The Monocle Guide To Building Better Cities

In this joyful new book Monocle unpacks what makes a great city, whether you're looking for a new place to call home or need help fixing your own. How do we make better cities - places that work for people of all ages and backgrounds? How do we make cities that provide the obvious essentials - great transport, good places to work - as well as the softer elements that truly deliver quality of life, from urban swimming pools to rooftop clubs? Since its launch in 2007, Monocle has been passionate about making better places to live. Every year it publishes a Quality of Life Survey, which names the top 25 cities to call home. In addition, across the issues, it has interviewed the best mayors, looked at the metropolises putting pedestrians first and met the people creating the best parks, both pocket and grand. Discover how you too can have a High Line, create the most covetable housing or turn a dirty river into a summer asset. Packed with great images and intriguing reports, this is a book that takes the urbanism debate away from city hall and explains what's needed in ways that will inspire us all.

Which cities offer the best quality of life? How do you build a good school? How do you run a city? Who makes the best coffee? And how do you start your own inspirational business? With chapters on the city, culture, travel, food, and work, the book also provides answers to some key questions. Works as a guide but also includes essays that explore what makes a great city, how to make a home and why culture is good for you

Monocle's latest book unpacks what makes a perfect shopping experience and offers tips on how to launch, design and run your own store. A must-have guide. The world of retail has never been so -challenged thanks to a mix of e-commerce, unimaginative brand owners and greedy landlords. Yet while many stores have -stumbled, a new generation of storekeepers and department store owners is arising. Is this the dawn of a new, independent age of bricks and mortar retail? Since launch the retail world has been one of the pillars of Monocle's editorial -coverage. On their travels around the world, the magazine's editors are constantly looking for well-designed fit-outs, the people setting new benchmarks in service and the stores offering the smartest product mix. At the heart of all this is an understanding that a memorable shopping experience relies on a delicate balance of an inviting space, a warm welcome and a sense of discovery (not to mention covetable products)--but an understanding, too, that shops and shopkeepers play an indispensable role in creating lively neighbourhoods and vibrant high streets. This new book from Monocle reveals the global media brand's 100 favourite shops worldwide, from the independent fashion boutique to the department store that takes up a city block. It also offers a few top tips and advice on how to launch and run your own retail venture, as well as a collection of sharp essays and snappy interviews. The Monocle Guide to Shops, Kiosks and Markets is a handbook for any aspiring shopkeeper, stocking a wealth of insight and inspiration.

From the team at Monocle, a look at some of the coziest and most creative homes around the world. Good homes are places where lives unfold, families grow up, dogs jump on sofas, and friends share meals. They’re also spaces to find some solitude—a quiet corner to read a book or have a Saturday afternoon nap. Homes need to do it all—they sustain you, inspire you, and tell your story through architecture, design, and collections. Monocle has always celebrated everything that makes a space a home when covering residences—whether featuring a city hideaway, a modernist seaside residence, or a summer outpost in a forest. The Monocle team brings this all together in one volume that explores individual homes, housing projects old and new, communities of self-builders, even whole neighborhoods where a simple philosophy of building well has created quality of life for many. The Monocle Book of the Home is packed with great photography that delivers the bigger picture and the smallest details alongside fascinating essays full of advice by key thinkers, writers, and designers. As we spend more time at home than ever, this is a book that could change how you live.

How to Make a Nation: A Monocle Guide reveals all you need to make a happy, vibrant and successful nation. From designing a better parliament, choosing a flag and creating social capital to taking care of your young and old, using culture to gain soft power and devising a national brand, this is a book for anyone who fancies a stint as PM, wants to be a more engaged citizen or just believes they deserve good government. This is a book about the small and big things that can make our nations work better for everyone who calls them home. Our 340-page guide features original photography and illustrations printed on a selection of great papers and bound with a linen cover. It is also available in a deluxe limited edition. Published by Gestalten.--

A timely handbook helping readers think about how to slow down, reconnect, and live a gentler life. Monocle has always been a champion of taking it slow. Past issues have encouraged readers to dive into a lake and go for a run. To sleep well. To eat food made with love. Even today, in a tense moment in history, the magazine has done its bit to argue for a new modern etiquette where communities are generous with their time, hospitality, and forgiveness. Now its editors and correspondents have brought all of this together into one volume with The Monocle Manifesto for a Gentler Life, a book that urges us all to slow down, reconnect, make good things, and think about the spaces we call home. Some of the highlights of this volume include: An illustrated guide to being nice, respecting your neighbors, and controlling your social media rants; practical tips on how to design a house that’s good for you and your family; Q&As with the people who have decided to take a gentler approach to work and living; and a celebration of locally made food—with featured recipes—as well as the chefs that bring people together. The helpful tips and insights in this guide make it the perfect handbook for anyone looking to slow down and enjoy life.

Building a relationship with a city is a lot like building a relationship with another person - just as cities can be intoxicating, generous and inspiring, so they can also be dangerous, fickle and impenetrable. How to Live in the City is a book for navigating and nurturing this important relationship. Hugo Macdonald believes you need to feel a city to understand it. He won't tell you how wide the perfect pavement should be but he will show you how to walk down a pavement with eyes wide open. This is a book to help you feel human in an inhuman environment.

The Monocle team heads north in this celebration of all things Nordic. This heavily illustrated book from Monocle is a celebration of the Nordic region, featuring some surprises, quirks—and maybe a sauna or two— along the way. Monocle’s journalists, editors, and photographers have returned time and again to all corners of northern Europe for insights, inspiration, and ideas for living better. This book isn’t about hammering the overhyped hygge trend or fussing over foamy food. Much the opposite—it’s about a shared but distinct set of values that have helped these nations excel in quiet diplomacy, thoughtful design, and reasoned debate. Monocle looks beyond the clichés and uncovers the people, companies, and stories that help the Nordic region rank highly in everything from art and architecture to eating well. Far from lumping these different nations together, the Monocle team will highlight the people, places and products that show the Nordics in all their nuances: lessons we can all learn from makers in Norway’s high north or retailers reaching higher in Reykjavík; the firms building bridges in Denmark or selling Swedish soft power abroad. The world can learn a lot from these northern countries and The Monocle Book of the Nordics is the ideal place to start.