Rebuilding the American Town: Design and Strategy at Small Scale

In the scholarship of urbanism, small towns are overlooked and understudied. Rebuilding the American Town highlights how smaller municipalities are transforming to serve their communities and meet the future. The book uncovers creative planning and design strategies of nine U.S. towns as they rebuild to remain vibrant, equitable and viable in the face of metropolitan sprawl, population shifts, political division, economic shortfalls and climate change. Rebuilding the American Town includes interviews and insights from those directly involved, to reveal the challenges and advantages of being a smaller city while highlighting the power of design at local levels.

The book provides a new lens for contemporary urbanism more broadly as it shifts thinking away from large-metro concerns, toward novel, tactical strategies that advance the quality of life for residents through design and policies that are scaled to the populations and places they serve. The projects in this book show how the small town in the United States is unexpectedly progressive, experimental, urban and global.

David Gamble is Lecturer in Urban Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a registered architect and certified urban planner and Principal of Gamble Associates, based in Cambridge, MA. The practice focuses on urban revitalization and community development. He is the co-author of Rebuilding the American City and editor of Idea City.

Patty Heyda is Professor of Urban Design and Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. She researches American cities and design politics, with a focus on mapping and spatial justice. She is the author of Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA and co-author of Rebuilding the American City.