Beyond Sightseeing

As vivid as it is practical, Beyond Sightseeing distills the considerable insights Alexander Garvin has acquired through a lifetime of traveling the world over in his career as one of the nation’s most notable urban planners. With historical context, personal stories, and photos from his own travels to locales as far flung as Moscow and Seville, Paris and Havana, Garvin generously invites the reader to view cities through his expert lens. Far from a travel guide, this book is a beguiling invitation to the joys of slow travel—transporting readers while equipping them to transcend tourist destinations to create their own unique experience of the places they visit.

Garvin is the author of six other books on cities including, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, winner of the American Institute of Architects book award in urbanism and What Makes a Great City, published by Island Press in 2016. Unlike his other professional books, which are devoted primarily to American cities, Beyond Sightseeing deals with tourist destinations around the world to which Garvin travelled. The principles it sets forth are applicable to places and cities anywhere in the world.