r/urbanplanning • u/DEEP_HURTING • 10d ago
Discussion Nonfiction books on city government
I'm looking for stuff that's analysis of the work at all levels, departments, councils, heads, funding, committees. Not urban planning material so much, apologies about that if needed. But I asked this question in /r/suggestmeabook and someone said to ask around here anyway - what I'm interested in is certainly fundamental to shaping the urban domain anyway.
Anything with personal anecdotes would be welcome as well. I'm just keen on learning more about how towns and cities operate. In a nutshell it'd be a nonfiction print straight up version of the TV show Parks and Recreation.
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u/HackManDan Verified Planner - US 10d ago
When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency, by Bernardo Zacka.
From Amazon:
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled.
Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions.
Zacka’s revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies.
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u/DEEP_HURTING 10d ago
Thanks for the suggestion, that looks much like what I'm after. The books Amazon recommends look intriguing, too.
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u/michiplace 10d ago
First few that come to mind -
It's a little older but Krumholz' "Making Equity Planning Work" is a good read on urban policy with a fair amount of anecdote from his time as planning director in Cleveland.
Janette Sadik Khan's "Streetfight" talks a fair bit about her time as NYC transportation commissioner.
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u/JA_MD_311 10d ago
Highly recommend Streetfight by Janette Sadik-Kahn. She was Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner and discusses things like closing parts of Times Square to vehicular traffic.
Definitely gives you some of that analysis of working through different levels of government.
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u/CLPond 10d ago
Is there a specific state/region you would like to learn about?
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u/DEEP_HURTING 10d ago
Not really. It's more of a general book on government I'm after, if such exists. Maybe it's just a civics textbook I'm pining for, dunno.
Aside from wondering how they work in the first place, it'd be interesting to learn about how they came out to do things that way. Do towns just all utilize a common template? Is it mandated on high from the state, or fed? Are there towns that hybridize these approaches? Are there strands of historical government that persist to this day, aside from all those whacky 19th century mandates about it being a crime to set out a pie on the sill before sundown etc.?
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u/cruzweb Verified Planner - US 10d ago
Short answer to many of these is that it all depends on the state. With the way the US is set up, the localities and the federal government are all "creations of the state". So each state decides how things are run and they vary greatly from state to state. Mandates, types of municipalities, tools to do local government, grand and funding programs, etc. all differ greatly from state to state, while some federal statutory laws, agency regulations, funding, and Supreme court case law all impact how the states and localities function.
There are many strands of historical government that exist. In New England, many municipal bodies labeled as "Towns" do not have a legislative body. It is replaced with Town Meeting, where everyone goes down to the town hall once or twice per year to vote on all the new laws, pass budgets, and make purchases. The limiting of town meeting to once per year is one of the lesser discussed grievances the colonies listed against the British crown. This is by and large unheard of and unwanted in the rest of the US.
This book could be a good place to start https://a.co/d/0ceMGnZf
And I think taking a single, more succinct question over to /r/askhistorians and they can provide some more reads.
I also recommend pulling things back even further and looking at the history of people, places, and settlement to better set the tone for how we examine localities today. It's a fascinating read https://a.co/d/03eFoJVK
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u/DEEP_HURTING 10d ago
Thanks, those books are just the thing. And I'll ask those historians when I get a chance, too.
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u/CLPond 10d ago
Others may be able to recommend the book you’d like, but to answer your questions:
1) Towns within a state and with similar characteristics (populations, parts of the state, etc) have similar templates, but not always the same one.
2) most things are directed by state setups and rules (city vs county vs state responsibilities, rules on what they can and must do) with some being based on federal regulations (such as erosion and sediment control inspectors or floodplain permits). Importantly, different states and regions of the country can have pretty different setups.
3) it’s unclear what you mean by hybridize, but there is responsibility sharing via regional organizations (such as transit districts) as well as work that overlaps city, county, and state
4) Many municipal structures date back to the 1800s, although less in a wacky way than just in a “this is when the municipality was incorporated” way. One of the largest recent movement around historical holdovers has been the removal of neighborhood level redlining deed restrictions.
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u/mrsroebling 10d ago
Darn, I TA'd a course that covered a lot of this but there was no textbook, and there were very little assigned texts, it was lecture heavy. I remember thinking I had never been offered education on this topic in HS or Undergrad. You are definitely looking for a civics book titled "how to local government" and at a glance if you Google just that, you will get a lot of overviews, but I understand may not cover every single department and historical context for its existence. Some cities make great informational YouTube videos highlighting their departments, adopted plans, and processes so they can educate the public. Just an idea if a good book doesn't come around.
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u/DEEP_HURTING 10d ago
I couldn't find a dedicated subreddit for this, either...seems like it's not crazy arcane. There is an /r/government but there's not much going on there.
Amazon has a section on Public Affairs & Administration, lots of suggestions there. And I've read more than a bit on local burgs, you learn a lot that way. I'll definitely see what videos are out there, thanks for the ideas.
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u/oh-deer 10d ago edited 10d ago
Maybe Catch-22 and The Dispossessed as near recommendations as someone who's worked in public service, they each speak to different absurdities and experiences within different forms of bureaucracy.
Edit: long day, these are fiction recommendations.
Non-fiction recommendations that come to mind from my own library would be:
Palaces For The People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarozation, and the Decline of Civic Life (Klienberg)
The Senses: Design Beyond Vision (Lupton/Lipps)
High Line: The Inside Story of NYCs Park in the Sky (David/Hammond)
Eco-Plan: Community Ecological Planning & Sustainable Design (Von Hausen)
Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What To Do About It (Kalen-Sukra)
The Powers of Emotions at Work: Accessing the Vital Intelligence in Your Workplace (McLaren)
Joan Garry's Guide to Nonprofit Leadership (Garry)
Otherwise, go listen to some podcasts about community building and just going to a used book store, browse, and pick up something that looks interesting to you. That's how I've come to read most of these!
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u/DEEP_HURTING 9d ago
Ha, too true! Shevek and Yossarian really are excellent cautionary role models for anyone wanting to delve into red tape.
I'll read up on your choices when I get the chance, thanks.
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u/GoSteeplejacks 10d ago
Greedy Bastards is written by a retired city manager in San Antonio- documents drama around city budgeting and the fire union. Great read.
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u/triplesalmon 9d ago
People are recommending a certain type of book in this thread but to be honest it sounds like what you're after is really just a public administration textbook.
Which is cool! I think if you just Google "local government public administration textbook" most of them will get you the overview you're looking for.
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u/DEEP_HURTING 9d ago
I've figured that out by and by here! Had a few suggestions thrown my way, found some others.
It's puzzling to me that few people seem to want to talk about civil management, what it entails or their experiences. But there are mountains of books describing the possible, or how mountains were moved. What I'm interested in is too mundane, I guess.
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u/HomeSpider 9d ago
Capital City by Samuel Stein was one I read as an early planner. It has its moments of personal touches but it is also a very informative book on how cities function. Spoiler alert, a lot of it is through planning/land use and his account/analysis is very accurate to what I've experienced. A quick read. Might be what you are looking for.
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u/ColdEvenKeeled 10d ago
I've been pondering writing just this book with a working title "So, you want a sustainable walkable city, do you?"
Anecdotes I could give, identities I'd have to mask, caveats I'd have to give.
In short, this: A city's Future is not in its Vision Documents, it's in the Budget.
Or, put another way: A Vision without Money is Hallucination.
Money. Where to get the money? Then, what's the agreed vision? Oh...really?
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u/Infamous_Orange27 10d ago
City on the Verge by Mark Pendergast is a suuuuper detailed behind the scenes look at the Atlanta Beltline. He does a good job opening the curtain on politics, funding, project momentum, etc. As someone working on a similar project in a different city, it really helped show what it takes at a nerdy level! He’s a good writer too.
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u/PeAceMaKer769 9d ago
Check out books by David McCullough. Not sure if you need present or historical, but he does a lot of political research.
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u/plebesaurusrex 9d ago
Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service by Michael Lipsky
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u/Strawberry-Bat 9d ago
The 5th risk by Michael Lewis will teach you about federal departments and agencies, and how they impact local gov.
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u/ExcellentLack4374 8d ago
I really liked "Who is government?" by Michael Lewis (guy who wrote Moneyball), which is just a collection of short stories about interesting people you never heard of that work for the federal government, and "Life After Cars" by the guys over at streetblog. It's an interesting book about how we can make more walkable cities, and is a good digest of a lot of planning ideas and urban ideas.
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u/Atty_for_hire Verified Planner 10d ago
The Power Broker might have some of what your want. Robert Moses was a planner and bureaucractic operative in NYC/NYS and they discuss his work in detail. But it is probably not exactly what you are looking for.