Raleigh City Builders Book Club List

5 min readApr 17, 2021

The list below is not exhaustive and is in no particular order. Books are broken down into two categories, books that I have read and recommend, and books that have been recommended to me that have not read. If you have a recommendation, please email me at OakCityCRE@gmail.com!

Books on this list span a range of categories, all with the goal of helping us build a better Raleigh. You will find books on development, utilities, government, finance, decision making, racism, leadership, transportation, and “getting things done”.

Raleigh City Builders Book Club List

Books I have read and recommend

Andrew Kleine — City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes

Chip and Dan Heath — Made to Stick*

Daniel Pink — Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us*

Edward Glaeser — Triumph of a City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier*

Simon Sinek — Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t*

Dan Ariely — Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions*

Dan Heath — Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

Richard Rothstein — The Color of Law: A forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America*

Scott Huler — On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and The Systems That Make Our World Work

Gary Keller — The one thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

Greg McKeown — Essentialism

Cal Newport — Deep Work

Cal Newport — Digital Minimalism

David Owen — Green Metropolis

Donald Shoup — The High Cost of Free Parking

Jane Jacobs — The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jeff Speck — WALKABLE CITY: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

Jeff Speck — Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places

Jarrett Walker — Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives

William J. Poorvu — The Real Estate Game: The Intelligent Guide To Decision Making And Investment

Ben Stevens — The Birth of a Building: From Conception to Delivery

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor — Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

Steven Higashide — Better Buses, Better Cities: How To Plan, Run, And Win The Fight For Effective Transit

Gabe Klein — Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun

Books in the Queue That Come Highly Recommended

Ken Miller — Extreme Government Makeover: Increasing our Capacity to Do More Good*

Tom Kelly and Jonathan Littman — The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate*

Mark Friedman — Trying Hard is Not Good Enough: How to Produce Measurable Results for Customers and Communities*

Scott Lazenby — The Human Side of Budgeting: Budget Games and How to End Them*

Matthew Desmond — Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Daniel G. Parolek — Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis

Roman Mars — The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

Angie Schmitt — Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

Ray Oldenburg — The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

Bill Bishop — The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

Janette Sadik-Khan — Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution

John P. Kretzmann — Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets

Charles L. Marohn — Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

Adam Grant — Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Christopher Duerksen — The Citizen’s Guide to Planning

Written by Oak City CRE