The Books Briefing: Trapped in a World That Uber Built

For good measure, we’re throwing in some good old urban dystopia too, whose narratives hew uncomfortably close to reality. The Municipalists imagines a fictionalized city where gentrification is fought through bombings, cashless restaurants are opened to shut out the poor, and the antihero is an urban planner. And Infinite Detail, set in New York City and Bristol, is a critique of too-smart cities that expertly straddles “the hardscrabble post-internet world and the uncanny near-future version of our own society that precedes it.”

​Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.

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What We’re Reading

We’ve been trapped in “Uberland”

“It’s becoming clear that these seemingly neutral services that have operated in a Wild West of regulation have destabilizing effects on society, even while delivering wonderful popular benefits.”

📚 Uberland, by Alex Rosenblat

A ride-sharing company’s ruthless rise

“After 10 years of existence, [Uber] does seem indispensable. But what is this going to look like in another 10 years?”

📚 Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, by Mike Isaac

The secret history of the suburbs

“As opposed to the groups who went far into America’s interior to settle isolated communes, these were, in a paradoxical-sounding phrase, practical utopians. … Their history shows that bold social and architectural experimentation is not alien to suburbia. In fact, it’s a suburban tradition.”

📚 Radical Suburbs, by Amanda Kolson Hurley

The dystopian novel that explains what’s wrong with real smart cities

“What smart cities do is take digital divides—divisions between who has access to technology and who doesn’t—and turn them into physical divides.”

📚 Infinite Detail, by Tim Maughan

The buddy-cop comedy that imagines a war against gentrification

“When I started writing this book, an alcoholic artificial intelligence was the most outlandish part of the book. Now an ambitious, well-funded federal agency is what’s ridiculous.”

📚 The Municipalists, by Seth Fried

The Reference Desk

(New York Public Library)

Write to the Books Briefing team at booksbriefing@theatlantic.com or reply directly to this email with any of your reading-related dilemmas. We might feature one of your questions in a future edition of the Books Briefing and offer a few books or related Atlantic pieces that might help you out.

About us: This edition of the Books Briefing is written by CityLab’s Sarah Holder. The book she’s reading while on her reporting trip is Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

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Sarah Holder is a staff writer at CityLab covering local policy, housing, labor, and technology.