Cities with Heart is written by a Harvard educated landscape architect who has lived and worked
in China. He cares deeply about the quality of life in fast-growing cities. Cities with Heart will
reflect upon various cases of city parks and makes the persuasive case that excellent urban open
space is important to the current quality of life and future sustainability. This book is the place to
start to understand and get familiar with emerging best practices globally.
—Wang Shi, Founder and Chairman, Vanke

After reading this book, never have I so wanted to grab my walking shoes and get an around-theworld
travel ticket. Its pages are filled with the pictures and stories of virtually all the world’s
brilliantly designed and wonderfully maintained urban public spaces and landscapes. To read
Cities with Heart is to have a revelation; not only do all the world’s problems seem to melt away,
but Tom Paine then moves on to describe and prescribe how more of these great parks can be
built today, even in the wildly burgeoning metropolises of Asia and Africa today. A marvelous
combination of “what is” and “what if.”
—Peter Harnik, Director, Center for City Park Excellence, The Trust for Public Land
Washington, D.C., USA. Author of Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities

Parks and green space matter deeply for the lives of people in cities––indeed for the life of the
city itself––as Tom Paine explains with authority and conviction. He’s given us three essential
books in one: a global overview of urban parks, a convincing case for investment in open space
excellence, and a much needed roadmap to creating cities with heart. Without question, the road
we must follow.
—Helaine Kaplan Prentice, ASLA, Center for Community Innovation, University of California,
Berkeley. Author of Suzhou: Shaping an Ancient City for the New China

With brilliance and wide-ranging vision, Tom Paine presents a captivating portrait of the ways
open space and aesthetically-designed landscapes nourish our souls in a variety of places from
dense urban centers to local neighborhoods. Anyone with an eye to their environment, but
certainly urban planners, architects, and developers, should read this enlightening book to see
the direction we must take – one that, as Paine beautifully illustrates, can make our cities truly
livable.
–Arthur B. Weissman, Ph.D. Author of In the Light of Humane Nature: Human Values, Nature, the
Green Economy, and Environmental Salvation, and President and CEO of Green Seal, Inc.

Cities with Heart is an interesting book on inner city parks. Mr. Paine’s profusely illustrated book
has a breadth and scope which communicates to readers the importance of the urban
environment and outdoor space—its history, planning principles, design principles, design
guidelines—and offers a vision for the future. There is much to excite the curiosity of anyone
entering the field and for everyone else interested in how urban spaces can improve urban life.
–Carol R. Johnson, Founder, CRJA Landscape Architects, Author, A Life in the Landscape

Cities with Heart is highly informative and richly attractive. Paine has been instrumental in
community and landscape planning and design in China projects since 1976. Anyone active in
the fields of urban open space planning and design or interested in these fields will be well
rewarded by this well illustrated volume’s comprehensive and illuminating coverage. Paine shows
how lifeless plazas and other urban spaces can be beneficially revitalized, and helps us
understand, quite clearly, why open space, attractive and happily functional, matters.
—Roy B. Mann, ASLA, NAEP, landscape architect and planner, founder and principal of The
Rivers Studio, Austin Texas. Author of Rivers in the City and manager of urban open space and
riverside projects in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, and Jordan

For those who care about cities and livability, Thomas M. Paine’s book Cities with Heart provides
easy-to-use planning and design principles, with 332 illustrations and photos, to help us achieve
better design for 5 types of urban open space–civic plaza, downtown park, large park, greenway
corridor, and neighborhood park. In addition, the historical survey of city open space in Asia and
the subject of future vision he brings in are wonderful subjects for tutorial discussion.
— Rachel Lee, Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture at Tunghai University, Taichung,
Taiwan.