Edited by DPZ’s own Andrés Duany and Brian Falk, Director of the Center for Applied Transect Studies, the book features essays from more than a dozen contributors including Charles C. Bohl, David Brain, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Emily Talen, Bruce Donnelly, Sandy Sorlien, Daniel K. Slone, Seth Harry, Galina Tachieva, Sidney Brower, Philip Bess, and Andrés Duany.
Praise for the book is already rolling in – including:
“The Transect Urbanism primer is for the understanding and planning of human settlements what The Origin of Species was for creation narratives.”
– Leon Krier
“Fairly regularly, but not often enough, I ask myself, ‘What has Andrés been up to lately?’ The answer to that question is always worth at least a year in grad school. This masterwork is no exception, offering a long-awaited and much-needed deep-dive into the Transect and its potential uses in city planning and beyond. If you are serious about urban design, you need this book.”
– Jeff Speck, author, Walkable City
“Understanding the Transect is like knowing the DNA code for human habitat. Transect Urbanism is a must-read for city-builders.”
– Charles Marohn, founder, Strong Towns; author, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
More about the book:
  • It is the definitive reference on the Rural-to-Urban Transect, a compilation of the most important essays, diagrams, and images on the subject.
  • It provides historical, practical, and theoretical insights into one of the most effective urban planning methodologies developed in the 20th Century. The Transect is a unifying theory, serving as a framework for the various fields of urban design, and provides the basis for thousands of urban plans and zoning codes in cities around the world.
  • The editors selected previously published essays and commissioned preeminent academics and professionals to write on the use of the Transect in their areas of expertise, including retail, zoning, thoroughfare design, environmental sustainability, and philosophy.
  • It contains the most complete collection of Transect images ever published, with hundreds of photos, illustrations and diagrams.
  • Transect Urbanism will serve as a primary reference source for academics, students, and practitioners interested in creating great places.
Transect Urbanism is available on Amazon or via Books & Books.
“It is time now with this book to explain the universality of this taxonomic engine; to showcase the many firms and colleagues who work with the Transect technology; and most important to show that there were predecessors and simultaneous discoveries — that it wasn’t the concoction of DPZ. And if no explicit precedent, it was innate in the work of Krier, Unwin, Schinkel, Vitruvius, and others, as shown by their illustrations. To this may be added the photographic evidence of the existence of the Transect in the structure of cities — even unplanned cities. It seems that the Transect is confirmed as an instance of immanence as a natural law.”
– Andres Duany, founding partner, DPZ CoDesign and co-editor of Transect Urbanism: Readings in Human Ecology
You can click here to read the introduction: issuu.com