New Planning Books
By Kate McMahan, AICP

March is National Reading Month, so it’s a great time to curl up with a book about planning! Here are a few recent planning-related books to consider:

• Mayor’s Desk: 20 Conversations with Local Leaders Solving Global Problems
  By Anthony Flint
  If you missed Anthony Flint’s Pitkin Lecture at the 2023 Annual Conference in Scranton, Mayor’s Desk is for you. In this collection of interviews, 20 mayors from five continents share their strategies for tackling global challenges at the local level. During a period dominated by racial unrest, the Covid pandemic, and the increasingly vivid impact of the climate crisis, these enterprising leaders have made their cities more healthy, functional, fiscally sound, and sustainable places to live and work.
• Dream Play Build: Hands on Community Engagement for Enduring Places and Spaces
  By James Rojas and John Kamp
  Did you attend the Plenary Session at the 2023 Annual Conference with James Rojas and John Kamp and want to learn more about their innovative public engagement techniques? Dream Play Build expands on their “Place It!” engagement approach which focuses on three methods: the interactive model-building workshop, the pop-up, and site exploration using our senses. Using our hands to build and create is central to what makes us human, helping spark ideas without relying on words to communicate.
• Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
  By M. Nolan Gray
  In many communities, the need for affordable housing has become a crisis. The arbitrary lines of zoning maps across the country have come to dictate where Americans may live and work, forcing cities into a pattern of growth that is segregated and sprawling. Arbitrary Lines discusses why zoning abolition is a necessary condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities.
• Racist Roots: How Racism Has Affected Trees and People in Our Cities- And What We Can Do About It
  By Christine Carmichael, PhD
  Interested in learning more about the intersection between nature and environmental justice? Racist Roots explores how our nation’s troubling history with racism has affected urban forests across the country and specific steps you can take for healthier urban forests for all people in the cities and towns where you live. Racist Roots discusses what environmental justice truly means as well as how you can make the most of your involvement to create a fairer future for urban forests and the people in our communities.