Reddit reviews Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Here's some books from my library:

The Affordable Housing Reader - Basics on how affordable housing in the US works (or how it doesn't work...)

Cities for People/Walkable City/Death and Life of Great American Cities - Classics that really pertain to most things

The Public Wealth of Cities - How to leverage public/city assets to benefit the most amount of people

The Color of Law - How racism has shaped our cities

Happy City - Planning for social health

> especially leftist urbanism (anti suburbs and single family housing, pro mass-transit etc)

I'd be weary of calling this 'leftist urbanism,' since all of these are perfectly compatible with right-wing viewpoints, just handled very differently. You're looking more for sustainable urbanism and the social impacts of it. The books I have recommended above do all have a centrist or left lean to it though.

I'm reading an excellent book called Happy Cities right now and the author brings up this exact point. Not just HOAs, but municipalities are obsessed with micromanaging property owners over the most minor things. For a nation that is so anti-authoritarian a lot of the time we sure do have a lot of rules about our property.

Personally, I don't think a full repeal to all of the residential zoning is the best practice. A full repeal would likely only increase land values
(here's a good explainer as to how that can happen). I do believe they need to be loosened significantly. At the rate this city is growing, it needs to have all of the tools necessary to help increase density and banning thing such as having both an ADU and DADU on single family lots and requiring their sizes to be such that they cannot accommodate families is a bad thing. Duplexes and triplexes also should be legal in single family zones. These allowances also should be paired with strategic rezones that allow for some sort of corner market/commerce zone within a 5-10 minute walkshed of every house in SFZs in order to make it reasonable for people in SFZs to live without a car in these now densified neighborhoods.


In regards to more reading: are you looking for more reading regarding Seattle zoning law exclusively or are you looking for reading recommendations that follow an urbanist bent? For Seattle specific stuff, The Urbanist and Seattle Transit Blog post a lot regarding land use in the city. If you are looking for books that talk about general city planning the gold standard is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I personally really enjoyed Walkable City, Suburban Nation, and Happy City.

It really depends on a lot of things, lot size, the size of the outdoors spaces for either the building or the house, the size of the house itself, etc. It isn't going to answer your question, but perhaps you'd be interested in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Some recent-ish architecture/urban design books that are really good reads & from well respected practitioners!

Walkable City by Jeff Speck

Happy City by Charles Montgomery

Cities for People by Jan Gehl

Otherwise, most stationary/art stores should stock some [Rotring] (http://www.rotring.com/en/) pens/mechanical pencils. They are high quality drafting pens that are always in high demand.

source: I own a lot, and still want many more. Always handy.

Here's the Amazon link to read more It's a great read. It's all about the "psychology" of planning and how much of an impact a cities design can have on our mental/physical health. I'm not sure if it directly relates to your new job, but since you said you liked Walkable City I think you might like this.

I'm reading Happy Cities right now and it gets to the core of the issue. Highly recommend

https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY

http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY