Reviews

The Experience of Place: A New Way of Looking at and Dealing with Our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside by Tony Hiss

jochno's review

4.0

As a Brit who does not understand very much about the American planning system there was some very interesting albeit fairly outdated parts to this book which provided some interesting insight. A few sections did drag on a little but I thought the parts about German migrants hanging out in train stations and the last farm in New York were extremely insightful.

jeffs's review

4.0

This book is a collection of lesser-repeated anecdotes about the state of our cities, our countryside, and where those places meet. Hiss frequently cited examples of urban planning in the late 1980s. Phrases like ‘urban sprawl’ or ‘global warming’ seemed just out of reach, but you can see these ideas beginning to take on newfound importance. As a Pennsylvania resident, I found it especially fascinating to learn about the Market Street Marshalls (a business-group-led street-cleaning group) and a protest of a thousand Amish for a new ‘superhighway’ proposal that would have sliced through the Amish countryside. I dug into the NY Times archives and found neither the Marshalls nor the superhighway exists today.