I enjoyed The Gated City, and I will be recommending it to others.

I’m planning to write a longer review for Talking Story, my blog, so briefly for now:

I can understand the feelings of the two previous reviewers now here, for both seem to be much more learned and familiar with the subjects at hand (urban planning, density economics etc.), however I greatly appreciated what Mr. Avent set out to do, in releasing his essay to the world-at-large as a very affordable Kindle Single. I was happy it wasn’t free, for we do pay more attention to what we pay for, and we’re more immediate in our reading, and our responding.

I agree that it’s “a decent book to inform the general public” and am glad it is — in fact, I think the ‘plain English’ of The Gated City (good title) may be its strength in light of the author’s honest intentions in writing it — for my feeling is that the public needs to be better informed, and is befuddled by the current state of the American economy, to the point of losing hope prematurely, when there are answers we can work on as a better informed citizenry. Even the “ton of throat clearing” one reviewer mentioned was fine for me as a reader, and I didn’t feel there was that much of it. As a small businesswoman who has worked with the ULI in the past (Urban Land Institute) and continues to follow urban planning and green sustainability with great interest, I’m familiar with the factors Mr. Avent covers, but his writing style actually proved to be a fresh reframing for me, for he describes them differently than in the discussions I’ve been accustomed to participating in.

I did reach the end hoping for more suggested solutions, but again, The Gated City is a Kindle Single on purpose, and not a full-throttled book: He’s written it for our awareness, and he’s asking for our involvement and our help. As I reached the last page, the next thing I did was send the author a message via Twitter saying, “thank you for writing [this]. Your message of more inclusive thinking is sorely needed” — for it is: We must do something about NIMBYism and the growing class/wealth divisions of America, and this discussion within The Gated City could help interject more economic logic where now exists a high degree of emotional selfishness.