The Making a Great City series continues with its focus on housing. Development consultant Coby Lefkowitz discusses his new book, Building Optimism: Why Our World Looks the Way it Does, and How to Make it Better.

As he writes in the book, building the world of our dreams has never been more attainable than it is today. Our society is the wealthiest, most knowledgeable, and most technically advanced in history, yet, for many, the ideal still seems out of reach.

But Lefkowitz sees reasons to be hopeful. He traces the history of the built environment in the United States from the rise of urbanization in the Industrial Revolution to the present day and offers a series of concrete reforms to make communities more beautiful, desirable, friendly, salubrious, and affordable.

Drawing together urban planning, finance, architecture, governance, and real estate development, Lefkowitz provides a practical guide for developers, city officials, and design professionals on how to create a better future, and a peek behind the scenes for anyone who is curious about how our world is shaped.

Lefkowitz is a co-founder of Backyard Development, a New York-based real estate development and consulting firm, as well as a writer and a professor of real estate development at the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University.