Města bez plánu - Jak volný trh tvaruje město – Bertaud Alain (2025)

How do cities come to be where people live well? And why do even well-intentioned plans often fail?

City planners make decisions with immediate impact – they determine the width of streets, the minimum size of plots, or the maximum height of buildings. They rely on vague goals such as 'sustainability', 'livability', or 'resilience', often without clear criteria for success.

Alain Bertaud, who previously worked as a planner in cities around the world from the USA to Yemen and later as the chief urban planner for the World Bank, shows that cities are not the result of plans, but rather dynamic markets – primarily the labor market and the housing market. Bertaud advocates for understanding the spontaneous development of cities through real data, economic models, and human behavior.

This book connects the economics of cities with the practice of urbanism and offers compelling arguments for why cities should function more like open systems responding to demand, rather than as centrally designed projects. The result can be higher productivity, better accessibility, and a higher quality of life – for each of us.