A bibliographic guide to research resources for the history of city planning and urbanism at the UC Berkeley libraries and online, with an emphasis on American and California city planning. For titles on the history of planning and urbanization for individual countries or places please consult the Library's catalog or the Environmental Design Library reference staff, 210 Bauer Wurster Hall.
Use encyclopedias, guidebooks, and manuals to find quick facts and background information on your topic. In addition to the selected, specialized titles listed here, use general encyclopedias.
American town plans: a comparative time line. Keller Easterling, with a chronology by Keller Easterling and Richard Prelinger. NY: Princeton Architectural Pr., 1993.
Encyclopedia of community: from the village to the virtual world. Karen Christensen & David Levinson, general eds. 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003. Excellent source, with substantive articles and bibliographies.
Encyclopedia of the city. Roger W. Caves, ed. NY: Routledge, 2005. Concise signed articles on a wide range of planning topics and concepts. Most articles include brief bibliographies.
Encyclopedia of urban America: the cities and suburbs. Neil Larry Shumsky, ed. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998.
Encyclopedia of urban studies. Ray Hutchison, ed. 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA : SAGE Publications, 2010.
International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences. James Wright, ed. NY: Elsevier, 2015.
Milestones in California planning history. by Larry Mintier. [2001].
The Palgrave encyclopedia of urban and regional futures. Robert Brears, ed. NY, NY: Cham, 2022.
The Value of a dollar: colonial era to the Civil War. 1600-1865, Scott Derks and Tony Smith, eds. Millerton, NY: Grey House Pub., 2005.
The Value of a dollar: prices and incomes in the United States, 1860-2019. by Scott Derks. 6th ed. Amenia, NY: Grey House Pub., 2019.
Wikipedia Online, crowd-sourced, open access encyclopedia. Useful for confirming a research starting point. USER BEWARE: Not peer-reviewed and generally cannot be cited in scholarly works.
Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of urban and regional studies. Anthony Orum et al, eds. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2019
Here's a short list of organizational and websites related to the urban planning.
Preservation.com - preservation organizations and resources
Planetizen - planning-related news website and e-learning platform based in Los Angeles, California
Urban Design Lab - an online platform for students and professionals to share methods and projects.
There are two ways to connect to library resources from off-campus using the new library proxy:
More information is on the EZproxy guide.
The campus VPN provides an alternate method for off-campus access.
Cities of tomorrow: an intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century. Peter Hall. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2002.
The City in history: its origins and transformations, and its prospects. Lewis Mumford. NY: Harcourt, Brace & World [1961]. History of the city from prehistoric to modern times, with a Western emphasis. Extensive bibliography.
Designing cities : basics, principles, projects. Leonhard Schenk. 2nd ed. Basel: Birkhäuser. 2023.
Eighteenth century collections online - UCB Only Contains over 180,000 full text books and other materials published in Great Britain and its colonies during the 18th Century.
The History of the city. Leonardo Benevolo. Translated by Geoffrey Culverwell. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pr., 1980. Excellent historical coverage of the Western world and the Middle East. Extensively illustrated with photographs and plans. Original Italian text: HT111 B45 1993.
Introducing planning. Clara Greed. New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Pr., 2000. Includes an extensive bibliography, pp. 257-269.
Making the invisible visible: a multicultural planning history - Leonie Sandercock, ed. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998.
Planning the twentieth-century city: the advanced capitalist world. Stephen V. Ward. Chichester: Wiley, 2002.
The Routledge companion to twentieth and early twenty-first century urban design : a history of shifting manifestoes, paradigms, generic solutions, and specific designs. Jon T. Lang. NY: Routledge. 2020
The sustainable urban development reader (4th edition). Stephen Wheeler, ed. NY: Routledge, 2023.
Towards the planned city: Germany, Britain, the United States, and France, 1780-1914. Anthony Sutcliffe. NY: St. Martin's Pr., 1981. A public policy approach to city planning history. Addresses the pre-1914 contributions to urban planning and planning as an international movement.
Urban design in the 20th century: a history. Tom Avermaete. Zurich: GTA Verlag. 2021.
Urban planning in a changing world: the twentieth century experience. Robert Freestone, ed. NY: Routledge, 2000.
Urban planning, 1794-1918: an international anthology of articles, conference papers, and reports. John W. Reps, comp. Primary source material for the study of how urban planning developed up to the end of World War I. Includes bibliographies and biographic information on authors.
The Urban world. J. John Palen. 10th ed. NY: Oxford University Press, 2015. A readable international survey of urbanization. Bibliography.
A selection of titles on the history of American planning.
The American city: literary sources and documents. Graham Clarke, ed. 3 vols. Robertsbridge, East Sussex: Helm Information, 1997. A useful compilation of original texts pertaining to the American city. Includes extensive bibliographies.
American city planning since 1890; a history commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the American Institute of Planners. Mel Scott. Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1969. Includes a substantial bibliography and plans.
The American planning tradition: culture and policy. Robert Fishman, ed. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Pr., 2000.
Architecture and town planning in colonial North America. James D. Kornwolf, with the assistance of Georgiana W. Kornwolf. 3 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2002. Emphasis is architecture but includes descriptions and images of colonial town plans.
The Birth of city planning in the United States, 1840-1917. Jon A. Peterson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Dreaming the rational city: the myth of American city planning. M. Christine Boyer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pr., 1983. Discusses the rise of the "planning mentality" in America from the 1890s to the postwar era.
The Environment and the people in American cities, 1600-1900s: disorder, inequality, and social change. Dorceta E. Taylor. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
Introduction to planning history in the United States. Donald A. Krueckeberg. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research. 1983. Introduction to the history of the city planning profession from the 19th century to the present.
The Language of planning: essays on the origins and ends of American planning thought. Albert Z. Guttenberg. Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993.
Learning from the past: the history of planning: symposium. [David A. Johnson and Daniel Shaffer, guest editors], IN:Journal of the American Planning Association, 51: 2 (spring 1985), pp. 131-208. Includes bibliographies.
The Making of urban America; a history of city planning in the United States. John W. Reps. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1965. Classic text. Includes bibliography.
Planning the twentieth-century American city. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996.
The Spaces between buildings. Larry R. Ford. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000. Looks at the history of 20th century city planning and public spaces.
Two centuries of American planning. Daniel Schaffer, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988. A concise survey of American planning history, from the early 19th century.
Urban transportation planning in the United States: an historical overview. Edward Weiner, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999.Substantial survey, focusing on key legislation, policy developments, etc., in the evolution of urban transportation planning.
Urban transportation planning in the United States: history, policy, and practice. Edward Weiner, 5th ed. Springer International, 2016.
