Talen’s latest book, “City Rules,” now available
Professor Emily Talen’s fourth book, “City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form,” is now available. As described by its publisher, Island Press,
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.
The book builds on another initiative of Talen’s, The Codes Project, a web site featuring the complete content of very diverse planning codes, ranging from the ancient Code of Hammurabi through codes just written.
“The key point about codes is they’re trying to find the minimal level of rule necessary to create what you want,” Talen says, in a recent article published on The Atlantic’s web site. “You want flexibility, you want openness; you want diversity in style. But where do you find that minimum level so that you get the quality environment you’re looking for? I don’t think anybody really wants to overregulate.”
- Better Zoning through Breaking Old Codes by Tod Newcombe, editor, Governing web site, March 2011
- An Encyclopedia of Land Use Codes by Nate Berg, The Atlantic Cities web site, December 12, 2011
- City Rules – How Regulations Affect Urban Form, Island Press, 2011
- The Codes Project web site
- "Codes Project" web site is launched, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning web site, January 2009