Urban Planning Books
Urban planning books are the written record of the discipline of urban planning, and they are the 3 kinds of text the profession is built on, the handbook that teaches the field, the monograph that studies one city or one problem, and the classic that set the terms the others argue with. The books every planner should know are a short, stable list, because the field is young enough that its canon was written in the 20th century and has held since. A student who reads the 5 or 6 titles that form the core enters the degree with the vocabulary the faculty assumes, and a professional who keeps the shelf on the desk has the references the plan is argued with.
The core titles a planner should know
The core of the urban planning bookshelf is the 5 titles that form the canon of the field, and they are the ones the degree programmes assign and the practice cites. The first is the textbook, the comprehensive survey of the discipline that the first year course runs on, and it is the book that defines the field for the incoming student. The second is the history, the account of how the city was planned, from the garden city movement of the early 1900s to the new urbanism of the 21st century, and it is the book that gives the practice its dates and its names. The third is the theory, the short book that argues for a way of reading the city, and the city as a text is the idea the urban design side of the field is built on. The fourth is the policy text, the book that explains the zoning and the land use law that make the plan enforceable, and it is the one the public planner keeps within reach. The fifth is the monograph on the planner's own city, the study of the place the work is done in, because the plan is written on top of the history of the ground it covers.
The handbooks and the how-to shelf
The handbooks of urban planning are the reference books that answer the practical question, and they sit on the shelf beside the theory. The handbook of the discipline collects the methods, the tools of the survey, the analysis and the design, in one volume the practitioner looks up when the question is how rather than why. The how-to titles are the guides to the specific instrument, the book on the geographic information system, the book on the transportation model, the book on the public hearing and the community process, and each is the manual for one tool of the 4 stages of the plan. The 2 kinds of book, the handbook that holds the whole field and the manual that holds one tool, are the working shelf of the office, and they are the books the staff planner opens before the theory, because the day is made of the tools and the theory is read in the evening.
The classic arguments the field still runs on
The classic arguments of urban planning are the books that took a side and changed the terms of the debate, and the 3 that matter most are the ones that argued for the machine, the car and the neighbourhood. The book that defended the efficiency of the planned city set the terms of the modernist side, the grid, the separation of the uses and the road that carries the car, and it is the argument the highway era was built on. The book that attacked it set the terms of the humanist side, the street as the room of the city, the mixed use and the scale of the block, and it is the argument the new urbanism is built on. The book that studied the neighbourhood set the terms of the middle, the small unit of the city that holds both the density and the belonging, and it is the argument the current planning code is written in. The 3 books are the 3 positions the field still argues between, and the planner who has read all 3 can place any plan in the argument it joins.
How to build the reading list
To build a reading list in urban planning, the reader works from the 3 needs of the work, the foundation, the method and the place. The foundation is the 2 or 3 books that define the field, the textbook and the history, and they are read first because every later book assumes them. The method is the shelf of the instruments, the book on the tool the work runs on, the GIS, the model or the process, and they are read as the need for the tool appears, one at a time, in the order the job demands. The place is the monograph of the city the work is done in, the local history and the local study, and it is read last because it is the book the others are applied to. The list is built in that order, the foundation before the method and the method before the place, and it grows with the career, a new method book added with each new tool and a new place book added with each new city, until the shelf is the record of the work that was done.
Where to read them
The urban planning books are read in the 3 places the discipline keeps them, the library, the publisher and the professional body. The library is the first source, the university and the city library that hold the canon in print and in the reading room, and it is the source the student uses while the degree is running. The publisher is the second source, the presses that carry the academic and the trade titles of the field, and it is the source the professional buys the new edition from, the updated handbook and the new monograph. The professional body is the third source, the planning association that publishes the journal and the position papers, and it is the source the planner reads for the current argument rather than the settled one. The 3 sources together, the library that holds the canon, the publisher that carries the new work and the body that runs the current debate, are where the urban planning book is found, and the reader who knows the 3 has the whole shelf within reach.