A review by tbrnichols
Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by Nolan Gray

challenging informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

I was not expecting this book to be nearly as informative as it was. I had already accepted the idea that zoning was flawed and we'd be better without it. But Gray went beyond that by showing what we ought to be doing instead, not a libertarian paradise but a paradise of planning and of regulations on externalities that make sense, instead of regulations of uses that end up failing to regulate the actually harmful externalities. I hope every planner reads this and realizes how much more good they could be doing if they were freed from the endless toil of zoning regulations to consider how our cities ought to be planned and run, instead of merely where the arbitrary lines should go.