My Kind of City

Hank lived by the credo, `first listen, then design'. Scott Bernstein, Founder and Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Center for Neighborhood Technology Hank Dittmar was a globally recognised urban planner, advocate, and policy advisor. He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including architectural criticism, community planning, and transportation policy over his long and storied career. In My Kind of City, Dittmar has organised his selected writings into ten sections with original introductions. His observations range on scale from local (My Favorite Street: Seven Dials, Covent Garden, London) to national (Post Truth Architecture in the Age of Trump) and global (Architects are Critical to Adapting our Cities to Climate Change). Andrs Duany writes of Hank in the book foreword, He has continued to search for ways to engage place, community and history in order to avoid the tempting formalism of plans. The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmars experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmars belief that improving our cities should not be left to the experts; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, Hanks writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising. My Kind of City captures a visionary planners spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.