Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City ** 1/2

Based on the title and semi-academic cover design, I was hoping that A Burglar's Guide to the City would provide a distinctive new way to look at buildings and urban design, the way Edge City or Infrastructure did. Instead, it is largely anecdotes about wild burglary techniques with an overlay of pseudo-Jameson architectural argle bargle. The only part that approximated what I was looking for was the burglar who could determine the interior layout of a building by looking at its fire escapes (and the city fire code).

Manaugh talks about a Canadian artist named Janice Kerbel whose work sounds intriguing. Her piece called 15 Lombard St. explores what it would take to rob a bank in central London, resulting in notes that span from floor plans to London traffic patterns.