Want to Know More About Zoning? Consider These Reading Suggestions

Zoning, Nolan Gray writes, "is arguably the single most important institution shaping where we live, how we move around, and who we meet." At the same time, it's also "notoriously obtuse, with zoning ordinances often cloaked in jargon, hidden away in PDFs, and completely different city-to-city."

To shed some light on a topic many of us could stand to understand better, Gray suggests a non-exhaustive list of books at introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. Gray gives some context on what each one offers the inquiring urbanist.

Jane Jacobs' seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities comes up first on the introductory list, where it's joined by Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City and David Owen's Green Metropolis. Intermediate titles include Sonia A. Hirt's Zoned in the USA and Richard F. Babcock's The Zoning Game. In the "advanced" category are texts like Order without Design by Alain Bertaud and Zoning Rules! by William A. Fischel.

See the article for the complete list, and happy reading!