urbanism

Big Mall

Shopping for Meaning

By: Kate Black
Narrated by: Tara Koehler
Length: 5 hours 28 minutes

A phenomenology of the mall: If the mall makes us feel bad, why do we keep going back? In a world poisoned by capitalism, is shopping what makes life worth living? In less than a century, the shopping mall has morphed from a blueprint for a socialist utopia to something else entirely: a home to disaffected mallrats and depressed zoo... Read more

Crossings

How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

By: Ben Goldfarb
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
Length: 11 hours 52 minutes

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the... Read more

How Infrastructure Works

Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

By: Deb Chachra
Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
Length: 11 hours 25 minutes

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Revelatory, superbly written, and pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece.” —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us

Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic... Read more

Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies

By: Leslie Kern
Narrated by: Parmida Vand
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

From the author of the best-selling Feminist City, this urbanite’s guide to gentrification knocks down the myths and exposes the forces behind the most urgent housing crisis of our time. Gentrification is no longer a phenomenon to be debated by geographers or downplayed by urban planners—it’s an experience lived and felt by working-class... Read more

The Privatization of Everything

How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back

By: Donald Cohen & Allen Mikaelian
Narrated by: Brian P. Craig
Length: 12 hours 16 minutes

As people reach for social justice and better lives, they create public goods that must be kept out of the market. When private interests take over, they strip public goods of their power to lift people up, creating instead a tool to diminish democracy, further inequality, and separate us from each other.

The Privatization of Everything, by the... Read more

The Sum of Us

What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

By: Heather McGhee
Narrated by: Heather McGhee
Length: 11 hours 8 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE... Read more

Speculative Futures

Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Citie s We Need

By: Johanna Hoffman
Narrated by: Henriette Zoutomou
Length: 4 hours 37 minutes

How the emerging field of speculative futures can help us dream--and build--better, sustainable, and more equitable cities for everyone.

Speculative futures--design approaches that help us visualize new and potential worlds--move us beyond what currently exists into what could one day be. Inspired by art, film, fiction, and industrial design,... Read more