100 books like The Environmental Protection Hustle

By Bernard J. Frieden,

Here are 100 books that The Environmental Protection Hustle fans have personally recommended if you like The Environmental Protection Hustle. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation

William A. Fischel Author Of Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation

From my list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I studied urban economics at Princeton in the 1970s, theoretical models of urban form were all the rage. Political barriers to urban development such as zoning were dismissed as irrelevant. But as I read more about it, zoning appeared to be the foremost concern of both developers and community members. My service on the Hanover, New Hampshire zoning board made me appreciate why homeowners are so concerned about what happens in their neighborhood. NIMBYs—neighbors who cry “not in my backyard”—are not evil people; they are worried “homevoters” (owners who vote to protect their homes) who cannot diversify their oversized investment. Zoning reforms won’t succeed without addressing their anxieties. 

William's book list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think

William A. Fischel Why did William love this book?

Hirt’s title might make you think it is just about the United States, but her well-written book is one of the rare instances of an insightful comparison of zoning policies in the other high-income nations of the world. Zoning actually started in Germany in the late nineteenth century and was imported to the US at the beginning of the twentieth. It was seriously modified on our shores. Rather than orchestrating the orderly development of mixed-use neighborhoods, Americans isolated the single-family, owner-occupied house on a zoning pedestal that it rarely enjoys in other countries. 

By Sonia A. Hirt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Zoned in the USA as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why are American cities, suburbs, and towns so distinct? Compared to European cities, those in the United States are characterized by lower densities and greater distances; neat, geometric layouts; an abundance of green space; a greater level of social segregation reflected in space; and-perhaps most noticeably-a greater share of individual, single-family detached housing. In Zoned in the USA, Sonia A. Hirt argues that zoning laws are among the important but understudied reasons for the cross-continental differences.

Hirt shows that rather than being imported from Europe, U.S. municipal zoning law was in fact an institution that quickly developed its own, distinctly…


Book cover of The Zoning of America: Euclid V. Ambler

William A. Fischel Author Of Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation

From my list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I studied urban economics at Princeton in the 1970s, theoretical models of urban form were all the rage. Political barriers to urban development such as zoning were dismissed as irrelevant. But as I read more about it, zoning appeared to be the foremost concern of both developers and community members. My service on the Hanover, New Hampshire zoning board made me appreciate why homeowners are so concerned about what happens in their neighborhood. NIMBYs—neighbors who cry “not in my backyard”—are not evil people; they are worried “homevoters” (owners who vote to protect their homes) who cannot diversify their oversized investment. Zoning reforms won’t succeed without addressing their anxieties. 

William's book list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think

William A. Fischel Why did William love this book?

Professor Wolf wrote a breezy and well-informed account of how zoning got the approval of the US Supreme Court in 1926. The definitive case, Euclid v. Ambler, was almost struck down, but the intrepid attorney for Euclid, Ohio, James Metzenbaum, managed to get a rare rehearing and saved the day. The case is nearing its centennial, and not everyone will be celebrating. Suburban zoning is now blamed for a host of modern problems, some foretold by the lower-court opinion that was rejected by the Supreme Court: “In the last analysis, the result to be accomplished [by Euclid’s zoning] is to classify the population and segregate them according to their income or situation in life." 

By Michael Allan Wolf,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Zoning of America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When the Cleveland suburb of Euclid first zoned its land in 1922, the Ambler Realty Company was left with a sizable tract it could no longer sell for industrial use - and so the company sued. What emerged was the seminal zoning case in American history, pitting reformers against private property advocates in the Supreme Court and raising the question of whether a municipality could deny property owners the right to use their land however they chose.Reconstructing the case that made zoning a central element in urban planning for cities and towns throughout America, Michael Allan Wolf provides the first…


Book cover of Sprawl: A Compact History

William A. Fischel Author Of Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation

From my list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I studied urban economics at Princeton in the 1970s, theoretical models of urban form were all the rage. Political barriers to urban development such as zoning were dismissed as irrelevant. But as I read more about it, zoning appeared to be the foremost concern of both developers and community members. My service on the Hanover, New Hampshire zoning board made me appreciate why homeowners are so concerned about what happens in their neighborhood. NIMBYs—neighbors who cry “not in my backyard”—are not evil people; they are worried “homevoters” (owners who vote to protect their homes) who cannot diversify their oversized investment. Zoning reforms won’t succeed without addressing their anxieties. 

William's book list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think

William A. Fischel Why did William love this book?

An architectural historian motivated by simple curiosity concludes that sprawl is not new and is a worldwide phenomenon. Highbrow critics have always condemned suburbanization until the next generation ends up living in it and trying to preserve it against further suburbanization. Bruegmann’s wide-ranging book is a sprightly send-up of the anti-sprawl sentiments throughout history and across the globe. Greenbelts to contain sprawl turn out to be especially toxic to sensible urban development. 

By Robert Bruegmann,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sprawl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed…


Book cover of Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America

William A. Fischel Author Of Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation

From my list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I studied urban economics at Princeton in the 1970s, theoretical models of urban form were all the rage. Political barriers to urban development such as zoning were dismissed as irrelevant. But as I read more about it, zoning appeared to be the foremost concern of both developers and community members. My service on the Hanover, New Hampshire zoning board made me appreciate why homeowners are so concerned about what happens in their neighborhood. NIMBYs—neighbors who cry “not in my backyard”—are not evil people; they are worried “homevoters” (owners who vote to protect their homes) who cannot diversify their oversized investment. Zoning reforms won’t succeed without addressing their anxieties. 

William's book list on why zoning isn’t as boring as you think

William A. Fischel Why did William love this book?

Dougherty, a New York Times reporter, gives a timely review of how zoning and environmental regulations have made California the nation's poster child for overpriced housing. More encouragingly, he profiles several of the leaders who are fighting for reforms, including leaders of "YIMBY" movement (Yes In My Back Yard) and a state senator, Scott Wiener, whose initiatives have influenced state legislation to promote environmentally friendly infill development.

By Conor Dougherty,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Golden Gates as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Time 100 Must-Read Book of 2020 * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * California Book Award Silver Medal in Nonfiction * Finalist for The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Named a top 30 must-read Book of 2020 by the New York Post * Named one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2020 by Fortune * Named A Must-Read Book of 2020 by Apartment Therapy * Runner-Up General Nonfiction: San Francisco Book Festival * A Planetizen Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 * Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside…


Book cover of Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960

Beryl Satter Author Of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America

From my list on urban history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I never read much urban history until I wrote one. For me, the problem was that most urban histories felt repetitive – they presented the same story over and over, just set in different locations. This was because most narrated the results of deeper, structural shifts (in spheres such as federal strategies of home finance, technological developments, demographic shifts, the rise or decline of manufacturing, political realignments, etc.) without sufficiently illuminating the causes. Regardless of whether they focus on Las Vegas or Philadelphia or Chicago or Dallas, each of these books – which I am presenting in order of publication date, not quality, as they are all excellent – will leave you smarter about the forces that shape our cities.  

Beryl's book list on urban history

Beryl Satter Why did Beryl love this book?

Many believe the myth that post-war public housing was constructed to help house the poor.  Hirsch focuses on the business and educational leaders who created urban renewal and public housing legislation to reveal their actual goal – to grab valuable land and displace African American residents who they viewed as threats to their investments. Like white working-class Chicagoans, these elites sought to exclude Black Chicagoans, but the white working class used riots and overt violence against Black residents who dared to enter their communities, while elites simply changed the laws to enable their more genteel form of ethnic cleansing. Published in 1983, Hirsch’s book pioneered whiteness studies. It remains a brilliant, scathing work on the mechanics of white supremacy and the racial politics of urban space.  

By Arnold R. Hirsch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Making the Second Ghetto as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1983 and praised by the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Thomas Sugrue, Arnold R. Hirsch's Making the Second Ghetto is the rare book that has only become more piercingly prescient over the years.

Hirsch's classic and groundbreaking work of urban history is a revelatory look at Chicago in the decades after the Great Depression, a period when the city dealt with its rapidly growing Black population not by working to abolish its stark segregation but by expanding and solidifying it. Even as the civil rights movement rose to prominence, Chicago exploited a variety of methods of segregation-including…


Book cover of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America

Deborah Dash Moore Author Of Urban Origins of American Judaism

From my list on Jewish lives in urban America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in New York City on the corner of 16th Street and 7th Avenue in an apartment on the 11th floor. I loved the city’s pace, diversity, and freedom. So, I decided to study New York Jews, to learn about them from not just from census records and institutional reports but also from interviews. After publishing my first book, I followed New York Jews as they moved to other cities, especially Miami and Los Angeles. Recently, I’ve been intrigued by what is often called street photography and the ways photographs let you see all sorts of details that potentially tell a story. 

Deborah's book list on Jewish lives in urban America

Deborah Dash Moore Why did Deborah love this book?

The key to Beryl Satter’s book lies in her title, Family Properties. The book grew out of a daughter’s desire to know her father, who died when she was young. Satter peels back layers of her Jewish father’s fierce advocacy for Blacks in Chicago, his relentless effort to uncover and hold accountable the white men (both Jewish and Christian) who were profiting from the housing segregation that made Blacks desperate to move out of the ghetto. Satter follows her father’s ultimate failure to prevent the exploitation of Blacks. She also reveals the anger directed at him by many Jews who were on the other side. Satter writes with empathy, showing her father’s complexity (he was a landlord as well as a lawyer), and resists the impulse to judge him. 

By Beryl Satter,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Family Properties as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Beryl Satter's Family Properties is really an incredible book. It is, by far, the best book I've ever read on the relationship between blacks and Jews. That's because it hones in on the relationship between one specific black community and one specific Jewish community and thus revels in the particular humanity of all its actors. In going small, it ultimately goes big.” ―Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

Part family story and part urban history, a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago -- and cities across the nation

The "promised land" for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly…


Book cover of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

Marcia Chatelain Author Of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

From my list on racial capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anytime we imagine ourselves to be smarter or more clever than Madison Avenue or sponsored content on your social media feeds or a well-designed advertisement a nostalgia unlocking tweet will prove you wrong. We are all vulnerable to their manipulations, and it is from this belief that I explore the histories, the conflicts, and the techniques that strengthen capitalism’s hold on our imaginations. And yet, despite the lures of the marketplace, I believe that people can come together and outmaneuver corporations and their enablers. Whether it’s a fast-food restaurant that crashed and burned in the 1980s or the most popular toy of 1973 or failed TV spinoffs, I see these cultural contributions as rich texts to understand race, gender, and American identities.

Marcia's book list on racial capitalism

Marcia Chatelain Why did Marcia love this book?

Race for Profit connects all the dots on the imbalances in housing in the United States today.  As someone who bought a first home right before the mortgage meltdown, I’ve always wondered about the experiences of Black homebuyers historically.  This is an expertly researched look at predatory inclusion, the nefarious ways that institutions—in this case the banks and real estate industry—extended opportunities for homeownership to poor, Black families to purchase homes in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Rather than create high-quality public housing or enforcing the principles of fair housing laws, the federal government supported home buying schemes that ultimately imperiled buyers.  Taylor places emphasis on how discourses about Black women and housing planted the seeds for backlash against people who received public assistance and housing program users.

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Race for Profit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion.

Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative…


Book cover of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing

Mark D. Steinberg Author Of Russian Utopia: A Century of Revolutionary Possibilities

From my list on the modern history of cities.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in San Francisco and worked in New York City in the 1970s as a taxi driver and printing apprentice, and, after getting a doctorate at UC Berkeley, taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Illinois. Most of my publications and teaching have been about Russian history—I've written books on labor relations, working-class writers, the Russian Revolution, St. Petersburg, and utopias. I've been teaching comparative urban history for several years and am writing a new book on urban storytelling about street life, nightlife, and morality in Soviet Odessa, colonial Bombay, and New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. I recently retired and live in New York City and Turin, Italy.

Mark's book list on the modern history of cities

Mark D. Steinberg Why did Mark love this book?

This is an extraordinary book: stories, in the voices of those who experienced it, about living in public housing projects in Chicago before these homes were demolished starting in the 1990s. Of course, there are memories of crime, gangs, drugs, violence, police brutality, sickness, and death: sometimes understood as the product of urban life, capitalism, and racism, but also as the product of individual mistakes and failures. But mostly these witnesses tell of community, of self-respect and determination, of learning to survive and even resist.

Students in my urban history class in a prison education program in Illinois reminded me that “urban” in their world—which was often precisely the world of High-Rise Stories—meant not the city as a whole, but the inner city, the world of the street, of the marginalized, of people of color. This is a compelling window into that story, told by people who lived it:…

By Audrey Petty,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked High Rise Stories as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the gripping first-person accounts of High Rise Stories, former residents of Chicago's iconic public housing projects describe life in the now-demolished high-rises. These stories of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification give voice to those who have long been ignored, but whose hopes and struggles exist firmly at the heart of our national identity.


Book cover of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida

Marcia Chatelain Author Of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

From my list on racial capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anytime we imagine ourselves to be smarter or more clever than Madison Avenue or sponsored content on your social media feeds or a well-designed advertisement a nostalgia unlocking tweet will prove you wrong. We are all vulnerable to their manipulations, and it is from this belief that I explore the histories, the conflicts, and the techniques that strengthen capitalism’s hold on our imaginations. And yet, despite the lures of the marketplace, I believe that people can come together and outmaneuver corporations and their enablers. Whether it’s a fast-food restaurant that crashed and burned in the 1980s or the most popular toy of 1973 or failed TV spinoffs, I see these cultural contributions as rich texts to understand race, gender, and American identities.

Marcia's book list on racial capitalism

Marcia Chatelain Why did Marcia love this book?

I love Miami, and I was immediately drawn to this stunning look at the relationship between the making of the cosmopolitan Miami we know today and the history of racial exclusion in the South. Before the high rises, the posh beach resorts, fine dining restaurants, and internationally renowned nightlife, South Florida epitomized all the forces of American history: conflict and negotiation with indigenous populations, reliance on immigrant populations, racially restrictive covenants, and powerbrokers of all colors looking to profit from real estate.

By N.D.B. Connolly,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A World More Concrete as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much…


Book cover of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

Jenny Price Author Of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto

From my list on revolutionize how Americans think about nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer, artist, and historian, and I’ve spent much of my career trying to blow up the powerful American definition of environment as a non-human world “out there”, and to ask how it’s allowed environmentalists, Exxon, and the EPA alike to refuse to take responsibility for how we inhabit environments. Along the way, I’ve written Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America and "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA"; co-founded the LA Urban Rangers public art collective; and co-created the “Our Malibu Beaches” phone app. I currently live in St. Louis, where I’m a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School at Washington University-St. Louis. 

Jenny's book list on revolutionize how Americans think about nature

Jenny Price Why did Jenny love this book?

An oldie but a goodie, and a classic. Cronon’s lead essay “The Trouble with Wilderness” roused ‘90s environmentalism like a brilliant party crasher—but don’t miss Richard White’s “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living,” Giovanna Di Chiro’s “Nature as Community,” and, well, my own “Looking for Nature at the Mall.”

By William Cronon (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Uncommon Ground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In a lead essay that powerfully states the broad argument of the book, William Cronon writes that the environmentalist goal of wilderness preservation is conceptually and politically wrongheaded. Among the ironies and entanglements resulting from this goal are the sale of nature in our malls through the Nature Company, and the disputes between working people and environmentalists over spotted owls and other objects of species preservation.

The problem is that we haven't learned to live responsibly in nature. The environmentalist aim of legislating humans out of the wilderness is no solution. People, Cronon argues, are inextricably tied to nature, whether…


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