Urban Planning

Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks and their accessibility. Many professional practitioners of urban planning, especially practitioners with the title "urban planner" study urban planning education, while some paraprofessional practitioners are educated in urban stud ...more

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile
Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time
Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource
Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System
The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back
Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment
Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns
On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America
Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis
A Paradise of Small Houses: The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
The Image of the City
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
The High Cost of Free Parking
Cities for People
Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

Rebecca Solnit
Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Jeff Speck
[...] most American cities have been designed or redesigned principally around the assumption of universal automotive use, resulting in obligatory car ownership, typically one per adult—starting at age sixteen. In these cities, and in most of our nation, the car is no longer an instrument of freedom, but rather a bulky, expensive, and dangerous prosthetic device, a prerequisite to viable citizenship.
Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

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Books about transportation, cities and the built environment.
2 members, last active 2 years ago
ThreadATL Books Books about urbanism (urban design, housing affordability, streets) with an Atlanta focus. Compi…more
25 members, last active one year ago
Jenn's Community Planning Book Group A no-pressure, VIRTUAL book group for like-minded lovers of planning for community, sustainabili…more
4 members, last active 5 years ago
The Global Grid Reads Reading group of The Global Grid. Here we will share the books we review on The Global Grid, the…more
38 members, last active 7 years ago

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Tags contributing to this page include: urban-planning, city-planning, town-planning, urban-development, and urban-policy