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 is the author of 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.

She is a tenured professor at Cornell University with appointments in the planning, law, real estate, and architecture faculties. She directs the Legal Constructs Lab and is a faculty fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. She is also an elected member of the American Law Institute and a past chair of the State & Local Government Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Bronin has co-authored 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 four books and dozens of articles on renewable energy, climate change, housing, urban planning, transportation, real estate development, and federalism. She has received millions of dollars of grants from the federal government, state governments, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to build teams to support her research, including 20 full-time staff for the National Zoning Atlas alone.

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 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. She was confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate in 2022 and is the first person of color to serve as chair. In that role, she has prioritized the improvement of federal 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.

In 2023, Bronin was 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.

Bronin 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. 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.