From Los Angeles to Boston and Chicago to Miami, US cities are struggling to address the twin crises of high housing costs and household instability. Debates over the appropriate course of action have been defined by two poles: building more housing or enacting stronger tenant protections. These options are often treated as mutually exclusive, with support for one implying opposition to the other. Shane Phillips believes that effectively tackling the housing crisis requires that cities support both tenant protections and housing abundance. He offers readers more than 50 policy recommendations, beginning with a set of principles and general recommendations that should apply to all housing policy. The remaining recommendations are organized by what he calls the Three S’s of Supply, Stability, and Subsidy. Phillips makes a moral and economic case for why each is essential and recommendations for making them work together. There is no single solution to the housing crisis—it will require a comprehensive approach backed by strong, diverse coalitions. The Affordable City is an essential tool for professionals and advocates working to improve affordability and increase community resilience through local action.

“This superbly succinct and incisive book couldn’t be more timely or urgent.” —Michael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer. Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life.

This important study documents the rich architectural heritage of Kansas City, a booming metropolis between 1880 and 1930. The grand houses built during this time are evidence of the importance of this midwestern metropolis, which once eclipsed cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver. The forty houses featured within this book were erected by the city's leading plutocrats, including newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson, minerals magnate August R. Meyer, lumber baron Robert A. Long, grain merchant Herbert F. Hall., and oilman Ernest C. These men typically hired local architects, many of whom had received their training on the East Coast, but settled in Kansas City. Architects in the book include Henry F. Hoit, Louis S. Curtiss, Horace La Pierre, Edward B. Delk, Edward W. Tanner, and Mary Rockwell Hook--one of the first women to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Almost all of these houses were designed in the European and American revival styles prevelant throughout Western culture during this period, although they are distinguished by a midwestern sensibility. This survey will surprise and delight anyone interested in America's residential architecture during this time.

For more than fifty years, Robert A.M. Stern Architects has designed extraordinary houses and residences around the world, each suffused with a rich understanding of traditional architecture and an intuitive sense of how to shape a home to the needs of modern life. Many of the firm's important early commissions were houses, and while RAMSA has since evolved into an internationally renowned firm with an extraordinarily broad portfolio, an unflagging dedication to timeless residential design has remained a cornerstone of the practice. In Houses: Robert A.M. Stern Architects, RAMSA's residential Partners--Roger H. Seifter, Randy M. Correll, Grant F. Marani, and Gary L. Brewer--offer an intimate look at RAMSA houses from the last ten years and explore how these residences embody the spirit of place and find harmony between the traditional and the contemporary. A 424-page visual feast of rich, full-color photographs and elegant drawings, the book presents a selection of 17 homes that showcase RAMSA's mastery of diverse styles and highlight the firm's collaboration with leading interior designers, landscape architects, craftspeople, and builders from around the world. Featured are a rambling oceanside retreat in East Hampton; a mountain penthouse in the Rocky Mountains; a lakeside cottage in the Midwest; an urbane Park Avenue apartment; an elegant Mediterranean Revival villa in Fort Lauderdale; and a house in Singapore in that city's distinctive "Black-and-White" style. Together, the homes epitomize the quality, craftsmanship, and undeniable presence that define every RAMSA residence. With every page, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how RAMSA's architects honor context and time-honored design principles while always looking to the future, infusing established tradition with fresh life and anticipating how each home will grow, change, and evolve over the years.

How to turn an old home into a jewel on the block. What do a fashion mogul, a Williams-Sonoma executive, a museum curator, and a design-savvy actress have in common? Good taste, of course, but more than that: a shared passion to "bring back," to carefully restore and artfully embellish, their houses. They are among the twenty-one real-life renovations featured in this essential resource—from stately town houses to brownstone fixer-uppers—to give the true experience of creating an urban oasis on any street. Whether hunting for rare chandeliers, salvaging floorboards for new tabletops, or removing walls to let more light in, all the nuts and bolts of restoration are here. In Boston, a young family's renovation takes three years and includes every modern amenity (a media room, home gym, elevator), but saves most of the original interiors (window shutters and seats, marble fireplaces). A Baltimore couple—both stars of the graphic design world—must reconcile their cutting-edge tastes with their traditional surrounds. From furniture and color to rooftops and terraces, Restoring a House in the City offers a treasury of inspiration and ideas, as well as a lavish illustrated tour of some of the best done renovations in the business.

Los Angeles's dramatic setting, Mediterranean climate, and outdoor lifestyle have long attracted creative individuals to its diverse neighborhoods. The thirty houses and gardens featured in City of Angels, designed by renowned architects, interior designers, and garden designers, offer a rich mix of quirkiness, elegance, glitz, and Hollywood pizazz. Expertly guided by author Jennifer Ash Rudick and photographer Firooz Zahedi, we visit Kelly Wearstler's beach house in Malibu, Hutton Wilkinson's exotic ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, a midcentury modern Schindler house, a Pacific Palisades villa decorated by Oliver Furth, John Lautner's vertigo-inducing modernist glass box in the Hollywood Hills, and Richard Shapiro's overgrown gardens surrounding a magnificent Hispano-Moorish house in Holmby Hills.