• $39.13, Paperback - 264 pages (December 2003)

Taken from the Amazon website:

From Book News, Inc.

“Urban planners, economists, and project managers report from the trenches in five US cities that are using public transit as the cornerstone of their development efforts. They also consider general topics such as the concept of transit-oriented development, the drama and its actors, regulations, financing, and traffic and parking. Copyright n++ 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR”

As our oil prices continue to rise and the negative effects of sprawl become more obvious, transit-oriented development is the way of the future.

• $49.99 - Windows
• $44.99 - Windows Rush Hour expansion pack
• $74.99 - MacIntosh
• $44.99 - MacIntosh Rush Hour expansion pack
• $24.74 - Official strategy guide

This is the game urban planners play, and not even urban planners. The thrill of laying the foundations to one’s city and seeing it grow has made Sim City one of the most popular simulation games of the past decade. It’s fascinating how Sim Earth, which allowed you to play god, has yet to be re-released, whereas Sim City, which lets you be a multi-billion dollar mayor.

Version 4 is the most detailed Sim City game yet, allowing you to get into the game and fight crime, or just cruise through your city. You can plug in your characters from The Sims as well. This game has the potential to eat your life.

• $15.99 - Paperback, 166 pages (July 26, 1996)

Casual fans of the TTC will enjoy a retrospective of its first seventy-five years, as presented by Mike Filey, in a series of year-by-year anecdotes. It isn’t a detailed history of the transit commission, as other enthusiasts would want, but it is loaded with pictures and interesting stores, making it a great read.

• $29.50 - Paperback

From the Amazon web site:

From Publishers Weekly

New York City’s rapid transit system, the longest in the world, was built between 1904 and 1940, and initally was operated as three separate lines (Interborough Rapid Transit, or IRT; Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, or BMT; and the Independent System, or IND), all of which were eventually unified into one municipal system. Hood, a professor of history at Hobart and William Smith College in New York, here provides a clear, perceptive and carefully researched study of this engineering feat and the ways in which the subway led to an expansion of the metropolitan area. Financed by both private and public funds, construction was hampered by conflicts between financiers and politicians, as well as by geological obstacles which led to devastating underground accidents. Hood convincingly argues that the takeover of the subways by the Transit Authority in 1953 resulted in a progressive deterioration that can only be remedied by government subsidies. This is a strong contribution to urban studies.

A political history of the construction of the New York subway, this book is not for railfans who want track plans, photographs and construction details. History fans, however, will be interested in the social and political maneuverings and transformations that shaped the subway and were shaped by the subway in turn.

• $20.95 - Hardcover - 256 pages (May 4, 2004)

The latest book from the guru of new urbanist design, Jane Jacobs, is at once pessimistic and optimistic. In Dark Age Ahead, she predicts a cataclysmic decline in North American culture. She blames this decline on modern North American urban design which, she argues, has led to a reduction in our sense of community, the value we place on our society and our environment, and (ironic considering our love of family values) the importance of families. Crime, environmental degredation, disillusionment in our political process and the widening gap between rich and poor are not keys to the collapse, but symptoms of the root cause.

Jane Jacobs' book is optimistic in that she notes that there are ways to pull out of this decline, and that these methods and reasons to hope are all around us. The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities explains it all in her trademark plain-language style. This woman is already changing the face of our cities, and it's entirely possible that Dark Age Ahead will finish the work that The Death and Life of Great American Cities started.

• $37.97, Hardcover - 192 pages (1999)

This book covers one of the last remaining Interurban railroads: Chicago’s South Shore and South Bend. By respected railroad-book author William Middleton, this 192 page book is full of interesting information, pictures, maps and schematics.

• $12.76, Library Binding, 32 pages (June 1, 1981)

I can remember reading this children’s book when I was young, and it might have been responsible for making me into a railfan. Toronto children will get a particular kick over poor Jonathan’s problems. Toronto railfans will find this book of interest because of its illustrations of Gloucester subway cars.

Personally, I would have loved it if my bedroom had been an entrance to a subway station…(Paperback edition also available for $5.95)

• $19.95 - Paperback - 252 pages Reissue edition (September 8, 1993)

Former Toronto Mayor John Sewell adeptly describes the history of Toronto's planning, from the birth of the town of York past the Modernist blockbusting movement, through to the grassroots postmodernism that gave my home town the reputation for sound planning practises that it has. A must-read for all planning students, John Sewell's style is accessible and it should provide an excellent read for non-planning individuals interested in seeing how Toronto was designed.

• $15.16 - Hardcover (June 1, 1996)

I have heard it said that there was one Chinese man dead for every mile of Canada’s transcontinental railroad built. Actual statistics show this number to be conservative. This point is driven home in this children’s book telling the sad tale of the Chinese migrants who came to Canada and laboured to build our National Dream. The synopsis reads “When a Chinese peasant girl, Choon-yi, who has only one magical arm, learns of her father’s death, she returns to China, where her father’s ghost tells her to paint the “fire car” that rides the rails he helped build, and her paintings come alive to transports home the souls of the laborers who died while building the railway.” This book features exceptional illustrations and is a keepsake for all ages.

• $46.46, Hardcover - 221 pages (October 1998)

Chicago has an impressive transportation system of subways, elevated railroads, and even remnants of interurban operations. This is nothing compared to the way things used to be. This book is a definitive history on one of the giants of North American transit systems.