The 10 Best Urban Planning Textbooks
Special Honors
Planners Web Although the creators are no longer adding new content, Planners Web hosts over 600 articles regarding city planning written and edited so that the layperson without a degree can understand them. You'll find information on everything from comprehensive planning and growth management to land use law, environmental issues, housing and development, and more. plannersweb.com
edX.org If you're picking up a textbook because you're looking to take a self-paced route to learning, consider supplementing it with an online course. edX.org is among one of the best digital education platforms out there, offering an introduction to the field with classes in city development, land use planning, sustainable urban development, technological advancements, and more from top universities and institutions. edx.org
Editor's Notes
June 03, 2020:
As cities modernize and expand and technology improves, there's an increasing need for urban planners to help conceptualize everything from urban farming and parks to solving complex housing issues and implementing cutting-edge mass transit systems.
We wanted this list to touch on a bit of everything, so you'll find works on public green spaces like Urban Forestry: Planning and Managing Urban Greenspaces and environmental concerns such as the newly-added Environmental Planning Handbook. We brought on the latter to replace The Urban and Regional Planning Reader since we felt this list already had an abundance of tomes that offer the same broad coverage, but with more detail.
For students still exploring their career options, there's Becoming an Urban Planner, which expounds on everything from educational requirements to the future of the profession. Planning and Urban Design Standards is useful for anyone looking to get a comprehensive best practices guide for learning and later, reference, and covers myriad topics to give readers a thorough grounding.
Today we brought on The American City at the expense of Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China. While the latter is extremely interesting to those already well-versed in the subject, it's not ideal for those just beginning to dabble. And while it's very beneficial, and even vital, to get a non-Western perspective or to look at how other countries are doing things, we feel it's best to start in your own backyard before moving on to global perspectives. The American City is really good for that, extensively going over problematic and successful programs throughout the US and extracting teachable moments from each one.