City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form 2nd ed. Edition
by
Emily Talen PhD
(Author)
ISBN-13: 978-1597266925
ISBN-10: 1597266922
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City Rules offers a challenge to students and professionals in urban planning, design, and policy to change the rules of city-building, using regulations to reinvigorate, rather than stifle, our communities. Emily Talen demonstrates that regulations are a primary detriment to the creation of a desirable urban form. While many contemporary codes encourage sprawl and even urban blight, that hasn't always been the case-and it shouldn't be in the future.
Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.
Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"...Emily Talen's new book City Rules: How Regulations Affects Urban Form is so interesting and important. It makes totally clear that architects and designers don't determine how small or big or what form to make our houses, the rules do. And those rules are often arbitrary, capricious and stupid."
― Treehugger"...insightful and intelligent... City Rules offers an essential basis for how to proceed."
― Better! Cities & Towns"It is primarily historical, tracing the origins of urban rules in the USA, the various ways in which they have been applied, and the arguments for and against which they have been generated. The story is fascinating and well told."
― Urban Design"Ultimately, Talen aims to create more 'walkable, diverse, compact, and beautiful' cities, and this book will be especially interesting and valuable to students of urban planning and architecture who share these important goals."
― CHOICE"An interdisciplinary audience whose research interests focus on the regulatory, physical, and historical attributes of cities should find Talen's critical analysis of zoning useful."
― Journal of Urban Affairs"...close examination and clear explanation...an engaging account that shows contemporary city builders and reformers working with codified ideas of past generations that in their institutional form—as rules—continue to wield significant influence."
― Annals of the Association of American Geographers"This book has long been needed to show the unintended consequences of use-based 'Euclidean' zoning, how we need to change our regulations to achieve a more desirable outcome."
― Urban Review STL"convincing and practical"
― International Journal of Urban and Regional Research About the Author
Emily Talen is Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and Director of the Phoenix Urban Research Lab at Arizona State University. She is also Coeditor of the Journal of Urbanism.
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Product details
- Publisher : Island Press; 2nd ed. edition (December 16, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1597266922
- ISBN-13 : 978-1597266925
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 0.7 x 10 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #229,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #97 in Sustainability & Green Design
- #142 in Urban & Land Use Planning (Books)
- #180 in City Planning & Urban Development
- Customer Reviews:
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Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is a surprisingly good read for a technical reference.
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2014
Verified Purchase
I purchased this book because it was required for a Zoning class. It was in good shape when it arrived, the book contains a lot of good information.
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2012
In part, this fine book states the obvious: that automobile-dependent suburbia is the result of municipal codes. But what Talen does that many other authors have not done is to show, using a wide variety of examples, that these codes have in fact become more stringently auto-oriented, and more complex, over time. For example, minimum lot sizes in 1920s zoning codes were typically around 1/10 to 1/20 of an acre; by contrast, suburbs today may require one- and two-acre lots.
In addition, Talen addresses details overlooked by other authors; while many commentators have discussed the impact of single-use zoning and density restrictions, Talen discusses more technical issues such as curb radii and makes them comprehensible. (Basically, a curb radius is a measure of how hard it is to make a turn; where streets are at right angles, curb radii are low, and drivers must drive more slowly to make turns).
Talen also shows how zoning often creates incoherent results, by combining complex regulation with lack of vision. For example, Herbert Hoover's 1920s zoning commission endorsed both separation of residential from commercial land uses and the idea of people being able to walk to work- but because the commission did not limit the size of homeowner-only zones, zoning created unwalkable suburbs.
Similarly, Phoenix's zoning seeks to separate uses, but allows a gas station next to a single-family house rather than buffering houses with less traffic-producing uses- a situation that gives people all the congestion of urbanity combined with the car dependence of sprawl.
In addition, Talen addresses details overlooked by other authors; while many commentators have discussed the impact of single-use zoning and density restrictions, Talen discusses more technical issues such as curb radii and makes them comprehensible. (Basically, a curb radius is a measure of how hard it is to make a turn; where streets are at right angles, curb radii are low, and drivers must drive more slowly to make turns).
Talen also shows how zoning often creates incoherent results, by combining complex regulation with lack of vision. For example, Herbert Hoover's 1920s zoning commission endorsed both separation of residential from commercial land uses and the idea of people being able to walk to work- but because the commission did not limit the size of homeowner-only zones, zoning created unwalkable suburbs.
Similarly, Phoenix's zoning seeks to separate uses, but allows a gas station next to a single-family house rather than buffering houses with less traffic-producing uses- a situation that gives people all the congestion of urbanity combined with the car dependence of sprawl.
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