As many of you know, I’ve spent many exciting and rewarding years exploring and documenting cities around the world, as a land use/environmental attorney, as a writer, and for my own enjoyment. I am continually motivated when experiencing great cities firsthand, and learning from historic and diverse examples how to create authentic urban environments.

Through these explorations, I’ve come to the conclusion that before we can create workable, sustainable urban areas, we need to understand what happens naturally when people congregate in cities.

I’m very pleased to announce that Island Press has just published a short e-book sharing my photographs and observations of how city dwellers interact naturally with one another and the urban environment, and how these interactions can be more readily observed and adapted. Part of the Island Press E-ssentials program, Urbanism Without Effort (9781610914420/$3.99) argues that in our rush to engineer livable, connected places, we have lost sight of the fact that the best urban places are fluid, spontaneous, and human.

A short article based on the book appears today as an exclusive in The Atlantic Cities, here. For more information and testimonials, see the book’s press release, here, or go to urbanismwithouteffort.com.

I hope you find the book inspiring. Please share this information with your own contacts, both those steeped in cities, urban planning, design and regulation, as well as those whose interests stem from their own daily experience with urban environments. You can download the book atAmazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple Store, Kobo and other electronic vendors.

If you’d like to submit a review for a publication or website, you can request a review copy at press@islandpress.org. If you have any questions or ideas for how to use Urbanism Without Effortin your own work, please get in touch.

P.S. For those of you in the Seattle area, the Urban Land Institute and Futurewise have been kind enough to host a book release event at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7, at the GGLO Space at the Steps. You can learn more and register here.