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Communities & Development

Books cover making communities more sustainable, sustainable land use, land use planning, smart growth, new urbanism, growth management, regional planning, planning land use and transportation together, land use law, ranchland and farmland protection, and related topics.

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Featured Books

Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods. By Dan Chiras & Dave Wann. Practical ideas for creating more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. This book is about remaking suburban and urban neighborhoods to serve people better and to reduce human impact on the environment. It shows how suburbs fail to meet many peoples' needs, then describes how existing neighborhoods can be transformed, offering cohousing and new urbanist communities as examples. More… | Dan Chiras EcoSpeakers Info >> | Dave Wann EcoSpeakers Info >>

The Key to Sustainable Cities. By Gwendolyn Hallsmith. Most of the world’s population now live in cities, but despite wide agreement on the core values of sustainable societies, municipalities are so busy solving current problems that they don’t have the time or resources to plan effective action for sustainability. This book uses the principles of system dynamics to demonstrate how today’s problems were yesterday’s solutions. It points to a new approach to city planning, that builds on assets as a starting point for cities to develop healthy social, governance, economic, and environmental systems. More... | Gwendolyn Hallsmith EcoSpeakers Info >>

Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health And Money. By Joel Hirschhorn. A hard-hitting book with a new market approach for replacing sprawl with Healthy Places. It explains why America is balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff, teetering as it looks at two distinct futures: one in which citizens are empowered as consumers and voters to get real housing, community and transportation choices to lead healthier, physically active lives, and another fraught with obesity, exclusion, worsening traffic, and disappearing greenspace. Learn how to fight corrupt sprawl politics, identify sprawl shills, and kill sprawl before it kills you. More... | Joel Hirschhorn EcoSpeakers Info >>

Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature. By Richard Register. Describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. This visionary book by the leader of the ecocity movement outlines a plan for developing existing cities in a way that lessens their destructive impact on the environment and increases their support of healthy social interaction. Ecocities is both a philosophical discussion and a call to arms by an activist who has worked for decades to restore and transform blighted urban areas. More... | Richard Register EcoSpeakers Info >>

The Restoration Economy. By Storm Cunningham. Examines the previously underappreciated trillion dollar global industries that are revitalizing our natural and built environments. This book is an entertaining blend of business, science, and economics. It documents the historic shift from new development to restorative development that defines 21st Century commerce and government. Written for a broad rage of people, including strategists, community planners, architects, engineers, ecologists, and investors. More... | Storm Cunningham EcoSpeakers Info >>

More Books

Building Without Borders: Sustainable Construction for the Global Village. By Joseph E. Kennedy. Describes pioneering efforts to create sustainable shelter for the billions currently under-housed. It surveys projects around the world that are housing the homeless (without destroying natural habitats to do so) by drawing upon local traditions such as bamboo, straw bale and earthen construction. More... | Joseph E. Kennedy EcoSpeakers Info >>

City Making in Paradise: Nine Decisions That Saved Greater Vancouver's Livability. By Mike Harcourt and Ken Cameron. Vancouver is recognized internationally as one of the best places to live. It achieved that reputation by breaking rules and forging its own brand of North American urbanism. This book details the nine most important decisions made in the Greater Vancouver region since the 1940s. It reveals the political machinations, the ideological struggles and the personal commitment that lay behind each one. By tracing today’s successes back to their roots, the authors illustrate how cities are the result of the choices made by leaders, activists and citizens. More... | Mike Harcourt EcoSpeakers Info >>

Dancing With the Tiger - Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step. By Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare. Presents the stories of individuals, teams and organizations learning about change and sustainability, and then acting on that learning. Case studies include some of the most successful companies and communities in North America. More... | Brian Nattrass EcoSpeakers Info >>

Deep Design. By David Wann. Explores a new way of thinking about design, one that asks "What is our ultimate goal?" before the first step has been taken. "Deep designs" meet the criteria of renewability, recyclability, and nontoxicity. More... | David Wann EcoSpeakers Info >>

Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future. By Richard Register. Offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere and a vision of what the future could be like with a fair amount of advance planning. More... | Richard Register EcoSpeakers Info >>

Ecological Diversity in Sustainable Development: The Vital and Forgotten Dimension. By Chris Maser. Apart from the beauty diversity brings to our lives, it is also absolutely necessary to the sustainability of life itself. Planners tend to ignore ecological diversity because they don't understand it. This book tackles the problems of how we can maintain sustainable diversity in both the Earth's ecosystems and in our cultural systems. More… | Chris Maser EcoSpeakers Info >>

Evaluating Sustainable Development: Giving People a Voice in Their Destiny. By Chris Maser and Okechukwu Ukaga. Presents principles and tools for participatory evaluation of sustainable development. Participatory evaluation empowers anyone impacted by a proposal to determine both what is to be evaluated and how it is to be evaluated. Acknowledging that the specific concepts, challenges, opportunities, and circumstances surrounding sustainable development differ significantly from one place or group to another, the book provides an adaptable framework for developing an evaluation plan as well as the tools for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting data. More… | Chris Maser EcoSpeakers Info >>

Land-Use Planning for Sustainable Development. By Chris Maser and Jane Silberstein. Reviews current land use practices from historical, constitutional, economic, ecological, and societal perspectives. Analyzes the results of these practices and suggests alternative methods for guiding, directing, and controlling the ways in which we modify the landscape. More... | Chris Maser EcoSpeakers Info >>

Reinventing Community: Stories from the Walkways of Cohousing. By David Wann. Describes life in cohousing from the perspective of people who actually live in these communities. Includes accounts of the difficulties encountered during development and relates insights on living and growing with cohousing. More… | David Wann EcoSpeakers Info >>

Reuniting Economy and Ecology in Sustainable Development. By Chris Maser and Charles R. Beaton. Explains why dividing ecology and economy conceptually will destroy society as we know it. The link between economics and ecology and the immense potential of that connection to influence the process of change within communities is the focus of this book. More… | Chris Maser EcoSpeakers Info >>

Road to Ruin: An Introduction to Sprawl and How to Cure It. By Dom Nozzi. Provides an easy-to-follow introduction to sprawl's causes and offers common-sense solutions. America has been obsessed with a desire to improve conditions for cars, not people, primarily through enormous subsidies for road widening and construction of free parking. Design principles encouraging walking, bicycling, and mass transit in conjunction with automobile travel are essential to creating livable cities. More… | Dom Nozzi EcoSpeakers Info >>

Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. By Chris Maser. Explores the seldom-considered philosophical basis behind the models and methods of leadership, pointing the way to the essential qualities it takes to establish a shared vision of community life. This book explores numerous issues and considerations to cultivate well-rounded leadership and provide a more substantive blueprint for local activism. More… | Chris Maser EcoSpeakers Info >>

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