The First City on Mars
An Urban Planner's Guide to Settling the Red Planet
Part of the Springer Praxis Space Exploration series.
A solid academic work that surveys the existing field of research, synthesises it and adds another layer, extending the field somewhat. An interesting read, especially the survey of prior art (including a useful review of fictional depictions) but the end result (the actual urban plan) I would have like to see a bit more detail on - only one of the twelve chapters actually contained information on “The First City” and many of the diagrams were reproduced with unreadably small text, reducing the city plan to little more than differently sized domes connected by lines indicating transit tunnels.
Some of the other diagrams were a bit redundant also (do we actually need a diagram to illustrate what is meant by providing 60cm of space between adjacent pedestrians?), but the renderings of the proposed architecture by one of the author’s grad students were nicely done.
Worth reading for anyone interested in Mars colonisation but more for the background presented than the solution offered.