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The Village Canon


 

Obviously any sensible village, town, or city will have a full-blown public library. But I'm curious what you folks would put in a curated library specifically targeting the development and advancement of the Village on its way to becoming a City (and beyond).

The Canon would obviously be crossdisciplinary, but I'm guessing Architecture, Engineering, and the Social Sciences might get a special focus.

I don't think there is a canonical text on off-grid and micro-grid architecture yet, which means there's certainly a gap to be filled. But here are a few of my picks:

- The Timeless Way of Building
- A Pattern Language
- Hackers
- Palaces for the People [1]
- Factfulness
- Hidden Life of Trees [2]
- Inner Life of Animals [2]
- The Giving Tree
- Sapiens / Homo Deus / 21 Lessons
- Everyware
- The Knowledge (Dartnell)
- The Way to Ultimate Calm
- Not Always So
- Tao Te Ching (Gia Fu Feng)
- The Little Prince
- Winnie the Pooh

What's on your list you wish everyone in your town would read?

-steven

[1] Not a great book but I'm not sure there's any better resource on the topic.

[2] The writing is terrible. Are there better alternatives that cover the same breadth of material? I'd love to replace these.

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