Book and Review: Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted Out Cities

Posted by on December 23, 2013

Joyful Journey

Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted Out Cities, by Mindy Thompson Fullilove, M.D. New Village Press, 2013, 333pp. $19.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Miriam Axel-Lute

I’m particularly fond of the underlying premise of the book that you need to address the city and region as a whole-reconnect it, unsort it-to address the problems facing each part. “We can’t just treat the neighborhoods,” Fullilove quotes Cantal saying. “We have to remove the chasm that is dividing the poor neighborhoods form the other parts of the city. Doctors know that if you want to treat a boil on the skin, you have to treat the whole body. It’s the same for the city” (p. 19). This strikes me as the perspective that is missing in so many planning exercises.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/3474/joyful_journey/


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