KICKED A BUILDING LATELY? WILL THEY EVER FINISH BRUCKNER BOULEVARD? <i> by Ada Louise Huxtable (UC Press: $10.95 each, illustrated) </i>

Ada Louise Huxtable’s New York York Times columns on architecture and urban planning shine as examples of contemporary criticism at its finest. Her lucid prose and mordant wit make specialized issues seem compelling. The underlying theme of these essays is the need to create an urban environment that is aesthetic, livable and affordable, and Huxtable excoriates architects, builders and planners who fall short of this ideal. A column lamenting a muddle-headed plan to renovate Times Square begins: “It is not the best of times, and it is not the worst of times, just somewhere discouragingly in between.”

Some of the situations Huxtable describes have changed since these pieces were first published in the ‘60s and ‘70s (New York City is hardly broke these days), but the practice she deplores of razing handsome, functional landmarks and replacing them with overscaled anonymous glass boxes continues, in New York and around the country.