These are the books that have arrived in our editorial office over the last few weeks.

We present four titles:

Reinventing the Automobile. Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, William J. Mitchell, Christopher E. Borrioni-Bird and Lawrence D Burns, MIT Press, Cambridge/London 2010 (pp. 216, $ 21.95)

A compendium of ideas for a new vision of urban mobility, Reinventing the Automobile takes a new look at the car of the future.

The cars we drive today in the 21st century are still designed for the purposes of the twentieth century: perfect for transporting multiple passengers over long distances at a high speed, but unsuitable for ensuring personal mobility in the city - where most of the population currently lives.

William Mitchell’s four points traces, along with two experts, the DNA of the next-generation automobile that will be green, smart, connected and fun to drive.

Above the Pavement - the Farm! Architecture & Agriculture at P.F.1, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010 (pp. 192, $ 19.95)

This book comes out after two years since the installation Public Farm 1, or PF1, created by WORKac for the Young Architects Programme (YAP), an urban farm in the form of an expanse of cardboard gliding over the courtyard of PS1.

Divided cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar and Nicosia, Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2009 (pp. 253, $ 59.95)

An investigation into understanding the logic behind urban divisions along ethnic dividing lines - when they happen, who supports them, what they cost and why an apparently healthy city succumbs to them.

The field research conducted by the authors in Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Nicosia and Mostar sheds light on the spacial and functional anatomy of these five cities attempting  to identify common and recurring patterns among them.

Through a series of interviews with people living in a state of physical segregation - residents, politicians, cab drivers, builders, cultural critics and journalists - the authors parallel the development of the lines of demarcation and social impact it brings.

A chi serve la luna? – Le mostre della Fondazione Nicola Trussardi

Graphic design by onlab. Texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Stefano Boeri, Tacita Dean, Flavio Del Monte, Massimiliano Gioni, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Michele Robecchi, Barbara Roncari, Tiziano Scarpa, Roberta Tenconi, Beatrice Trussardi, Catherine Wood, Hatje Cantz, 2010 (pp. 368)

The book’s title, pilphered from a work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, A chi serve la luna? (Who needs the moon?) seems basically a way to ask, who needs art?

This is the question that seems to motivate this nomadic foundation, by choice without a headquarters, to look for answers by organizing, since 2003, exhibitions open to all public spaces in Milan.

The book examines this history made of places, artists and projects, conflicting voices like that of Maurizio Cattelan’s criticised installation of four life-sized mannequins hanging in Piazza XXIV Maggio from Milan’s oldest tree.

or from the duo Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragsetche with their trailer in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.

Presented in alphabetical order, not chronological, works produced by the artists are introduced with a different type of text each time, from interview- to chronicle-style.