Back to Geography and Planning Resources

Planning: A Brief Guide to Selected Sources

This guide is intended to serve as a starting point for locating information about planning and urbanism topics using both print and electronic resources available through the University at Albany Libraries. Call numbers for print materials listed here beginning with “ULIB” are for materials located in the University Library and those beginning with “DEWEY” are located in the Dewey Graduate Library on the Downtown Campus. Call numbers beginning with the prefix “REF” are in the Reference area.

Please note that databases having the icon can only be accessed from off campus if you are a registered library borrower. You must have a SUNY card issued by the University at Albany AND currently be affiliated with the university as faculty, staff or student. For more information on accessing these resources remotely, see Off-Campus Access to Databases and Online Journals.

This guide is not intended to be comprehensive, and the library owns many more resources than are listed here. For more planning-related Web sites see Geography and Planning Resources. The Geography and Planning Key Resources page links additional subscription databases available for University at Albany library borrowers. If you would like more assistance, please contact a reference librarian (442-3558).

Locating Books

Books about planning and urbanism owned by the University Libraries can be identified using the Minerva  online public access catalog.  You may search Minerva by author, title, subject, keywords, etc.  Subjects can be searched using either Library of Congress Subject Headings or by using keywords. Minerva contains information about books housed in all three libraries: Dewey Library, the University Library and the Science Library.  Minerva will also help you find the titles of journals owned by the Libraries, but it will not help you to locate individual articles within journals.  See the section in this guide on Locating Journal Articles for more information on that.  The location "ULIB" in the record indicates that the book is found in the University Library, the location "DEWEY" is for the Dewey Library, and the location "SCIENCE" is for the Science Library.  Please ask for help or instructions at the reference desk (442-3558).

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries and Handbooks

• Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History, by Robert S. Fogarty.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Contains brief biographies of people who had critical roles in the development of utopian communities. Also includes short overviews of more than 200 utopian communites.  [ULIB HX 653 F65 BldgOnly]  
• Encyclopedia of Housing, Willem Van Vliet, ed.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.   The Encyclopedia of Housing highlights significant topics about contemporary issues that affect housing. Though the main focus of the entries made by eminent researchers and analysts is the United States, many of the authors make reference to policies, programs, or research from other countries, especially European housing policy research.  [ULIB REF HD 7287 E53 1998, DEWEY REF HD 7287 E53 1998]
• Encyclopedia of the City, Roger Caves, ed. New York: Routledge, 2005.   The Encyclopedia of the City is useful for getting an overview of topics related to urban issues. Entries are written by major theoreticians and practitioners in urban planning and related disciplines.  [ULIB REF HT 108.5 E63 2005]
• Encyclopedia of the Third World, by George Thomas Kurian. New York: Facts on File, 1992.   The Encyclopedia of the Third World describes the dominant political, economic and social systems of 122 countries of the world.  [ULIB REF HC 59.7 K87 1992]
• Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs, Neil Larry Shumsky, ed.  Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998. This two volume work offers about 500 entries by scholars in a variety of disciplines. It provides insight into the diversity, culture and history of American cities. [ULIB REF HT 123 E5 1998]
• Encyclopedia of Urban Planning, Arnold Whittick, ed.  Huntington, NY: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1980. This encyclopedia is international in scope and covers planning in forty-eight of the principal countries of the world where systems of planning legislation and administration are maintained. Planning in each country is broadly considered, with a similar division of subjects so that comparisons of planning legislation, administration, practice, and recent history can readily be made.  [ULIB REF HT 166 E5 1980]
• Encyclopedia of World Cities, by Immanuel Ness.  Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. This work presents entries on 130 major international cities included for their cultural, historical, economic, and political significance.  [ULIB REF HT 108.5 N47 1999]
• Urban Sprawl: A Reference Handbook, by Donald C. Williams.  Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000. This work offers an introduction which places urban sprawl in historical context, an outline of the current debate over controlling sprawl, a chronology of development patterns and land use policies, biographical sketches, and bibliographies. [ULIB HT 384 U5 W55 2000]

General Bibliographies

The following section list bibliographies that deal with planning as a whole. More specialized subject bibliographies are included under specific subject headings.

• Cities in Winter: A Bibliography on Planning, Design, and Climate, by R. Margaret Yuen and Norman Pressman.  Chicago: Council of Planning Librarians, 1995. This bibliography emphasizes materials published between 1970 and 1995. There is a strong focus on Canadian publications with some Scandinavian content. [ULIB HT 166 Z999 A63 1995]
• Healthy Cities: An Annotated Bibliography, by Namir Khan, Willem H. Vanderburg; with the collaboration of Lynn Macfie [et al.].  Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001. Covers the literature on preventive approaches to make cities healthier and more sustainable. [ULIB HT 119 Z999 K44 2001]
• Information Sources in Urban and Regional Planning: A Directory and Guide to Reference Materials, by Edward E. Duensing.  New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1994. Information sources specific to the field of urban and regional planning, as well as those from fields that overlap planning's areas of interest are covered. Titles included have a publication date of 1980 or later.  [ULIB REF HT 165.5 Z999 D84X 1994]
• New Urbanism Bibliography, compiled by Dhiru A. Thadani. New Urbanism bibliography, complied by Dhiru A. Thadani, provides a variety of internet resources for architecture and urban design in the Caribbean. Articles from the publication Periferia by Architectural Resources Network are also available (1996-1999 only). Some articles are only in Spanish.
• Planning Advisory Service Report Index, 1949-1997. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association, Planning Advisory Service, 1997. Planning Advisory Service Reports are published eight times a year, and focus on the field’s current issues and innovative practices. [ULIB OVER (*) NA 9108 A545 INDEX 1997] An up-to-date subject and chronologic index to PAS Reports is available at: http://www.planning.org/pas/reports.htm
• University of Nottingham Online Planning Resources Bibliographies. A frequently updated and comprehensive planning bibliography. While the emphasis is on England, many of the sources and issues covered are global in scope.

Architecture

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, by Toni Petersen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. [ULIB REF Z 695.1 A7 A76 1994]
• Contemporary Architects, Muriel Emanuel, ed. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1980. This work emphasizes living architects as well as those architects of the modern movement of the 1920s-1950s who continue to exert an important influence on architecture. [ULIB REF NA 680 C625]
• Dictionary of Architectural and Building Technology, by Henry J. Cowan and Peter R. Smith. New York: E & FN Spon, 1998. [ULIB REF NA 31 C63 1998]
• A Dictionary of Architecture, by James Stevens Curl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. [ULIB REF NA 31 C86 1999]
• Encyclopedia of American Architecture , by Robert T. Packard.  New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. This is a well-illustrated work for general readers. It contains detailed articles on all aspects of American architecture, with substantial bibliographies for further reading.  [ULIB REF NA 705 P3 1994]
• Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats , by Donald Langmead and Christine Garnaut.  Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2001. Offers an overview of the architectural and engineering works that represent significant innovations in the creation of the built environment. [ULIB REF NA 200 L32 2001]
• Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture , by Dennis Sharp. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1991. This work is both a documentary history of architectural ideas and a biographical dictionary. Entries are the work of specialist authorities in the field. [ULIB REF NA 40 I45 1991 ]
• Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings From the 10th Century to the Present, by G.E. Kidder Smith. NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. The five hundred buildings covered in this book were selected to demonstrate architectural evolution during the history of the United States. [ULIB REF NA 705 S578 1996]
• Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture From Postwar to Postmodern, by Sylvia Hart Wright. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989. This book supplies basic information for more than 500 of the most widely discussed building and complexes completed in North America from 1949-1987. [ULIB REF NA 703 W75 1989]
• A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, by Francis D.K. Ching. New York: Van Hostrand Reinhold, 1995. This book provides definitions for terms relating to architectural design, history, and technology. Many entries are illustrated with detailed line drawings. [ULIB REF NA 31 C44 1995]
• Who's Who in Architecture: From 1400 to the Present Day, J. M. Richards, ed. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. Covers architects from Britain, the United States, British Commonwealth, Israel, and Japan. Since this book is intended for English and American readers, the architects from Britain and the United States have been somewhat less rigorously selected than those from Europe and Latin America. [ULIB REF NA 40 W48]

Sprawl

• Edge Cities, by Christine M. Sala. Chicago: Council of Planning Librarians, 1995. This is an annotated bibliography, with most references dating from 1991. [ULIB HT 334 U5 Z991 1995]
• Encouraging Smart Growth, by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Through this web site, the Environmental Protection Agency provides various resources to promote smart growth. The site presents numerous approaches ranging from formal legislative and regulatory efforts to informal approaches, plans, and programs to help communities realize smart growth.
• The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl, by Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton. Washington: Island Press, 2001. This work describes three interrelated phenomena: the emergence of regionalism, the maturation of the suburbs, and the revitalization of older urban neighborhoods. [ULIB HT 392 C28 2001]
• Smart Growth Online. Smart Growth Online is a web-based catalogue of smart growth related news, events, information and resources. Developed and funded through a cooperative agreement between the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Sustainable Communities Network, this tool is designed to advance public understanding of smart growth and how growth can improve community livability.
• Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse. Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse's mission is to "make the tools, techniques, and strategies developed to manage growth, accessible to citizens, grassroots organizations, environmentalists, public officials, planners, architects, the media and business leaders." The site provides book reviews and news on historic preservation, economics, suburbanization and more.
• Suburban Sprawl: Private Decisions and Public Policy, Wim Wiewel and Joseph J. Persky, eds. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. This book examines the rise of sprawl, especially in the last thirty years, and looks at the role of federal and state programs and policies. [ULIB HT 352 U62 C47 2002]

Brownfields

• Brownfields Center, by Carnegie Mellon University and The University of Pittsburgh. The mission of the Brownfields Center (TBC) is to improve the brownfield revitalization process by enabling scholars of engineering, the social sciences, economics and the arts to develop a comprehensive, multi-level understanding of the challenges facing community leaders as they seek to return brownfields to productive use. This site presents cases studies of brownfields redevelopment projects, regulations, decision support tools and more.
• Brownfields: Cleaning and Reusing Contaminated Properties, by Charles Bartsch and Elizabeth Collaton. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1997. This book covers important topics regarding cleanup and reuse of brownfields including environmental, public policy and economic development concerns. [ULIB HT 175 B368 1997]
• Brownfields Cleanup and Redevelopment, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This government site provides information about the Environmental Protection Agency's Brownfields Program including the Brownfields Law, Brownfields Grants, technical tools and resources as well as information on brownfields projects across the county. There is a key-word search function available.
• Brownfields: Redeveloping Environmentally Distressed Properties, by Harold J. Rafson and Robert N. Rafson. This work reviews numerous case studies of bringing underutilized industrial sites back to productive use. This book approaches brownfields redevelopment from the point of view of both the buyer and seller. [DEWEY HD 257.5 R34X 1999]

History of Planning

The following items deal broadly with planning history. Search Minerva to locate materials dealing with specific geographical areas.

• The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917, by Jon A. Peterson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. This book covers the birth, expansion, and decline of planning, starting with the pioneers of the City Beautiful movement. [ULIB HT 167 P47 2003]
• Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, by Peter G. Hall. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. This book looks at the history of urban development in are London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Edinburgh, Chicago, New Delhi, Moscow, Chandigarh, Brasilia, Indore, Lima, Berkeley, Long Island, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Manchester, California, Baltimore, Hong Kong, St. Louise, and Tokyo. [ULIB HT 166 H349 1996]
• Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920, by Stanley K. Schultz. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989. This is a book about the evolution of the new American urban culture. In exploring the changing physical landscape of urban America, the author tries to capture what it was like to be alive in a nineteenth-century city, seeking to explain how Americans created a new urban culture. [ULIB HT 167 S284 1988]
• Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It, by Alison Isenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. The author covers the history of urban centers in the Twentieth Century. [ULIB HT 123 174 2004]
• The History of Urban and Regional Planning: An Annotated Bibliography, by Anthony Sutcliffe. NY: Facts on File, 1981. The bibliography details major contributions to the study of the history of urban and regional planning, with a Western European and North American focus. [ULIB HT 166 Z999 S98X]
• History of Urban Form: Before the Industrial Revolutions, by A.E.J. Morris. NY: Wiley, 1994. This book provides an international history of urban development, from its origins to the industrial revolution, and covers the physical results of some 5000 years of urban activity. [ULIB HT 166 M59 1993]
• Introduction to Planning History in the United States, Donald A. Krueckeberg, ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1982. This is a basic text on the origins and history of city planning in the United States, beginning in the nineteenth century through the post-1980 period.  [ULIB HT 167 I57 1982]
• Metropolis, 1890-1940, by Anthony Sutcliffe. London: Mansell, 1984. This book consists of case studies of seven of the world's largest urban areas for the periods of 1890 through 1940. The cities covered are New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and The Ruhr. [ULIB HT 151 M45X 1984]
• Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design, by Rodolphe El-Khoury. New York: Routledge, 2004. This is a wide-ranging collection of case studies including Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Brasilia and Atlanta. The work also includes discussions of such themes as the Cybercity, the Asian Megacity and the New Urbanism. [ULIB HT 166 S399 2004]
• Two Centuries of American Planning, by Daniel Schaffer. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. The chapters of this book, written by some of the most prominent practitioners in planning history, are ordered chronologically. Each chapter illustrates the intellectual continuity which has existed within the notion of planning since the nation's first efforts to shape the growth of its cities. [ULIB HT 167 T86 1988]
• The Urban Millennium: The City-building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present, by Josef W. Konvitz. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. This book offers a general historical outline of the city-building process. [ULIB HT 111 K58 1985]
• Urban Past: An International Urban History Bibliography, by Gilbert A. Stelter. This bibliography concentrates on English language post-1980 works with an urban historical focus.

Housing

• After the Planners, by Robert Goodman. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972. In this book, Goodman, who is a practicing professional, examines present conditions and poses new ways for building more humane places to live. [ULIB HT 166 G64]
• Bulletin of Housing and Building Statistics for Europe and North America, United Nations. New York: United Nations, 2000. This bulletin provides basic annual data on trends in the field of housing and building in European countries, Canada and the United State of American in the years of 1980, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993. [ULIB HD 9715 A1 U48]
• Encyclopedia of Housing, Willem Van Vliet, ed.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998. The Encyclopedia of Housing includes over 500 concise articles covering all aspects of housing issues in the United States. [ULIB REF HD 7287 E53 1998, DEWEY REF HD 7287 E53 1998]
• Housing Markets and Housing Institutions: An International Comparison, Björn Hårsman and John M. Quigley, eds. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Each chapter in this book presents a description and analysis of a national housing market and an analysis of the development of housing policy and outcomes in a particular metropolitan region. The countries selected for analysis include Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the metropolitan areas that form the bases of the analyses include Vienna, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Budapest, Stockholm, Glasgow, and San Francisco. [ULIB HD 7287.5 H66 1991]
• Housing Statistics of the United States, by Patrick A. Simmons. Lanham, Md.: Bernan Press, 1997. This work provides current and historical statistics on households, housing, and housing finance. [ULIB REF HD 7293 H78272X 1997, DEWEY REF HD 7293 H78272X 1997]
• Human Settlements Database - This database is produced by the Environment and Human Settlements Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Contains statistical data on available housing and construction for over 50 countries.
• Index to Current Urban Documents. NY: Greenwood Press. [ULIB REF Z 7164 L8 I53X] The key national resource for local government publications of the U.S. This source is available both in print and online. Online edition contains citations and full text (PDF format). Online edition is accessible only to members of the University at Albany community.

Locating Journal Articles

Journal articles relevant to your subject can be identified using indexing and abstracting services. Planning is a multi-disciplinary field, so you may need to consult several databases to cover your topic. Some databases provide access to the actual text of the articles, but most do not.  If the journal article text is not available online, you must determine if the library subscribes to the print journal, and locate it in the Periodicals Room.  For more help with this process, ask a Reference Librarian (442-3558).

Sources described below are the most relevant databases for researching articles covering planning.

• Art Index - Key international arts publications, including periodicals, yearbooks, museum bulletins, reproductions, and book reviews, are covered in this database.
• EconLit - This database is the standard source for the indexing of scholarly economic literature. It covers over 400 journals in economics and related fields, and includes conference proceedings, books, book reviews, dissertations and working papers.
• EBSCO Academic Search Premier - Provides nearly 4,600 full text scholarly publications, including more than 3,500 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to the full text, this database provides indexing and abstracts for nearly 8,043 titles.
• Geobase - Updated semimonthly, this database contains over 2,060 sources covering literature on geology, geography, and ecology. Includes more than 6,000 abstracts to journals, books, monographs, conference proceedings, and reports.
• Grove Dictionary of Art - Covering all aspects of the visual arts including painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic and decorative art, and photography, this database contains 41,000 full-text articles, 500,000 bibliographic references, and more than 8,700 images.
• JSTOR - This database offers full-text image backfiles of journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
• LexisNexis Academic - Provides access to thousands of worldwide newspapers, magazines, trade journals, and industry newsletters in the areas of law, medicine, and business.
• PAIS - This database is a bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. It indexes journal articles, books, government documents, committee reports, directories, as well as reports of public, intergovernmental, and private organizations.
• ScienceDirect - Contains the full-text of 1800 Elsevier journals. Backfile coverage starts with 1995.
• Social Science Abstracts - Access to abstracts and full text articles from worldwide periodicals in sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, political science, and law.
• Sociological Abstracts [via CSA] - This database abstracts and indexes international literature in sociology drawn from over 1,809 publications from 1963 to the current year. It also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, book reviews, journal articles, dissertations, and conference papers.

Last Updated: May 11, 2006
Maintained by Mary K. Van Ullen
Comments to mvanullen@uamail.albany.edu