Status
Available
Publication
New York : Scribner, 2007.
Description
The bestselling author of Home and A Clearing in the Distance tells the compelling story of the transformation of a Pennsylvania cornfield into a RneotraditionalS housing development--taking the reader on a revelatory inside tour of real estate in America.
User reviews
LibraryThing member teaperson
A book that helped me understand why so many suburban developments look the same, and are so unsatisfying. It's the economics (and to a certain extent, the politics). Rybczynski profiles a development in the Philadelphia exurbs, from the first planning until the first families move in. All along,
Not as good as fascinating as some of Rybczynski's other insightful books on buildings and spaces, but still interesting.
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the developers have great intentions about making a 'new traditional development': but in the end, the economics (cost of the land and building process, and the need to appeal to mass taste) make the development a lot more similar to everything else.Not as good as fascinating as some of Rybczynski's other insightful books on buildings and spaces, but still interesting.
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LibraryThing member JBD1
Honestly, I never would have expected to have been particularly interested in a book about the process by which a housing development came to be. But in the hands of Witold Rybczynski, this is a compelling, dramatic, very nearly unputdownable read. Interspersing details of septic systems and vinyl
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siding with a capsule history of zoning ordinances and suburban planning, Last Harvest is a remarkably good book. Show Less