The Best #CityReads of 2012

It's not just your lousy memory: the end of 2012 was much busier than the beginning. Just since July, we've seen a U.S. presidential election, a once-in-four-centuries hurricane, four horrific mass shootings, riots and warfare across the Middle East. Our #Cityreads of the year follow the news cycle -- into a high-rise housing project after Sandy and the Republican party's relationship with cities -- but they also veer off course, into the weirder corners of rail construction, charter cities, and more.

Over the past year we've tried to make our #Cityreads reflect the breadth of subjects that accompanies so universal a concept. It might be expressed, in its simplest terms as: what happens when a lot of people live in one place? As with the #Cityreads we post each week, this is by no means a complete list. It's a start.