A collection of essays about architecture and related topics. Which, alas, I think I turned out to mostly not be the right reader for. I was most interested in the kinds of essays that appeared early in the book, touching on ways in which architecture, city planning, etc. affect our culture and ordinary people's experience of public spaces. These include the title essay, about mall food court design, some discussion of the failures of public housing, a brief look at the nature of suburban sprawl, and other such topics. But a lot of those essays felt rather slight, and many turned out to be very dated. (This collection was published in 2015, but the contents go back as far as the 1990s.)

The meatiest of the essays, I think, mostly involved the designs of particular buildings and the careers of particular architects, and these were of a lot less interest to me, to the point where I often found myself starting to skim without even quite meaning to. I admit that this seems a bit unfair to Rybczynski's writing, which is very clear and accessible, but there we are.

Well, there were at least some pieces that I definitely enjoyed. I was, for instance, very interested in the one about how cities have gone from being the places people wanted to get away from when traveling to being tourist destinations in their own right. And I was surprised by how effective I found the one that was basically an extended love letter to New York's Central Park; it made me feel very fond of the place even though I've never actually been there, and that's not something any other writer has quite succeeded at. I was also very amused by the carefully restrained snark he levels at things like the desire for every big new building to be special and gimmicky and "iconic."

Rating: This was enough of a mixed bag for me that I have to give it a 3.5/5 at most. I feel kind of bad about that, though. I would bet that people who have more of an interest than I do in the design of concert halls or the career of Frank Lloyd Wright are likely to get a lot more out of it than I did. ( )