How to Read a City is a field guide for explorers of the modern urban world. In a pocketable handbook of text, photography, sketches, and maps, it bridges the domains of travel, urban planning, and psychogeography. Contrary to typical sightseeing-oriented tourism, the book encourages the explorer to understand the nature of a human-built place: how it expresses itself through its social flow, art and culture practices, architecture/infrastructure, geography/topography, history, and social desire. Through notes, observations, and examples, design/pattern languages, and questions, exercises, practices, and frameworks, the explorer learns methods that help reveal the underlying soul of a city.
The book is currently in development.
The author, John Labovitz, will be exploring various cities in the southern United States in January–March 2024. Contact him at [email protected].