Learning from Savannah: From Ideal City to Elastic Urbanism(Wormsloe Foundation Publications)

Learning from Savannah bridges the mostly separate worlds of the history of Savannah’s famed urban plan and the history of the city’s architecture. The authors analyze the history of the urban plan, how it functions, and how it has shaped the city’s buildings in distinctive ways. Distilling over two decades of original research on the history of Savannah’s built environment, as well as the daily experience of it, Gobel and Williams uncover the complex and illusive qualities that have enthralled visitors since the nineteenth century and architects and planners since the mid-twentieth. The book includes many previously unpublished historic maps and images, as well as numerous original analytical diagrams that interpret the city in fresh ways.

David W. Gobel (Author)
DAVID W. GOBEL is professor of architectural history at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he has taught since 1996. He has published articles in a variety of architectural and urban-planning journals, and he is one of four coauthors of the award-winning SAH Buildings of Savannah guidebook. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Robin B. Williams (Author)
ROBIN B. WILLIAMS has taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design since 1993, chairing Architectural History since the founding of the department in 1996. He is the lead author of the guidebook Buildings of Savannah, which won the Best Guidebook Award from SESAH in 2018. He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Much has been written about Savannah's remarkable plan implemented during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Building upon this corpus, Learning from Savannah adds an impressive array of historical details as well as a compelling conceptual framework, taking the city's development up to the present. The text further integrates architecture and landscape design with planning and urban form. This is a model study and an important work for anyone interested in how cities evolved over time.

Any urbanist knows that the Savannah Plan stands in a class all its own, as a model of what we might hope to achieve when we pair vision with vitality. Gobel and Williams offer a careful account of the layers of wisdom embedded in the remarkable longevity of the city we enjoy today, then demonstrate the meaning we can derive from the blocks, streets, and buildings that make the Savannah Plan real. Learning from Savannah: From Ideal City to Elastic Urbanism is a must for anyone who appreciates this famously planned city!