In Neighbourhood: Designing a Liveable Community renowned architect, professor and urban planner Avi Friedman describes the planning of a neighborhood in Middlesex Centre, a rural municipality in southern Ontario. Friedman explores the points where design–both good and bad–effects our homes and community life. In his quest to build a new kind of neighbourhood, Friedman describes the architectural and community touchstones, both local and global, that have informed his work over the years.

Worrisome signs–climate change, depletion of natural resources, unrelenting urban sprawl, the tyranny of the automobile, the decline of face-to-face human contact–have motivated us to rethink home and community design. in the view of Avi Friedman, these issues that have brought us to a perfect storm of challenges and force us to question fundamental practices.