PLANETIZEN, the public-interest information exchange for the urban planning, design, and development community, this month released its eleventh annual list of the ten best books in urban planning, design and development published.

The Planetizen editorial staff based the 2012 list on a number of criteria, including editorial reviews, popularity, number of references, sales figures, recommendations from experts and the book's potential impact on the urban planning, development and design professions.

"This year's list covers a range of urgent topics, from the technical to the technological, from the city to the country, from the personal to the professional; all oriented towards a variety of audiences from 'Dummies' to 'Straphangers'," the editors wrote.

"Common among this year's books is the provision of practical suggestions for meeting some of our greatest challenges: how to grow our economies, how to build multi-modal cities, how to maximize our public spaces, and how to head off environmental collapse."

Presented alphabetically, Planetizen's top ten books published in 2012 are:

• Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space (Edited by Ron Shiffman, Rick Bell, Lance Jay Brown, and Lynne Elizabeth with Anastassia Fisyak and Anusha Venkataraman);
• Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities (Brent D. Ryan);
• Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet (Kendra Pierre-Louis);
• Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds (Jim Sterba);
• Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City (Brad Feld);
• Straphanger (Taras Grescoe);
• Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation (James Howard Kunstler);
• Urban Bikeway Design Guide (National Association of City Transportation Officials);
• Urban Planning for Dummies (Jordan Yin); and
• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Jeff Speck).

The full list and more information about Planetizen's top 10 books are available from the Planetizen website at <http://www.planetizen.com/node/59616>.