Easily the best treatise I've read on the subject of sprawl. The fact that it manages to do so in a very unsanctimonious tone is perhaps what makes this book such a treasure. The authors are the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism and were active in the design of Seaside, Florida, a town that serves as a model for how cities should be built if we want them to last and to be livable and rewarding (the movie "The Truman Show" was filmed there by the way). Each chapter has a point-by-point breakdown of what causes sprawl and traffic and how it could easily (well, relatively easily) be done better. It calmly explains how each component of sprawl costs the community huge sums of money in the long and short run. The fact that they are able to do so with out resorting to yuppie-bashing or anti-SUV hubris makes this book all the more credible. James Howard Kunstler's three books on the subject are all terrific and indispensable, but he tends to level his vitriol at suburbanites who he thinks should know better by now the toll their lifestyles take on the community. That's always entertaining reading, but is really kind of an elitist turkey shoot, and verily does it detract from the credibility of his cause. Conversely, the concepts advanced in Suburban Nation could be easily digested by virtually anyone with a cursory knowledge of cities and neighbhorhoods, which is to say everybody, really. The chapter called "More Freeways Means More Traffic" is perhaps the most valuable. The idea that building more freeway lanes only causes more traffic is supremely unintuitive at first, but the authors deconstruct the process over a long period of time and thusly prove the point conclusively. And though urban planners in Europe have been wise to this for decades, this revelation is largely ignored in the US because, of course, there's boatloads of money to be made from developing real estate along new freeways and the suburbs they serve. The authors also shrewdly point out that the fiasco of sprawl is not just a physical or geographical one, but an architectural one as well, though this is no surprise to anyone who has driven through the asteroid belt of McMansions and big-box retail lately. Houses nowadays are a shrine to cars, with their garages facing the street. They're constructed of vinyl, chipboard and fake brick and are lucky to outlast their mortgage. Stores sit in an oceanic parking lot and seldom exceed one story or have any windows. The curvilinear streets typical of suburbia are disorienting, disconnected, needless, and a major cause of traffic congestion. There is no good reason why this book is not required reading for all planners, real-estate developers, traffic engineers, city council members, mayors, and architects.