I got a few requests in response to this post for an introductory reading list in urban economics. Here you go.
Bear in mind that I'm not an economist, just a lawyer; give this list whatever weight you think it deserves with that caveat. But the subject has a fairly well-defined core. I think this is a good introduction to that core.
A basic (and I think standard) elementary textbook on urban economics is this by Arthur O'Sullivan. However, I like Brendan O'Flaherty's City Economics better. It covers the standard topics and is lively and entertaining while still presenting some of the basic mathematical models for those who want to see them. There aren't many writers who can make the economics of water rationing interesting.
William Fischel's The Economics of Zoning Laws is the standard on that subject and very good. See also his Homevoter Hypothesis, which is an extended, informal essay on NIMBYism, public finance and Tiebout sorting.
Agglomeration economics and positive spillovers are central ideas in urban economics although the mechanics are still poorly understand, at least in a rigorous way. Jane Jacobs' The Economy of Cities is an insightful stab at a theory. Krugman develops a model of regional agglomerations in Development, Geography and Economic Theory, which is quite readable for something written by an economist. Both the Jacobs and Krugman books have the additional virtue of being cheap.
Ed Glaeser is the best-known urban economist today. Anyone who writes about this stuff should read The Triumph of the City, which, besides being a celebration of cities, is a popular introduction to the central ideas of urban economics. He's posted his research papers spanning the last 20 years here. They are heavily and rigorously empirical, which is a good thing. They contain some technical stuff which might put off the mathematically unsophisticated but each has a narrative introduction that summarizes the key result. They're definitely worth browsing.
For the mathematically sophisticated, Cities, Agglomeration and Spatial Equilibrium is Glaeser's systematic survey of urban economics models. The math is technical. I struggle with it, to be honest, and I know more math than the average American. I'm torn over these formal models. On the one hand, they often do a poor job of capturing the dynamic processes that shape cities. On the other hand, they often do a good job of capturing the dynamic processes that shape cities. They also force one to think clearly about the incentives property owners and cities face.
For real estate finance, which is arguably a subset of urban economics and worth knowing something about in any event, pick a random book at your local Barnes & Noble or wherever.
For blogs on urban economics, the pickings are slim. I'm distinguishing here between blogs about urban economics specifically and urbanist or new urbanist or Streetsblog-type or demographics-oriented blogs. There are oodles of the latter but they are rarely economics oriented. Ryan Avent's is the best of the former, but he got a gig at Free Exchange and has wandered off into the macroeconomics wilderness. He still occasionally puts up posts on his personal blog, though, and his archives are excellent reading. Yglesias writes about urban economics too. I share their policy preferences pretty much down the line. They are progressives, which in the land-use context mostly means allowing the market to supply more housing and less parking in central cities and ending market-distorting subsidies for suburban development. (Gratuitous editorial: Many of their commenters are inegalitarian, statist, anti-supply types who fancy themselves progressive. It is not progressive to oppose subsidies to suburban development while simultaneously ginning up pretexts to oppose vastly greater supply in the urban core.)
Matthew Kahn is a serious economist and the best writer on the intersection of environmental and urban economics. Richard Green, Richard Florida and Aaron Renn are worth reading. Market Urbanism is what you'd guess and also worth reading.
There are other bloggers who know a lot of urban economics and could be enlightening but in my view are too dogmatic to list here.