---
title: Urban Planning
description: Urban planning shapes how cities grow. You will learn zoning and land use, transport and housing policy, urban design, the history of planning ideas and how to evaluate proposals for your own city.
category: social-sciences
subcategory: public-policy-and-administration
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/urban-planning
---

# Urban Planning

Urban planning shapes how cities grow. You will learn zoning and land use, transport and housing policy, urban design, the history of planning ideas and how to evaluate proposals for your own city.

## Available Resources

5 Books • 3 Courses • 2 Websites

## Websites

### 1. Planetizen

Daily news, opinion, and job listings for the North American urban planning field, published since 2000. Useful for tracking policy debates, zoning reform, and transportation projects as practitioners argue about them in real time.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.planetizen.com/

**Tags:** urban-planning, planning-news, zoning, transportation, cities

### 2. Strong Towns

A nonprofit advocacy site arguing that North American development patterns are fiscally insolvent, using per-acre tax analysis and incremental street design. Readers come away able to question infrastructure spending and suburban growth on financial grounds.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.strongtowns.org/

**Tags:** urbanism, municipal-finance, street-design, land-use, cities

## Courses

### 1. Reclaiming the Street for Livable Urban Spaces

**Author:** Marco te Brömmelstroet

Coursera course from the University of Amsterdam and EIT Urban Mobility on moving cities away from car-dominated streets, covering mobility transition theory, temporary street experiments, citizen activism versus bureaucracy and international case studies, ending with a written plan for local street change.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/reclaiming-the-street

**Tags:** street-design, urban-mobility, public-space, transition-management, urbanism

### 2. Sustainable Neighborhoods

**Author:** William Roper

Johns Hopkins course in the Sustainable Cities specialization examining a neighborhood's natural context, components and structure through case studies in Houston, San Antonio and Chattanooga, so learners can evaluate neighborhood plans and sketch general plans for urban parks.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/sustainable-neighborhoods

**Tags:** sustainable-neighborhoods, urban-design, form-based-zoning, landscape-architecture, community-development

### 3. Sustainable Cities

**Author:** Aromar Revi

SDG Academy course, curated by Aromar Revi with faculty from UN-Habitat, universities and city governments, on urban development under the Sustainable Development Goals. Covers urbanization trends, informal settlements, infrastructure, climate resilience, urban governance and finance, explaining how public and private actors shape sustainable cities.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.edx.org/learn/sustainability/sdg-academy-sustainable-cities

**Tags:** sustainable-cities, urban-development, urbanization, urban-governance, sustainable-development-goals

## Podcasts

### 1. Econ Dev Show Podcast

**Author:** Dane Carlson

Interview podcast hosted by a former county economic development director, featuring practitioners on business attraction, retention, site selection, workforce and community revitalization. Listeners gain practical strategies used by local and regional economic development organizations in the United States.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-us | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://podcast.econdevshow.com

**Tags:** economic-development, business-attraction, business-retention, site-selection, community-development

## Books

### 1. Cities for People

**Author:** Jan Gehl

Jan Gehl's synthesis of forty years of observing how people use streets, squares and buildings. Sets out design principles at the human scale (eye level, walking speed, edges, density) for lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities, with 500+ photos and drawings.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/159726573X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** public-space, human-scale-design, walkability, urban-design, street-life

### 2. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

**Author:** Richard Rothstein

A documented history of how federal, state and local policy created residential segregation in the United States. It covers racial zoning, FHA underwriting, public housing siting, restrictive covenants and highway routing.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1631494538?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** residential-segregation, housing-policy, redlining, exclusionary-zoning, restrictive-covenants

### 3. Human Transit (Revised Edition): How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives

**Author:** Jarrett Walker

A transit planning consultant sets out the geometry and trade-offs behind public transit networks: frequency versus coverage, grid networks, connections, and walking distance to stops. It uses them to judge transit proposals regardless of mode.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1642833053?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** public-transit, transit-planning, network-design, frequency-vs-coverage, urban-mobility

### 4. The High Cost of Free Parking (Updated Edition)

**Author:** Donald Shoup

Donald Shoup's economic analysis of minimum parking requirements and underpriced curb parking. It proposes market prices for curb parking, spending the meter revenue in the neighborhoods that generate it, and ending off-street parking mandates. It is the definitive source on how parking rules shape land use and transport.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/193236496X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** parking-policy, parking-minimums, land-use, urban-economics, transportation-policy

### 5. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880 (4th Edition)

**Author:** Peter Hall

Peter Hall's history of planning ideas since 1880. It covers the garden city, City Beautiful, Le Corbusier's modernism, regional planning, highways and urban renewal, and later movements, and follows how each idea played out in real cities. It covers the topic's 'history of planning ideas' goal better than any other single book.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118456475?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** planning-history, garden-city, urban-renewal, modernist-planning, urban-design

## Youtubes

### 1. City Beautiful Planning Basics (Video Textbook)

**Author:** Dave Amos

This is a short, current, academically-grounded survey that maps the whole field before the books go deep : five-episode video textbook, each 10-20 minutes, covering the core pillars of city planning: land use, transportation, environment, housing and social justice. Made by a planning professor as a free companion to an introductory planning course.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7cWZJ9rFTx7t3H_Ys9EiCrHsMGFYZYa-

**Tags:** land-use, transportation-planning, housing, environmental-planning, planning-fundamentals

---

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