What I'm reading

I figured that as long as I'm ranting about urban planning, I might as well know what I'm talking about. So I went to the bookstore and got these books:

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam

A little light reading. Ominously, two of these books contain the word "collapse" in their titles. The other two contain the words "death" and "decline." The Diamond work differs from the others in that it concentrates mainly on environmental issues and on the sustainability of economies. It does, however, cite ex-urban sprawl as a factor in resource depletion in Montana.