Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor, and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She wrote Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (W.W. Norton), and she founded and directs the National Zoning Atlas, which aims to digitize, demystify, and democratize information about zoning in the United States.

Academics

Bronin is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts in property, land use, zoning, and historic preservation law. Effective July 2025, she is the Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School. Prior to joining GW, she was a tenured professor at Cornell University.

Bronin has co-authored four books and two treatises, including the land use volume of the Restatement (Fourth) of Property, which distills principles of black letter law that will shape judicial decisions for decades to come. She has also written dozens of law review articles.

Public Service

Bronin has been a reformer and change-maker in public roles at the local, state, and federal levels.

In the area of land use, Bronin chaired the planning and zoning commission of Connecticut’s capital city for seven years, leading its nationally-recognized efforts to overhaul its zoning code and to adopt a new decennial city plan. In that role, she also spearheaded the city’s first climate action plan and helped create a City Sustainability Office. In 2020, she founded DesegregateCT, a pro-homes grassroots coalition that successfully advanced the first major statewide zoning reforms in several decades. 

In the area of historic preservation, Bronin was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate to serve as the 12th Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the independent federal agency charged with preserving the country’s historic places. The first person of color to serve as Chair, she prioritized the improvement of regulatory and policy approaches to housing, climate change, and the concerns of Indigenous Peoples. Previously, Bronin served as a board member for Latinos in Heritage Conservation, an advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the chair of Preservation Connecticut, and the vice chair of the city of Hartford historic preservation commission.

Bronin was also appointed by President Biden to serve as a Trustee of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. 

Consulting & Practice

Bronin has been an attorney, adviser, and expert witness for institutional clients, governments, and law firms dealing with complex matters. She is admitted to practice in Texas, Connecticut, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and she actively maintains her architecture license. She won several architectural design awards for the rehabilitation of her family’s National-Register-listed 1865 brownstone. 

Education & Personal Information

Bronin holds a J.D. from Yale Law School (Harry S Truman Scholarship), M.Sc. from the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship), and B.Architecture and B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas. Among other honors, she received an honorary degree from Trinity College. While in law school, she clerked for then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

A seventh-generation Texan, Sara is a native Houstonian. She grew up working in her grandparents’ Mexican restaurant.