Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
by M. Nolan Gray · Island Press
City planner M. Nolan Gray explains how American zoning works in practice: its origins, minimum lot sizes, single-family districts and parking mandates, their effects on rents, sprawl and segregation, and the reforms, including Houston's approach, proposed to replace it. Covers the zoning mechanics that Glaeser and the papers only reference in the aggregate; it is a reform argument, not a neutral survey, but it is well sourced and the most widely recommended single book on how zoning raises housing costs. It also covers parking mandates, so Shoup's 800-page treatise is not needed alongside it.
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