Professor Sara Bronin’s book, Key to the City, pulls back the curtain on how urban zoning works. And through in-depth city case studies, it shows how communities can be improved through zoning changes.
For those who write and teach in the property law space, the most interesting part of the book is probably how Professor Bronin pushes for major deregulatory changes without falling into the trap of arguing for the scrapping of all rules. And all readers who care about urban spaces will appreciate the breadth and depth of the community profiles used to both illustrate and inform Professor Bronin’s arguments.
This is a book that should be read by those who teach Property and by everyone who cares about the future of cities.
As the title suggests, Key to the City is an urbanist’s take on zoning. Professor Bronin does not shy away from the first person but neither does she let personal stories overwhelm the text. It is not a “look at me” book but instead an invitation by Professor Bronin to consider cities through her eyes.
Those who are less enamored of cities—including this reviewer who still longs for the off-the-grid cabin where he was born and struggles with the fact that even in bedroom communities you can usually see your neighbors—may not agree with the book’s attacks on suburbs or neglect of rural spaces. But if readers set aside their own anti-urban biases, Professor Bronin offers up a vision for improving urban spaces by reinvigorating communities and freeing up the creative potential of cities.
Key to the City came out of Professor Bronin’s work as head of the Planning & Zoning Commission of Hartford and as founding leader of the National Zoning Atlas, so it is not surprising that the book has examples from across the nation while still being grounded on the zoning reform efforts that happened in Hartford.
The book takes readers from the recording studios of Nashville, Tennessee (made possible by permissive zoning) to the streets of Burlington Vermont. Drawing on rich portraits of zoning issues in Austin, Baltimore, Buffalo, Burlington, Chicago, Delray Beach (FL), Galveston, Las Vegas, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, and, of course, Hartford, the book’s refrain is that bad zoning decisions have choked off valuable forms of urban dynamism and cities need to free themselves from overly restrictive rules.
While the housing affordability crisis, or perhaps the housing supply crisis, has led numerous scholars to highlight the need to reform zoning to allow greater density and to check on the power of NIMBY property owners,1 Professor Bronin takes a broader perspective on the problem of excessive regulations. Readers are likely to leave convinced of at least two things: (1) zoning should be defined broadly, and (2) thriving urban environments are often built on mixed, multi-layered uses.
Key to the City repeatedly calls out the ways car-centric transportation harms urban spaces by making development too expensive as a result of parking space requirements and by prioritizing traffic speed over walkability. Similarly, the book highlights how allowances for light industrial uses such as craft brewing, for entertainment venues such as nightclubs, and even for small corner stores in residential areas can help cities meet resident needs and support a vibrant urban community.
The final substantive chapter of the book argues for a curated approach to urban development, suggesting that planners should ensure continuity of lines and forms. Professor Bronin argues that even with such limits designed to ensure cohesiveness there is still lots of space for individual preferences.
Coming at the tail end of a largely deregulatory book, the celebration of curated neighborhoods is not fully convincing. Nor, for that matter, is the ode to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. as the country’s best neighborhood (curation is great if it is built on an exclusionary pile of money and privilege, but it is very hard to reproduce elsewhere). But such points actually add to the book rather detract; ultimately, Key to the City is itself a celebration of well-planned urban development, something still exemplified in these curated neighborhoods.
Professor Bronin’s work challenges readers to think big when it comes to zoning reform. And it illuminates the beauty that is possible in urban spaces and the ways in which poorly conceived regulations can thwart our collective hopes for cities. Residents in the communities with such poorly conceived regulations deserve better, and Key to the City stands as a powerful call for (thoughtful) action.
- See, e.g., John Infranca, Singling Out Single-Family Zoning, 111 Geo. L.J. 659 (2023) (discussing the scholarly attacks on single-family zoning); Robert C. Ellickson, The Zoning Straitjacket: The Freezing of American Neighborhoods of Single-Family Houses, 96 Ind. L.J. 395 (2021).
