(Part 2) Best urban & land use planning books according to redditors
We found 311 Reddit comments discussing the best urban & land use planning books. We ranked the 106 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
So a good start is the textbook I had a million years ago.
Although the street grid has for the most part remained similar to the way it was first planned in 1807, there have been several important changes to it, most notably Central Park, which was something of an afterthought as the city was pushing northward. That said, there were already a number of different grids already in place, including three distinct ones downtown, the roads of Greenwich Village, a separate grid which had been laid out by the Stuyvesant family in the East Village, and in the small villages scattered throughout northern Manhattan. The boundaries of the Commissioners’ Map illustrates the influence of Greenwich Village, as its street grid was kept in place, and the numbered streets initially started above 14th Street on the West Side, and above Houston on the East side. The grid that the Stuyvesant family laid out, however, was virtually erased from the map, with one notable exception: Stuyvesant Street, which is one of the oldest streets in the city, and runs from true East to West; most of the grid actually runs from Northwest to Southeast. Although Broadway was in fact an old native trail (which originally went up the East side, as the West side of Manhattan is rocky), what many people don’t know is that its planned route from 1811 was altered by Henry Brevoort, who could not stand the idea of the city running a road straight through his beloved orchard (at 10th Street and Broadway, you can see the jog here). Other significant changes to the street grid include the later inclusions Lexington and Madison Avenues, and the streets of Hamilton and Washington Heights, which bend to the will of Manhattan's topography. If you are really interested in the street grid, I read an excellent book about the chief surveyor of the project: The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr.: Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.
I’ve always loved learning about NYC history, and friends started suggesting that I look into being a tour guide. The Department of Consumer Affairs gives a test for a sightseeing license that is comprised of 150 multiple choice questions and you have as much time as you need to take it. You have to get a 97 to pass and if you get above 120 you are distinguished on the DCA’s website; I think I got a 140 (damn bus stopping regulations). There wasn’t any official training beyond that, I just have always had a knack for remembering facts about history. Once I got my license, I became a NYC specialist and I've been sharing my love of the city with all sorts of folks ever since. I’ve found that it’s a great career for me, because I get to do what I love every single day of my life!
I think this article: http://marketurbanism.com/2018/07/30/how-should-we-interpret-jane-jacobs/ has a solid treatment of the topic.
A quote from the article:
> As Flint (2011) notes, Jacobs’ now famous battles with Robert Moses created a framework for later NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) efforts, including but certainly not limited to her 1952 fight to prevent a highway intersecting Washington Square Park. Beyond this battle, Jacobs helped to organize the community in resisting a number of large-scale projects from occurring in Greenwich Village using the tactics of endless public review and pressure on elected officials to kill projects.
Jacobs was of course, much more than just a NIMBY. And, as this article notes, it's more accurate to say that what we now call "NIMBY" groups copied Jacobs' tactics, because she's probably the most successful neighborhood preservationist of all time. But in her famous fight with Robert Moses, he was absolutely the voice of modern, rational (white) progress, while she was the obstructionist fighting change.
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First of all, you bless your soul for getting on the commission. You will be able to make a huge difference. Forget about democrat vs republican though--at the local level it really doesn't matter and the identitarian stuff will get in the way of you actually getting things done. Plenty of "liberal" democrats are just as greedy and stupid about land use as anyone else.
In conclusion--there actually isn't really any justification for setbacks in zoning code nor parking minimums. Setbacks might make sense to allow light in New York City, but in a suburban neighborhood they are mostly about conformity and keeping poor people out (and building codes require 5 foot separation or firewall, so if setbacks are needed they can be addressed there). Parking minimums are 100% arbitrary as there is no connection between land use and transportation mode choice (unless the land use is a road, of course). Best of luck to you.
For those interested, there's a great book describing why this area is home to so much.
Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945--2005
Don't be fooled by the title, a lot in there pertains to Ashburn as well.
Streetfight is what you are looking for.
Other books related to this topic in some form or another:
The New Localism
The New Geography of Jobs
The Public Wealth of Cities
Politics of Resentment
The Color of Law
City-County Consolidation
The telco/colo footprint in NoVa is the legacy of MAE-East and the dot com boom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAE-East
https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Alley-Technology-1945-2005-Innovation/dp/0262516683/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=tysons+corner+telco&qid=1562845403&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr1
It's arguable that the federal government and contractors also drove some percentage of that growth, but it's self sustaining now. AWS East isn't dependent on federal subsidies.
I just bought this book that sounds relevant. Apparently the primary cause of urban sprawl, which was heavily prioritized over dense urban pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods, has been various regulations such as zoning. Despite the common understanding it wasn't just market forces that resulted in suburban sprawl. Looking forward to reading it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00872FOEU/
I'm curious what effects this had on pollution and driving related deaths.
I'm happy my generation is pushing back on this trend via market forces. But still the result is non-optimal. In Toronto the result has mostly been high rise condos and over priced million dollar single family homes. Nothing in between.
If we're talking about affordable housing SF's protective housing market is basically a tragedy.
Same with rent control experiments from the 1970s that resulted in less affordable housing for the poor. And the housed with rent control, the landlords had zero incentives to take care of their properties, or renovate, and the number of intentional arson spiked in cities like NYC just so property owners can redevelop.
Capitalism is villianized as not helping the poor. But there are plenty of examples of government having the opposite effect of their intentions.
You're very welcome!
Normally, I would list these books in addition to a small description and reasons why I found them particularly interesting or engaging. However, it’s getting a bit late, so I’m just going to give you a list of some books that I particularly recommend. I should have some time later this afternoon to talk about them more in depth, and to answer any questions that you might have.
> Are you against people choosing to live in suburbs if they pay the full cost of doing so? ie: transportation & other infrastructure requirements
Why do you ask? Because as things stand, the cost of infrastructure and transportation is heavily socialized. And that is not even taking into account the significant externalities imposed by a sprawled, highway-heavy suburb on the environment as well as traffic problems into whatever city such highways end up in.
Even if suburban residents actually paid these cost (and I would argue that aforementioned externalities make this almost completely impractical), you still have to deal with the fact that adding to highway capacity actually makes traffic worse, not better.
People will bear a particular commute until the point at which it becomes... unbearable (duh). So because suburban living is attractive (which I'm not denying), not to mention almost always cheaper (at least to the individual) people will keep moving into the suburbs so long as their commute is still bearable, until eventually it isn't. Then they demand more highways, and the cycle repeats, though the actual commercial center of the city where everyone is going hasn't necessarily changed, so it's actually much, much harder to cram all these extra people in via highway after each cycle.
My favorite author on this topic is (Jane Jacobs)[http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0679600477] - she made some remarkably accurate predictions about the problems with highway-based sprawl and her arguments have not aged one bit.
>I believe he is referring to research showing that up to now, higher density cities with extensive transit have failed to improve commute times as too many people who live in condos end up driving to work anyways.
What research is that?? All the obvious super-dense residential cities (New York, San Fran, even Vancouver) have excellent ridership figures for public transit.
>Most jobs in a city are in the suburbs, so there is a lot of cross city travel that people use their cars for.
This isn't quite true - at the very least you'd have to agree that city centers have a much higher concentration (per capita, not square mile) of jobs. Think downtowns and commercial districts.
Other then heavy industry (which has been on the decline for a while now in terms of employment), most jobs in the suburbs are caused by office parks which basically come to exist the exact same way residential suburban development happens (cheap land, free highways, woo!), just for commercial tenants. Anything you do to one happens to the other.
> I would expect this should change as self-driving cars are implemented and road capacity doubles or more. High-speed trains of cars will be able to zip through cities.
But that's the point! We dont' have self-driving cars today (and probably not for a while) - but we DO have self-driving trains, as well as trams and elevated rail and subways and ferries and car coops and taxis and bike lanes.
I am sympathetic towards the argument that punishing people for driving is not a good way to encourage public transit use. The much better way is to simply provide better public transit. European cities make great use of transit and ridership is high throughout social classes.
> It goes without saying that housing affordability goes down as density goes up. At the moment, it's still cheaper overall to build low density 2-story houses out of wood than high density steel & concrete buildings.
But again, this is simply by virtue of the numerous externalities that you can get away with for single family homes. They are cheaper to build, yes, but are they actually more affordable to live in once you consider the cost of transport, the cost of providing public and civil services and so forth?
I should probably also mention that I'm not against suburbs as an idea, only against highway-based suburbs. "Street car suburbs" are actually quite sustainable and can contain their costs much more effectively. Ever watch Mad Men? Don Draper lives in the idyllic suburban wonderland of the 60s, but even he usually takes the train to work.
There are plenty of "healthy" suburbs to be found if you look for them. They maintain a pleasant low-density lifestyle but also introduce mixed-use blocks and localized medium-density "mini-downtowns". If you just want to do some shopping or go see a movie (or go to school) you can get by with walking, bus/trams or biking but you definitely have to take a commuter train to work. And of course all of this still combines just fine with occasional car use, which is now far less painful since you aren't perpetually filling up the streets to the point of unbearability.
Fixing existing developments and creating better ones in the future are very different beasts. One very influential group working on latter is the Congress for New Urbanism. A useful volume by a few of CNU's leading practioners is Suburban Nation. One pertinent critique of New Urbanism though is that is has been relatively ineffective about the retrofitting you describe. For that you might check out books like Retrofitting Suburbia.
If you want a good rant on how we got into the mess J.H. Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere is an angry read. On patterns that underlay places we like being in, there is the always present work of Christopher Alexander. For my money one of the most under-read great urbanists of our time is Richard Sennett, particularly his book The Uses of Disorder.
Finally, Jacob's has a lot of prescriptive stuff in Death and Life. I'll give you that it is not as rule-based as most contemporary approaches, but therein lies its greatness.
Building and sustaining vibrant cities full of life and economic activity goes well beyond building traffic lanes.
Check out this guys book:
http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0374285810
>In the end it is a logistical nightmare.
You got that right! I've been thinking about this for quite some time and I think a,b,c are not reasonable or even doable. B and C would be a massive waste of resources. And A would take forever to accomplish. I haven't read this book but it seems to cover some of the issues you are talking about. It's not about anarchism but the thinking about communities is similar. I flipped through some of the chapters and it seems like people have been thinking about the very dilemmas that you mentioned. I did read Common Ground is a Liquid City that does revolve around anarchism. I wasn't a big fan but the book shows real life examples of people transforming the cityscape.
Here's one you can check out, Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805092293
Human Transit and Trains, Buses, People (written by a professor of transportation at Rice University) are excellent introductions to transportation. Jarret Walker, author of Human transit, also has a blog he updates quite frequently. Strong Towns has a biking and parking section of their blog and an editorial called Ask R. Moses that has questions answered by civil engineers, typically professionals that run transportation. NACTO also has an excellent guide in urban bike transportation for something specific that we're using for a bike-ped class this semester.
As you explore these topics you'll start to find organizations like NACTO and people like Jarret Walker you'll be able to find webinars and youtube videos as well as additional reading material to fill in those gaps.
If you want something truly academic, I have a pdf of a textbook I used in my transportation fundamentals class last semester I'm happy to email you if you'll DM me.
The following comment operates on the assumption that you are interested in American urban planning from an administrative or public policy focus. For real estate development, urban design/architecture, or international issues, look elsewhere.
A solid, all purpose undergraduate major: philosophy. You can teach yourself subjects and even methods, but to learn how to think critically and write about complex subjects in a clear way you need quality, focused instruction and that's the purpose of philosophy. Outside of your general major requirements, take exclusively analytic philosophy courses. Typically there is an analytic philosophy survey course but for other courses identify which professors in your department operate in this tradition (and take teaching seriously) and take whatever courses they offer, regardless of your personal interest in the subject going in. Common subjects include logic, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, epistemology, etc. These courses will discipline your thinking and writing in ways that other majors won't. These skills are absolutely fundamental and lay the groundwork for a successful, highly adaptable career.
Outside of that major, which will fulfill your humanities requirements, you should fill your general requirements with courses like U.S. government (typically fulfilling a social science requirement), microeconomics and macroeconomics (social science, business, and occasionally quantitative), and environmental science (natural science). Take as many economics courses as you can. You can also take a basic geography course focused on cities but in my experience these courses teach you what you can easily learn from disciplined study on your own time. Focus your electives on methods courses, specifically statistics and digital mapping (GIS). You can also easily learn these online but if you have to fill up requirements, stick with these.
"But wait, don't I need to know something about urban planning?" Definitely! But you don't need to use up valuable course time on this subjects unless you have top urban planning scholars teaching undergraduate courses at your school, which probably isn't the case. Feel free to share your program and I'm sure the great community here can point out any top scholars active there. Otherwise, focus on teaching yourself the subject over summer and winter breaks. Read books by esteemed experts/scholars/writers in the field. A few broad essentials, all of which should be available at your public library:
Other users are welcome to contribute what they see as essentials. The key here is to read about urban planning relentlessly in your free time (important: this includes blogs!) and focus your coursework on skills development. This combination of philosophy/methods coursework and disciplined, independent reading will make you not only an issue expert, which are a dime a dozen, but a productive expert, someone who can approach a completely new problem and produce useful results.
This is the path I have followed and I have been happy with the results. Hope this helps.
Edit: grammar errors, typos, etc. fixes.
'The Transit Metropolis' by UC Berkeley Professor Robert Cervero for the in-depth classic.
Also be sure to check this out. I read it years ago and just bought my own copy recently.
http://www.amazon.com/Greater-Milwaukees-Growing-Pains-1950-2000/dp/0938076167
I think I get what you're saying - you wish /r/urbanplanning would acknowledge the fact that we have suburbs and post more things like the Build a Better Burb design challenge for Long Island, which does still endorse many of the things that do get discussed and posted here on the subreddit, like better transit access, increasing density (the slippery slope argument against density is that we want skyscrapers...), and improving a sense of place.
I'll definitely say that there's a lot to be had from the influence of land-use policies that could be changed to encourage transformations of suburbs to European-like strong towns linked by rail with greenspace in between, as is discussed in this article. However, a lot of these ideas aren't as easily applied elsewhere in US suburbs where suburbs came in after the decline of the railroads; Long Island is unique in its mostly electrified commuter rail services and lends itself better toward the idealistic transmogrification we'd love to see across the US. Perhaps this is the space of the discussion you're looking for?
On top of that, you still do have the issue that people do live in the suburbs for one or more of the features one finds/expects to find there. Actual implementation of land use policy can be very difficult when dealing with many individual property owners, even if those policies encourage the improvement of transport access, community amenities, public spaces, etc.
I've always been intrigued by the book Retrofitting Suburbia but haven't pulled the trigger on buying the book yet - I'm still going through the Shoup bible and my signed copy of Triumph of the City.
There are lots of small towns and small cities in New England that are in the ballpark of what you are looking for. They vary in size and cost:
Also, outside New England:
You could take a drive up Route 1 in Maine and just pick the town you like best. Also, most good college towns would fit the bill. Google "best places to live" and "best college town" to find suggestions.
A possibly radical thought: I hear Detroit has all the elements that attract artists; low rent; lots of space; a government which is desperate to attract young, creative people. It is a laboratory for urban planning; think New York in the 1970's. Or so I have heard.
EDIT: You might want to read Richard Florida's book Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life . It appears to be a how-to guide for exactly your question.
If you enjoyed how she fought Moses, I highly recommend "wrestling with moses"
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0812981367
It's a detailed account of her time in Manhattan and focuses much more on the context of the man as well as the city at the time, in a more retrospective fashion.
The Architecture of Community by Leon Krier
Wonderful, wonderful book that is totally accessible to the layperson while also engaging in some really meaningful and thought provoking discourse.
It's a little more expensive than you requested ($33), but totally worth it.
Wrestling with Moses by Anthony Flint is a good companion piece to The Power Broker.
I'm sure you know by now that there isn't one "grid" rather it's a patchwork of regional systems strung together and it crosses a multitude of state, local, and federal boundaries. Having an entity be able to cut through all that to update and manage that system would be a gargantuan task and ludicrously expensive.
If you had something created at the federal level, something like a national monopoly, you'd first have to wrest control away from regional private and public entities that own parts of the grid. Eminent domain might be able to get you that but you're not just stepping on some toes you're wailing on them with a hammer.
Also every mayor, state legislator, and governor is going to go into a feeding frenzy when you get to their town/county/state/district because they can throw a temper tantrum and maybe stop you from working until they get some type of consideration. Legally you could battle it out but how much time and money do you want to spend fighting every branch of everywhere you try to go?
Assuming you can get through all that you have to consider that the idea of a smart grid, at least in the incarnations I've read about, is more than a bit unsettling.
Wifi/cellular enabled meters sound great but they aren't exactly lockboxes and there have been a ton of examples of people breaking the encryption and messing with them, even bumping whole neighborhoods off the grid.
Another part of it that I've read about is your utility company being able to adjust how much power they send you or how they bill you based on specific appliance usage in your home correlated with time of day and other related aspects. A lot of people aren't going to want that kind of granular access by the power company to their daily lives.
There's a book that goes into detail about parts of this, while some of it will probably be review for you the smart grid aspects are probably of interest, "On The Grid" by Scott Huler.
Urban planning, especially roads, is one of my weird obsessions. It's one of the most fascinating things I've ever encountered.
I'm currently reading The Big Roads, a book about the history of the road system in the country. https://www.amazon.com/Big-Roads-Visionaries-Trailblazers-Superhighways/dp/0547907249
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And after that, I move onto this: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Average-Neighborhood-Systems-World/dp/1609611381
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On The Grid actually uses Raleigh as the subject matter. I'm excited for it.
Will be using This
Also This is a pretty rigorous book if you have time for it.
http://www.amazon.com/State-Against-Blacks-Walter-Williams/dp/0070703787
http://www.amazon.com/War-Poor-Clarence-Buford-Carson/dp/0870000551/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373124962&sr=1-15&keywords=clarence+carson
http://www.amazon.com/Federal-Bulldozer-Martin-Anderson/dp/0070016402/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373124991&sr=1-2&keywords=the+federal+bulldozer
These books talk about the institutional disadvantages the poor face due to laws.
Just graduated with a master's in planning (in Canada). The first thing you should know is that you cannot go into this field for the money or for great job prospects. Getting a job right out of school is extremely difficult in both the US and Canada right now unless you have the right prior experience and skills (which school will not give you). Many people take unpaid internships (which is disgusting on the part of employers in my opinion) or have a long wait ahead of them for an entry-level job.
So if you do pursue planning for grad school make sure you are in no financial difficulties and that you have a backup plan or money to spare in case.
There is also a difference between what skills jobs want and what you'll learn in planning school. Planning school will focus heavily on "issues" in urban planning (social science, econ, history, etc). So you'll be writing term papers just like you are now in poli sci. You'll also learn a bit about planning law and the planning system but not nearly enough of what jobs want. And lastly, planners need to know some software, but this greatly depends on what type of job you have. Some typical programs include ArcGIS, AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator/Indesign.
Learning about the urban issues part of planning is not too difficult in comparison and there are a lot of great books.
The best one's I've read so far are also the books that are best to introduce anyone to the major issues in planning:
If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer!
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If you're interested in the FEA topic but don't want to take the course, I recommend the book Matrix Analysis of Structures by Aslam Kassimali.
http://www.amazon.ca/Matrix-Analysis-Structures-Aslam-Kassimali/dp/1111426201
He goes through the formulation of the various methods, with examples in almost every topic.
The main reason Milwaukee annexed westward like this (leaving the city boundary to appear like fingers) was to reach out to the overall goal of annexing into Waukesha County. Read "Greater Milwaukee's Growing Pains", it's a great book.
https://www.amazon.com/Greater-Milwaukees-Growing-Pains-1950/dp/0938076167
The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry by Cervero is over 10 years old now, but is still very relevant. Perhaps The New Transit Town by Dittmar and Ohland is a bit more up to date. As the US tries to modernize its transportation networks, civil engineers are going to have to really begin looking through the eyes of city planners.
If we're doing Amazon links:
So, is it Lowell or Lawrence? :)
I've read this book - it's really fascinating and I'd highly recommend it.
Similarly, if you are interested in the public transport side of this I'd recommend reading "Human Transit" by Jarrett Walker which touches on how design and attitude influences efficiency in a transit system.
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" http://www.amazon.com/Death-American-Cities-Modern-Library/dp/0679600477/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293317786&sr=8-1
Looks pretty compelling.