Reddit mentions of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Here's some books from my library:

The Affordable Housing Reader - Basics on how affordable housing in the US works (or how it doesn't work...)

Cities for People/Walkable City/Death and Life of Great American Cities - Classics that really pertain to most things

The Public Wealth of Cities - How to leverage public/city assets to benefit the most amount of people

The Color of Law - How racism has shaped our cities

Happy City - Planning for social health

> especially leftist urbanism (anti suburbs and single family housing, pro mass-transit etc)

I'd be weary of calling this 'leftist urbanism,' since all of these are perfectly compatible with right-wing viewpoints, just handled very differently. You're looking more for sustainable urbanism and the social impacts of it. The books I have recommended above do all have a centrist or left lean to it though.

Yep. Btw these are two great books that talk about how the physical structure of cities, a.k.a. urban planning, has brought about the changes that we see in OP's picture, and that we can pretty much blame one person for making cities super car-centric: Robert Moses.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394720245/

The Death and Life of Great American Cities https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWKSBDI/

You'll be fine. The Metreon has a movie theater that is open late most nights, there is plenty of foot traffic in the area between the Metreon and BART.

While on the topic of the intersection of foot traffic and public safety, allow me to recommend Jane Jacobs' classic book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWKSBDI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1