanization to Cities
Capital City
Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility
 
donkeybutlers said:
Some books on some of the wide variety of topics that is relevant here
On Boston/the region:
Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools
The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston
Burn Boston Burn: 'The Story of the Largest Arson Case in the History of the Country'
A People's History of the New Boston
A People's Guide to Greater Boston
The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions
Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston 1870-1940
Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts
King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty
Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England
Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston
Mapping Boston
Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings
Click to expand...

Intriguing list. Not one I would have ever thought of, but I suppose that in a culture where home care for the elderly is regarded as infrastructure it makes sense that King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty could be considered a book on civil engineering.

As Dylan might put it now, The dictionary definitions, they are a-changing...
 
xec said:
Intriguing list. Not one I would have ever thought of, but I suppose that in a culture where home care for the elderly is regarded as infrastructure it makes sense that King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty could be considered a book on civil engineering.

As Dylan might put it now, The dictionary definitions, they are a-changing...
Click to expand...
This colonial expansion both necessarily included and facilitated specific infrastructure projects as well as the founding/expansion of many of the towns in the region. The society, city, and region we live in did not simply spring from the earth. It has a specific history that is worth understanding in the context of urban planning. I grant you this is generally ignored. I do not grant you that this is not relevant. The fact that it is taken for granted, responded to with dismissal, an preferably ignored only emphasizes how much it is necessary to explicitly include in the conversation.

The title of this thread is "Best Civil Engineering & Urban Planning Books." While civil engineering might try to avoid political questions as a discipline (which are in fact relevant to its practice always) urban planning as a discipline does not in the same way.
 
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I just finished Michael Healy's BART, a history of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.

I found it fascinating, particularly the many passages regarding the engineering & construction of the system (the chapter about the TransBay Tube was worth the price of the book alone). As someone who's not a civil engineer but is familiar with the industry/discipline, for me the text was technical enough to properly explain things, but not so technical as to become dense/unreadable. I highly recommend it if you're into these kinds of books.

Having recently read Ethan Elkind's Railtown (about the history of LA's Metro system), it was interesting to compare/contrast that book to BART. Railtown was good, but focused primarily on political struggles of the project, as well as the many planning and budgeting hurdles required to get the project going (and keep it going). Very informative in that sense, but I personally found BART's more holistic focus a better read; it addressed the system's conception, planning, budgeting, political squabbles, design/engineering/construction, and even its marketing outreach. That last piece being understandable since Healey was BART's Director of Media & Public Affairs for years (despite this, the book is quite even-handed and takes care to point out the many warts/failures the BART has had along the way).
 
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