Broken City

Broken City argues that skyrocketing urban land prices drive our global housing market failure – so, how did we get here, and what can be done about it?

Patrick M. Condon is a professional city planner, teacher, and researcher with over forty years of experience in sustainable urban design. Patrick has taught in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia since 1992. He is the author of three previous books, including Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities and Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities.

A pioneer of public engagement, Patrick understands collaboration as a fundamental part of designing sustainable communities. He has successfully focused attention on strategies for inspiring systemic change in city-building and operations, notably in the East Clayton project in Surrey, British Columbia. More recently, he and his research partners collaborated with the City of North Vancouver to produce a 100-year plan to make the city carbon-neutral by 2107. Patrick and his partners’ work received the Canadian Institute of Planners Award for Planning Excellence and the BC Union of Municipalities Award of Excellence. Patrick Condon lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Paul Boniface Akaabre, University of Alberta:

"The book is a must-read … Its accessible writing style and plain language, combined with a robust theoretical foundation and empirical examples, make it an excellent resource for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of urban land markets and their social implications."

F. H. Smith, Davidson College:

"Condon's book stimulates thought about today's most important urban policy problems"

Ryan Mitchell:

"Condon writes in a clear, accessible style that makes the daunting, highly politicized housing crisis topic approachable and understandable...he makes the book both relatable and compelling...a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our cities, and is a call to action; challenging us to rethink urban development and advocate for policies that put people first."

Setha Low, The Planning Report:

"….readable, provocative, and satisfying…"

Emily Talen, author of Neighborhood and City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form:

This is an excellent book on an essential topic – the hyper-financialization of urban land – that is well-written and straightforward. The work is provocative but well-reasoned, and follows with practical policies.

Michael W. Mehaffy, Ph.D., executive director, International Making Cities Livable:

There couldn’t be a more urgent problem for cities than housing affordability, and there couldn’t be a more welcome or well-targeted book than Patrick Condon’s Broken City. With calm and thorough logic, he walks us through the thicket of misinformation and misconceptions, to show where the overlooked truths still lie: obscured by distorted land tax policy, and the stubborn persistence of obsolete supply-side dogma. Critics might miss his point that, yes, supply is a factor, but housing cost is the result of multiple factors, and there is no silver bullet. What we might need is something more like ‘silver buckshot’ – which he describes here in refreshing detail, from zoning reforms, to innovative funding approaches, to land use and the economics of sprawl. You needn’t think his argument is gospel to find this a very welcome new take on one of the central urban issues of our time.

Robert Liberty, planning consultant:

The old neo-liberal economic theory that deregulation will solve the problem of unaffordable housing is being contradicted by reality, with ugly consequences for social cohesion, mental health, urban vitality, and politics. New thinking and experiments with effective solutions addressing the problem – like those presented in Broken City – are urgently needed.