An Apology for the Builder

Coming in 2022 from YIMBY Press. Now available for preorder!

An Apology for the Builder: Barbon's 1685 Manifesto and the Rise of Projectable Urbanism

Preface by Sonja Trauss.
Edited, with Introduction & readings, by Tim McCormick

Now available for preorder: $15.00 (discounted from $20 list):
Please email: press@yesinmybackyard.org 
(while we get an order page up!)

"An Apology for the Builder" by Nicholas Barbon is the manifesto of post-Great Fire London's polymath pioneer of speculative, abundant building and row (aka terraced) housing.

YIMBY Press's new edition of Barbon's Apology restores this landmark essay for the 21st Century housing activist, political activist, and citizen. We also explore the rich historical context of Barbon and 17th/18th century London with additional texts such as Daniel Defoe’s ode to the speculative “Projecting Age,” from Essay on Projects, and his satires on nativism and intolerance, “The True-Born Englishman” and “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.”

We show how controversies over housing—whether and how to build it, where, by and for whomst—are not novel to our time, but have been raging along similar lines since the dawn of capitalism in the English-speaking world.

Now available for preorder: $15.00  (discounted from $20 list price).

Please email: press@yesinmybackyard.org

[order page coming soon!]