The Lewis Mumford Prize ($500) is awarded to the best book in American (United States and Canada) city and regional planning history.
Transnational or comparative histories that include the United States or Canada are also eligible but may be nominated only for this prize or the Global Book Prize, not both.
For the current awards cycle, books must have a publication date between August 1, 2023 and December 31, 2025.
To nominate a book, authors or presses should send one hard copy each to the three committee members, postmarked no later than the nomination deadline of December 31, 2025. (Electronic submissions [ebooks, PDFs] will not be considered.) For shipping addresses please email committee chair Alex Sayf Cummings (alexcummings@gsu.edu).
Committee: Alex Sayf Cummings (chair; alexcummings@gsu.edu), Brian Goldstein, and Mike Amezcua
Past Winners
2023: Mike Amezcua, Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
2021: Paige Glotzer, How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960 (Columbia University Press, 2020)
— 2021 honorable mention: Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky, and Tim Stallmann, A People’s Atlas of Detroit (Wayne State University Press, 2020)
2019: Brian D. Goldstein, The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem (Harvard University Press, 2017)
2017: Francesca Russello Ammon, Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape (Yale University Press, 2016)
2015: William Philpott, Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country (University of Washington Press, 2013)
— 2015 honorable mention: N. D. B. Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
2013: Elihu Rubin, Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape (Yale University Press, 2012)
— 2013 honorable mention: Gregory L. Heller, Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania, 2013)
— 2013 honorable mention: Sarah Jo Peterson, Planning the Home Front: Building Bombers and Communities at Willow Run (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
— 2013 honorable mention: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania, 2013)
2011: Josh Sides, Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco (Oxford University Press, 2009)
2009: D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
— 2009 honorable mention: Jennifer Light, The Nature of Cities: Ecological Visions and the American Urban Professions (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
— 2009 honorable mention: Randall Mason, The Once and Future New York: Historic Preservation and the Modern City (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
2007: Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
— 2007 honorable mention: Joel Tarr and Clay McShane, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)
2005: Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
2003: Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
1999: Michael Holleran, Boston’s ‘Changeful Times’: Origins of Preservation and Planning in America (Johns Hopkins Press, 1998)
— 1999 honorable mention: Joel Rast, Remaking Chicago: The Political Origins of Urban Industrial Change (Northern Illinois University Press, 1999)
1997: Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (MIT Press, 1997)
1995: M. Christie Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (MIT Press, 1994)
1993: Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Ohio State University Press, 1993)