The Urban Calendar is such an engaging and inspiring read - it's like a Readers' Digest for urban planners! With a unique layout, the author packs a collection of 365 bite-sized entries—each one a snapshot of a pivotal moment, idea, or person that shaped urban life. They’re short n' sweet, and engaging—perfect to read day by day, or a few pages at a time when you need inspiration.

Each page was labeled with a smart tag—Legislation & Governance, Transportation & Mobility, Visionaries & Innovators, and more—making it easy to see patterns across history and to understand whether an entry is about a policy breakthrough, a design innovation, or the people who pushed the planning, engineering, and design fields forward.

Each entry also closes with a thought-provoking question. These prompts stimulate readers to reflect on current challenges and how the lessons of the past can help us find solutions to today's issues and shape the cities of tomorrow- perfect when used in an educational setting. Combined with visuals in each page, the book is a way to spark daily reflection on the evolution of cities.

It's a book that will spark curiosity. It’s approachable, inspiring, and packed with insights for planners, designers, students, or anyone who simply loves cities.

Thank you to Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC of The Urban Calendar, in exchange for an honest review..
This is such a great book for those interested in urban architecture, infrastructure, or engineering!
I loved the layout of this book, explaining the significance of events in relation to the urban landscape. 365 days of fun and interesting facts that can be picked up in any order. Great for someone with some curiosity in this subject field.
I thought the questions at the bottom, in red were a bit redundant. Yes, it makes you think a bit more about the subject on the page and how it relate to the urban landscape and lifestyle, but I don't think they were needed,

I had the privilege to read an advance copy of The Urban Calendar: 365 Days That Shaped the Urban World, and it was one of the most thought-provoking reading experiences of my life.

Each page offers a spark, an idea, provoking further investigation and learning — each page can open up entirely new conversations and discoveries. The beauty of this book lies in its structure: you can dip into any day of the year and come away with fresh insights into how cities have been shaped, and how they continue to evolve.

There is so much to learn, so much to explore, and so much inspiration for new ideas and achievements that will carry urban living into the future. A truly unique and valuable contribution for planners, designers, students, and anyone who cares about the story of our cities.

The Urban Calendar is a great source of daily inspiration or a thoughtful gift for an urbanist. The book offers snapshots of significant events in urban history—one for each day of the year. For example, January 27 recognizes the day in 1926 when arguments were heard in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. case, which upheld the legality of zoning. Each date includes a summary of the event, an image, a quote, and a question to contemplate about the event’s relevance for today’s urban challenges. The elegant organization of the book is also present in the way dates are coded by themes, such as Urban Utopias or Green, Sustainable, Resilient. The book does a wonderful job showcasing the big ideas that shaped the urban world, demonstrating “that cities are not merely physical places but evolving reflections of our values, struggles, and hope.” While intellectually stimulating, it is thoughtfully structured and crisply written, making it an accessible and enjoyable resource.

If you know someone who is curious about places, events, people, and the creation of things this is a book for them. Each day identifies the event date and category (there are 10 ranging from Colonial & Post-Colonial Urbanism to Visionaries & Innovators) of each day's page with photo and a brief narrative and even includes a discussion question. It covers a wide range of time (ancient to present day) and geography worldwide. As with all proper history it reviews not only the successes but also lessons learned from mistakes.

I quickly fell in love with this unique book and was thinking of which friends and family would also enjoy it. Each page invites exploration. For example, January 3 is about the Brooklyn Bridge, January 8 about "The War on Poverty..." and January 9 about the iPhone. The book encourages you to look at the many elements which contribute to the building and structure of our communities large and small.

At the moment (13 August 2025) the book is available in paperback form only. I hope for an ebook release soon.

NOTE: Thanks to NetGalley for an Advanced Reader Copy. I received no payment for my review.
Review also posted on Goodreads and Amazon.

The Urban Calendar is a fascinating and thought-provoking book that I’d heartily recommend to anyone who is a fan of urbanism, cities, history, or travel in general.

The book is structured around 365 of the most important and influential things that have shaped our urban fabric. Each page starts with an engaging quote, which leads to a detailed explanation of an event, person, or place, and finishes with a thought-provoking question. With every page turn, you’ll get a chance to learn the most important aspects of a topic while still leaving you curious to learn more about it. As a professional urban planner, married to a professional park planner, we learned a lot and discovered some fantastic conversation starters.

This book is a unique literary experience that I will treasure for far longer than 365 days, and I suspect you will too!

Overall this was a delightful read. I enjoyed the range of topics within the overall context of urban development and felt the amount of background information for each one was appropriate - not too much and not too little. No doubt this was a big lift to find a relevant topic for each day of the year - creative and well done. A future iteration may tighten in on the timespan, geographic area, or urban thread. I'm not sure the questions included in each page add value, but appreciate the thought if perhaps these are used in an educational setting.

I really enjoyed reading this book with its bite-sized kernels of knowledge on urban planning themes. The topics Juan selects are diverse, ranging from the familiar, like the birthday of Jane Jacobs (May 4), to the thought provoking - the Mexico City Earthquake (September 19).

In our hurried day-to-day lives as urban planners, these once-a-day briefs offer a moment for thoughtful reflection as we navigate the twists and turns of our careers. And that's ultimately why I'd recommend this book; the Urban Calendar offers mini-meditations on planning and its vital importance for our communities.

For someone like me that struggles to find time for focused reading, this book is approachable. People can take 1-2 minute each day to learn bite-size pieces of urban history. It is an easy read, and in no way intimidating. The concept is great, and will have readers thinking about how events like invention of the telephone have affected urban development and society. The questions asked on each page invite further thought and discussion with other readers - perfect for a book club. The big challenge going forward will be in updating the book with new dates in urban history each year!

It was amazing to learn that transcendental events that shape different aspects of urban realms across the world can fill each of the days of a calendar year. Each of the events was well pictured to satisfy instant information while many of them awakened in me the curiosity to learn more.
I wish there was a an app that would remind me each day of these distant or recent events such as the passage of the GI Bill on June 22, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities act on July 26, the creation of the National Park Service on August 25 or the Great Chicago Fire on October 8. As someone engaged in the urban design field this is definitely a book I will treasure and revisit frequently.

The Urban Calendar: 365 Days That Shaped the Urban World Book Review

The Urban Calendar: 365 Days That Shaped the Urban World is a valuable compendium of human history viewed through the prism of urban planning. Infused with pivotal events that built our civilization over time, it offers a delightful voyage through place and time. A comprehensive collection of urbanism principles—from ancient settlements to crucial infrastructure milestones, to social discord—the book delivers a wealth of global perspectives with a touch of provocation.

The Urban Calendar is more than a concise source of knowledge about humanity’s habitat; its world-spanning lens emphasizes the universality of urban challenges—housing, mobility, public space, the environment, and democracy—while celebrating the uniqueness of local solutions.

Structured by topics essential to urban-related professions, the “Calendar” distills complex issues into accessible language without sacrificing depth. “Urban threads” delves into ten themes interspersed with insights that draw connections between past creations and present dilemmas.

What sets this urban compendium apart is its international scope and historical approach. It moves fluidly between continents and centuries—from ancient Alexandria’s powerhouse to Apple’s life-changing innovations, from Haussmann’s transformation of Paris to Brasília’s monumental geometry, and from the futuristic Metropolis to contemporary transit-oriented development in Asia. All the while, it reminds us of our responsibility as citizens to long for a more equitable world, stirring our senses with historical landmark events that have significantly shaped the urban world.

More than a chronological reference, The Urban Calendar is a source of inspiration. It weaves in transformative moments and visionary thinkers—such as Jane Jacobs, Ildefons Cerdà, John Nolen, and Léon Krier—alongside famous inventors, conquerors, writers, architects, politicians, and activists from across the globe. These stories not only educate but ignite the imagination of today’s urbanists and policymakers.

The Urban Calendar skillfully links literature, technology, art and politics, all relevant aspects to present-time culture. In a time when cities face mounting pressures from climate change, population growth, socio-spatial inequality, and political uncertainty, this book serves as both a mirror and a guide. It reminds us that the built environment is never neutral, and that the choices we make in shaping our cities reflect our values and aspirations—both in the present and for generations to come.

Juan Mullerat has masterfully produced a must-read for students, professionals, and anyone with a passion for cities. The Urban Calendar: 365 Days That Shaped the Urban World is both a superb source of knowledge and a moving tribute to the ever-evolving art and science of urban planning. It succeeds as a clever anthology that bridges history, planning, and global practice with clarity and creativity.

From the Formation of the City of Greater New York (January 1) to the First New Year’s Eve Celebration in Times Square (December 31)…
From April 21 753 BCE (Founding of Rome) to November 4, 2024 (Cairo Hosts the 12th World Urban Forum)…
From the Birth of Zoning (January 27, 1926) to the Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961)…
…this “Calendar” covers it (well, almost) all.
I wish this resource was available as I started my architecture, urban design, planning journey 30+ years ago. Nevertheless, I’m so happy it’s available now. So much fun, so many unexpected connections, and so many new things to learn!

If you are an urban designer, architect, planner—or simply someone who loves cities—The Urban Calendar: 365 Days That Shaped the Urban World is a delightfully engaging read. Juan Mullerat has curated a fascinating collection of moments—some monumental, others seemingly minor—that have left a lasting mark on how our cities and communities have taken shape over time.

The book offers a daily window into urban history, from groundbreaking policies and transformative events to quirky milestones that remind us the built environment is shaped not only by grand visions but also by the ripple effects of small decisions. Mullerat’s clear, concise storytelling makes it easy to absorb each entry, and the format invites you to learn something new every day.

Whether you read it cover to cover or treat it as a daily ritual, The Urban Calendar is both a fun companion and a gentle reminder of the intricate connections between people, place, and time. It’s a perfect blend of history, design, and curiosity—one that will spark reflection for professionals and city enthusiasts alike.

Urban planning is a diverse field, full of nuanced roots in history and human motivation. Set up as an easy, simple read of one page, one topic, one minute reads over the course of a year (or faster, if you wish), this book intricately blends the aspects of human behavior and needs, technology, culture, politics, trade, disaster - manmade and natural, and others to paint pictures of motivations and critical questions that speak to the root of history, place, and our interactions with the world.

You may find yourself first flipping to your birthday (as I did), but then reading through for the next idea - and each page is a quick read - enabling you to jump to another concept. The next gem. The next little bit of question or thought. The next lesson, some rooted in shameful history as much as the ones that provide for hope and wonder of the next advance in human history. As you read this book, I would urge the reader to consider cause, effect, and longer consequences hidden in the short passages that look designed to create new journeys for you to explore further. If you do so, you will find that what this book provides is greater than the sum of its parts.

Urbanists often forget the political, socio-economic and seemingly unrelated underpinnings of what shapes our built environment. Others outside the profession of planning and policymaking are usually none the wiser. In The Urban Calendar, author Mullerat gives us remarkable insight into the relevance of a year's worth of events that have greatly influenced the world we all live in. The daily format of the book - including a thought-provoking question on every page - is both a give and take. The author provides an entirely digestible accounting of a relevant and fairly isolated topic, and then prompts a dialogue with the reader - almost as if to encourage further research and engagement by them. The Urban Calendar is written in a way that suits our increasingly deficient attention spans all while educating, entertaining and provoking. It is a must-read for anyone interested in how we go about civilizing and making sense of the places we inhabit.

I have an overall mixed feeling about this book.
On the positive side: I applaud the author for the huge task of gathering not just 365 events, but finding something for each day of the year. I recognize this is a complicated and challenging feat of research.
The book is a unique format - not a complete narrative, but a huge set of bite-sized pieces that can be / are best read in any order.

On the other side:
The side-effect of this format means that some topics and examples are more relevant than others. The install of the first Otis elevator - directly and obviously relevant, the birth of Marc Anthony or the launch of the iPhone are a bit more of a stretch, and the author uses the question prompt at the end to pivot to relevance, not unlike a university professor.
Others seem oddly misdirected: ie. June 10 Death of Gaudi... is not focused on his design or his urban contributions or even the expansion of Barcelona, but focuses solely on his death by a streetcar and asks how urban transit can be made safer.
Also, nearly half of the entries are from the late 19th and early 20th century (1880-1920) and about 80% USA focused. So, while technically global and wide reaching (with entries from c.100BC to 2025), there is a clear preference in eras.

The writing is unbalanced and all over in level of explanation and detail.
This writer is clearly comfortable with long form writing, and the effort to summarize these vastly different elements into 150 words resulted in a mixed levels of detail and understanding. Some entries are very generic and say barely anything, others are so specific they require the reader to have decent additional knowledge to understand and appreciate the relevance of the time. Some provide broader historical context about the time and place and individuals, others stay super specific.... resulting in more questions than answers and unbalanced understanding of moments in time.

The questions at the end of each are confusing and uneven. Intended to be "thought provoking" but some come off as quiz questions that have already been answered in the explanation, some sound like college long-answer essay questions and others are so broad the reader has no possible way of answering them without further outside research. But the imbalance is worstened by the ones that clearly make an assumption and point to a clear political bias. ie. two consecutive examples - from very specific to college exam broad: "How can cities better support food trucks as a dynamic part of the urban economy and cultural scene?" "How can modern infrastructure projects balance economic growth and mobility with social equity and environmental sustainability?"

While I highly respect the time, energy, research, effort and commitment to fulfill this unique format, I feel like a bit more editorial cleanup would take this from college class study guide to actual readable nonfiction resource.

Firstly, the structure of the book has been carefully considered to facilitate ease of reading and appeal to All, which I enjoyed. It is fitting and appropriate that the opening statement in the introduction is 'Cities are among humanity’s greatest achievements', humans are at the core of cities and in turn they serve humans.

The approach and choice of the diverse initiators got me to reread some of my books on history not just on Architecture, but also those for social relevance. This is a testament of a good book I think, that it should make you revisit ideas and see them anew. The period in the book on Housing and Social Movements resonated with me as it has always been at the centre of how I see the built environment.

I was inspired by the 'Urban thread' in the book, which I took as being the human endeavour to carve out and attempt to shape the built environment in various forms.

The way the book is written and structured makes for easy reading. It gets to the point, but entices the reader to go and read further. I stayed engaged and read it in one sitting. I am still going back to it.

This book will appeal to young, old, those that are not avid readers as well and inform to hopefully make one consider where they are, have been and where they could be.

As a certified urban planner with over 30 years of experience in public and private sector planning, I was surprised, delighted and engaged by this book and its innovative approach to conveying important and timely lessons in planning history, theory and current practice in a cogent, easy-to-read and digestible manner. Juan Mullerat succeeds in selecting on-point examples of transformative events and innovations in urban planning for each day of the year, a format that helps put the impact of planning on our daily lives into context. I often struggle in trying to describe we do as planners, and why it is important, to laypersons - Mullerat's book fully succeeds in this regard! I anticipate that it will be a valuable resource both to planning practitioners, city enthusiasts and the interested public for many years to come. I also very much appreciate the thoughtful questions posed throughout, which helped put many of the issues I deal with daily as a planning director in a large and complex metropolitan area into a broader historic framework. I will heartily recommend this book to my staff, colleagues, constituents, planning officials, family and friends. Bravo!

What a delightful take on a modern book of days! This was full of interesting things that I can't wait to share on the appropriate day!

Thanks so much to NetGalley for this free Kindle book. My review is voluntarily given, and my opinions are my own.

When I requested this from NetGalley, I really was not sure exactly what to expect. If it was going to be daily calendar with some blurbs or what. I was so pleasantly surprised, though. This is really more of a "This day in history" book. Every single day of the year has historical information, some all the way back to the birth of Mark Antony in 83 BCE. It really would be interesting to find out what the decision making process was when choosing each entry. The years jumped around randomly, but every single one was very interesting.

Loved all the pictures!

Definitely would recommend this!