Book Review: Key to the City
Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World by Sara C. Bronin is the most well rounded book on city building I’ve read in a long time. The book is ostensibly about zoning, but it covers many non-zoning issues that impact how cities feel and function as well. The only weakness of the book is that it shoehorns everything into a zoning framework, which doesn’t work for every aspect of how a city functions.
In many ways, Key to the City tires to refute some of the ideas pushed by zoning abolitionists, such as what’s found in M. Nolan Gray’s Arbitrary Lines. While many of the problems with zoning that Nolan brings up are acknowledged in Key to the City, the book maintains that zoning is a powerful tool for shaping a city. In Key to the City, Bronin contends that while zoning can stifle city building, when properly calibrated, zoning can and does enhance the economic vitality and livability of a city.
Key to the City is organized by the purpose of different zones, more or less. It starts by looking at zones that drive a city’s economy. In many ways, this was an odd place to start because Part 2 of the book is called “The Essentials.” We get a chapter about bars and entertainment zones before we get to any discussion about housing. On the other hand, without a vibrant economy there will be no reason to live in a city in the first place, so the order makes some sense in that respect.
As the book talks about each zone, it describes what good zoning is, but often fails to explain why it’s good. For example, in chapter 2 when talking about Remington, MD it says, “Significantly, the code permits all these uses ‘as of right,’ meaning that a simple staff to verify compliance can expedite the permitting of a project. No public hearing is required.” Unfortunately, that’s the end of the thought, the book does not go on to explain why by-right approvals are significant or how avoiding public hearings is a benefit to the project or anyone else.
The most interesting idea in the book is that city streets should be governed by the zoning code. Since so much of how a city feels and operates is determined by the construction of streets, street design and zoning need to work together to create a cohesive experience of the city. However, this is where viewing the city through the lens of zoning really hurts Key to the City. While streets and land uses must work towards the same goals, planners should not be dictating road design.
This problem arises because, “no one person or entity is really thinking of, or responsible for, the overall way all of the parts work together.” However, instead of trying to have planners oversee the whole process, goals should be identified in a city’s comprehensive plan and the City Council should be the ones to ensure each department is working to achieve those goals.
Unlike most planning books, Sara Bronin takes a wholistic look at the city in Key to the City. In that respect, it fills a need in a landscape full of highly specialized planning books. Unfortunately, it falls a bit flat due to looking at everything in the city as a zoning issue. This could have been a truly marvelous book had it not tried to be solely about zoning.