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This Is Smart Growth Showcases Development at its Best
Many people want to know what smart growth looks like. This Is Smart Growth, a publication from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and the Smart Growth Network, illustrates and explains smart growth concepts and outcomes. This full-color booklet describes how, when done well, development can help create more economic opportunities, build great places where people want to live and visit, preserve the qualities people love about their communities, and protect environmental resources.
21st Century Land Development Code
In 21st Century Land Development Code from APA Planners Press, two of the nation's leading experts in land-use law and planning provide a comprehensive guide to drafting and updating land-use regulations.
A Citizen’s Guide to Participating in Florida’s Growth Management Process
1000 Friends of Florida have produced A Citizen’s Guide to Participating in Florida’s Growth Management Process, a handbook that provides a brief overview of the Florida's Growth Management Act, and then focuses on how citizens can become effective advocates for better planning in their communities.
A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Historic Places
A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Historic Places from the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a primer that reviews the five cardinal land use principles that make up effective historic preservation ordinances, and includes the historic background of historic preservation.
A Community Guide to Saving Older Schools
National Trust for Historic Preservation. 2000. This booklet demonstrates through case studies that older school buildings can successfully adapt to new technology and the latest educational mandates.
A Guide for Property Owners Returning to New Orleans
The National Trust for Historic Preservation offers this two-page guide for property owners returning to New Orleans. This overview is designed as an initial guide in helping property owners minimize structural and cosmetic flood damage.
A Guide to Aging in Place
The National Aging in Place Council (NAICP) has create an online Guide to Aging in Place. This resource, indexed by topic, provides detailed information about things to consider if you want to remain living independently in your own home throughout retirement.
A Guide to Smart Growth and Cultural Resource Planning
A Guide to Smart Growth and Cultural Resource Planning, prepared by the Wisconsin Historical Society's Division of Historic Preservation, is now available.
A Guide to Tax-Advantaged Rehabilitation 2009
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is updating its A Guide to Tax-Advantaged Rehabilitation, featuring the latest information on the historic rehabilitation tax credit in an easy question-and-answer format. Sample worksheets help readers estimate the value of the credit for their projects.
A Guide to Transportation Enhancements -- Call for Submissions
The National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse (NTEC) is currently seeking submissions to include in A Guide to Transportation Enhancements. The guide utilizes case studies to examine transportation enhancements, and is NTEC's most popular publication.
A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects
Written by pioneering attorneys in the emerging fields of urbanism and green building, A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects offers you practical solutions for legal issues you may face in planning, zoning, developing, and operating such communities.
A Preservationist's Guide to the Federal Transportation Enhancement Provision
The second edition of Building on the Past, Traveling to the Future: A Preservationist's Guide to the Federal Transportation Enhancement Provision is now available from the Federal Highway Administration and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This booklet answers questions about Transportation Enhancement activities and illustrates the role TE funding can play in revitalizing communities, preserving historic resources, and stimulating cultural tourism. It also offers case studies of successful projects from across the United States.
A Reporter’s Resource and Media Guide to Growth in CA
Unprecedented population pressures throughout California are threatening the state’s natural values and pristine landscapes. The threat is largely the result of land use policies that favor low-density development over carefully planned growth within existing urban boundaries.
A Residents' Guide to Creating Safe and Walkable Communities
People need walkable communities where sidewalks, trails, and street crossings are safe, accessible, and comfortable for people of all ability levels. A Residents' Guide to Creating Safe and Walkable Communities from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, provides examples from communities that are working to improve pedestrian safety. It includes information, ideas, and resources to help residents learn about issues that affect walking conditions; find ways to address or prevent these problems; and promote pedestrian safety.
A Smart Growth Reader
A Smart Growth Reader, prepared by the American Planning Association (APA), is designed as an aid to understanding the various elements that make up Smart Growth. This on-line publication draws on articles that have appeared in APA publications over the past two years, and is intended as a rich compendium of perspectives on the smart growth.
A Strategy for Saving Rhode Island from Sprawl and Urban Decay
This briefing book from Grow Smart Rhode Island provides background information about issues that are critical for the state’s healthy economic and physical development, quality of life, and social well-being.
Achieving Equity and Inclusion in America
PolicyLink has developed Achieving Equity and Inclusion in America: Policy Principles for the Obama Administration and New Congress, a framework of principles that can guide federal decision-making to maximize the return on national investment for all Americans, especially low-income people and communities of color. These principles reflect the knowledge and experience PolicyLink has developed through its decade-long partnership with local leaders working to foster economic and social inclusion in communities across America.
Achieving Smart Growth in New Hampshire
The New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning (OEP) has produced a report and website, Achieving Smart Growth in New Hampshire. This project documents how New Hampshire is changing and highlights some positive examples of development and conservation throughout the state.
Active Design Guidelines
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, architects and urban reformers helped to defeat infectious diseases, such as cholera and tuberculosis, by improving design of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, clean water systems and parks. In the 21st century, designers can again play a crucial role in combating the most rapidly growing public health epidemics of our time: obesity and its impact on related chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. Today, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are second only to tobacco use as the main causes of premature death in the United States. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.
The Active Design Guidelines provides architects and urban designers with a manual of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.
The Guidelines includes:
- Urban design strategies for creating neighborhoods, streets and outdoor spaces that encourage walking, bicycling and active transportation and recreation.
- Building design strategies for promoting active living where we work, live and play—for example, through the placement and design of stairs, elevators and indoor and outdoor spaces.
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Discussion of synergies between active design and sustainable design initiatives such as LEED and PlaNYC.
The Active Design Guidelines was developed through a partnership of the New York City departments of Design and Construction, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation, City Planning and the Office of Management and Budget, working with leading architectural and planning academics, and with assistance from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter. Other City agencies that contributed to the Guidelines include the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Department of Buildings, Department of Parks and Recreation, School Construction Authority, Housing Preservation and Development and the Department for the Aging.
Aesthetics, Community Character, and the Law
Scenic America/APA.2000. This publication helps land-use planners and citizens understand the law of aesthetics and the legal tools available to help their communities maintain their special features and sense of place.
AIA 50to50
50to50 from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a how-to resource intended to assist architects and the construction industry in moving toward the AIA's public goal of a minimum 50 percent reduction of fossil fuel consumption in buildings by 2010 and carbon neutrality by 2030.
An Economic Development Toolbox
An Economic Development Toolbox from the American Planning Association is a practical guide to economic development that will help local governments analyze their economies and incorporate economic goals into comprehensive plans. It explains the forces that shape local economies and shows officials and planners how they can influence those factors by encouraging the development of infrastructure and promoting regional cooperation in creating jobs.
Better Models for Commercial Development
Better Models for Commercial Development is a one-of-a-kind publication from The Conservation Fund
that shows how communities can improve the design and siting of new commercial development.
Better Models for Development in California
Better Models for Development in California is a one of
a kind publication for creating, maintaining and enhancing livable communities in California.
Better Models for Development on the Eastern Shore
Better Models for Development on the Eastern Shore is a unique publication for improving the design and siting of new commercial development on the Eastern Shore. This booklet,
co-published with the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy was written for elected officials, planning commissioners, developers and interested citizens on the Delmarva Peninsula. Better Models shows how new commercial development can be made more attractive, more efficient and more profitable.
Bringing Buildings Back
Abandoned properties are a plague across the United States, from rust belt cities like Detroit and Buffalo to small towns like Lima, Ohio, and Waterloo, Iowa. Even in Sunbelt cities such as Houston and Las Vegas, abandonment is a major problem, as investment flows to the periphery, leaving the older, inner neighborhoods behind. In Bringing Buildings Back, author Alan Mallach provides policymakers and practitioners with the first in-depth guide to understanding and dealing with the many ramifications that this issue holds for the future of our older cities.
Brownfields Resource Guide for Rural and Small Communities
Published by the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) Research Foundation under a cooperative agreement with EPA, Brownfields Resource Guide for Rural and Small Communities is a guide that provides a range of resources for brownfields efforts.
Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies
In response to unprecedented growth in the Northern Rockies, the Sonoran Institute launched an innovative effort to guide a vision for development that reflects and protects the unique natural and architectural assets of the West. Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies (BBNR) promotes this alternative vision for growth, highlighting what good development looks like in the West. It documents and celebrates new developments in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho that embody this vision.
Building Healthy, High Performance Schools
Building Healthy, High Performance Schools: A Review of Selected State and School District Initiatives illustrates policies, programs, and practices to incorporate a high-performance approach in school planning, design, and construction.
Building Vibrant Sierra Communities
Building Vibrant Communities: A Commercial and Mixed Use Handbook from the Sierra Business Council (SBC) builds on the vision set forth in the SBC's Planning for Prosperity. Historic downtowns and neighborhoods have been the social, cultural, and economic centers of Sierra communities for over a hundred years. These compact, pedestrian-friendly towns are unique to our region and have enduring value. The Sierra Business Council believes they provide an excellent model for how to plan and enhance future development while we preserve what is best from our past.
Caring for Your Historic Buildings
Technical Preservation Services (TPS) helps home owners, preservation professionals, organizations, and government agencies by publishing printed pamphlets and books -- easy-to-read guidance on preserving, rehabilitating and restoring historic buildings.
Cascadia Scorecard
Northwest Environment Watch (NEW) offers the Cascadia Scorecard, a new gauge of regional progress that monitors seven key trends--health, economy, population, energy, sprawl, forests, and pollution--that are profoundly shaping the region's future.
Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl
Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 1999. In this book Richard Moe presents cases of communities that have used preservation as a tool to fight decay and sprawl to become vibrant places, making the case that historic preservation is good for America's communities.
Check Your Success: A Guide to Developing Indicators for Community-Based Environmental Projects
Check Your Success is a guide to developing indicators for community-based environmental projects. It's designed for groups that are working on environmental protection at a community level, and will boost efforts to improve your community by helping you develop indicators to measure your success. It also will show you how your group can move beyond a narrow focus and start thinking about how your activities can be used to address the connections between the environment, economy and society.
Children and Nature Network Community Action Guide
The Children and Nature Network (C&NN) was created to encourage and support people and organizations working toward the goal of reconnecting children and nature. C&NN provides a critical link between researchers, individuals, educators, organizations, businesses and government agencies dedicated to children's health and well-being.
Choosing Our Community's Future
Smart Growth America has released Choosing Our Community's Future, a guidebook developed to assist communities in shaping the growth and development of their neighborhoods, towns and regions.
Cities Back from the Edge: New Life from Downtown
New York. John Wiley& Sons/Preservation Press, 1998. This book looks at cities that have ''come alive'' with basic policy changes such as curbside parking, walkable sidewalks, neighborhood shopping and more to sustain growth into the 21st century.
Citizen Surveys for Local Governments
Citizen Surveys for Local Government: A Comprehensive Guide to Making Them Matter from ICMA is a 2009 book that shows how to put your citizen survey results to work for you, to improve performance and efficiency.
City Parks: When There's Nothing to Conserve -- Create!
When There's Nothing to Conserve -- Create! is a publication from the Trust for Public Lands (TPL) that describes how, from Boston to San Francisco, successful parks have been created out of former factories, home sites, office buildings, railyards, parking lots, landfills, and even highways.
Codifying New Urbanism
Codifying New Urbanism describes New Urbanist essentials, the steps to putting New Urbanism to work in your community, and the successes of 12 communities who have followed the approaches described in the report.
Communities by Design
From the website: Communities by Design is the first in a series of AIA publications addressing livable communities from the architect's point of view. It is meant to stake out the AIA's position and get people to think of architects as integral to livability issues.
Community Culture and the Environment: A Guide to Understanding a Sense of Place
This Environmental Protection Agency guide is a technical document designed to help environmental professionals engage human communities in the processes of
creating, implementing, and sustaining environmental protection
efforts. It is based on elements of social science theory and
methodology (e.g., anthropology, cultural geography, political
science, economics, and sociology) that are relevant to defining and
understanding the connections between community life and
environmental issues.
Community Design Assessment: A Citizens’ Planning Tool
The Community Design Assessment: A Citizens’ Planning Guide by Kennedy Smith and Leslie Tucker provides a step-by-step process for evaluating the design and visual impact of buildings and corporate graphics in your community in order to guide decisions about future development.
Community Developer's Guide to Improving Schools in Revitalizing Neighborhoods
Community Developer's Guide to Improving Schools in Revitalizing Neighborhoods is a report from Enterprise that shows community developers how to work with school systems to improve individual schools.
Community Development: A Guide for Grantmakers on Fostering Better Outcomes through Good Process
Community Development is a guide for funders on the valuable role of collaborative process in community development initiatives. It draws from the lessons learned by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation during twenty years of funding conflict resolution, collaboration, and civic engagement.
Community Engagement Guide
The Community Engagement Guide from KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Ohio's largest public education philanthropy, is an essential resource for community and school change efforts.
Community Jobs in the Green Economy
Community Jobs in the Green Economy, a collaborative effort between the Apollo Alliance and Urban Habitat, emphasizes the potential of the ''green economy'' to generate quality jobs in the nation's low-income communities and communities of color.
Community Rules: A New England Guide to Smart Growth Strategies
Written by the Vermont Forum on Sprawl and the Conservation Law Foundation, Community Rules is a guidebook for local planners, concerned citizens, and others who want to achieve smart growth in their communities through better planning, zoning, and permitting.
Comprehensive Guide to Sustainable Municipal Planning
The Alberta Urban Municipalities Association has produced a Municipal Sustainability Planning Guide to help communities proactively address current challenges and move towards a sustainable future where a strong economy and participative governance models protect ecological integrity and contribute to a vibrant cultural scene and strong social cohesion.
Conservation Finance Handbook
Conservation Finance Handbook is a how-to guide that explains the complex process of securing federal, state, and private conservation funds and -- most importantly -- researching, designing, and passing a local, voter-approved conservation finance measure.
Conservation Options for Connecticut Farmland
This guide describes farmland protection options and programs available in Connecticut and answers some frequently asked questions about agricultural conservation easements.
Creating a Regulatory Blueprint for Healthy Community Design
ICMA's consumer guide, Creating a Regulatory Blueprint for Healthy Community Design, is a road map for local government officials and their staff as they consider reforming zoning and development codes to encourage more physical activity in their areas.
Creating a Sense of Place: A Design Guide
Creating a Sense of Place: A Design Guide forms the third in a series of publications produced by Britain's Affordable Rural Housing Initiative, begun in 2003. It is a collaboration between two charitable organizations: Business in the Community and the Foundation for the Built Environment.
Creating Successful Communities: A New Housing Paradigm
The 16-page brochure from the National Multi Housing Council takes on the conventional wisdom about housing preferences and is recommended for use with local planning and zoning boards or to support state and local advocacy efforts.
Design and Development: Infill Housing Compatible with Historic Neighborhoods
National Trust for Historic Preservation. 1989, revised 1998. Explores the design and development processes behind compatible infill housing with strategies for new housing on vacant lots.
Design Guidelines to Enhance Community Appearance and Protect Natural Resources
Design Guidelines to Enhance Community Appearance and Protect Natural Resources is a guidebook for citizens, decision-makers, and youth from Michigan Technological University that compares traditional development to a more visually appealing approach that also protects natural and cultural resources. Tools to accomplish the recommended approach are suggested.
Directory of Federal Programs for Environmentally-Related Education
The Directory of Federal Grant-Making Programs for Environmentally-Related Education, published by Campaign for Environmental Literacy (CEL), is designed to help meet the need of the environmental education community for easily accessible and reasonably comprehensive information about federal funding programs. It also helps enable the Campaign for Environmental Literacy to track and analyze government grant-making trends, and to provide this information to Members of Congress.
Disaster Planning for Florida's Historic Resources
1000 Friends of Florida has produced the guidebook Disaster Planning for Florida's Historic Resources to help communities better prepare for catastrophic damage to their landmark buildings and structures, historic districts, and archaeological sites -- resources that embody a community's distinct heritage and are a source of pride for area residents.
Discovering Community Power
Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization's Capacity is a community-building workbook from the Asset-Based Community Development Institute (ABCD Institute) School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.
Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader’s Guide
The Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader’s Guide has been updated by author Donovan D. Rypkema in this 2005 edition. This book is an essential reference for any preservationist faced with convincing government officials, developers, property owners, business and community leaders, or his or her own neighbors that preservation strategies can make good economic sense.
Environmental Planning Handbook
In The Environmental Planning Handbook, Tom and Katherine Daniels clarify complex environmental issues, examine current sustainability efforts, and offer step-by-step guidance for local governments to incorporate sustainable environmental quality into local and regional comprehensive planning.
EPA's Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Model
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Model is a handbook for all stakeholders to understand how equitable development and local environmental and/or public health issues can be addressed through the Collaborative Problem-Solving (CPS) Model.
Establishing and Operating an Easement Program to Protect Historic Resources
Preservation Books, the publishing arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has published a new edition of Establishing and Operating an Easement Program to Protect Historic Resources, the popular booklet first released in 1980.
Evaluating Scenic Resources
Scenic America.1996. This guide describes a methodology for identifying scenic areas worthy of preservation.
Four Ways to Genuine Prosperity
New Jersey Future has developed the Four Ways to Genuine Prosperity policy guide for state leaders committed to New Jersey's long-term prosperity. Featuring nearly two years worth of research and policy analysis, the guide also reflects the expertise and advice of many contributors and financial supporters.
Getting Started: A Guide for Creating School Gardens as Outdoor Classrooms
Getting Started is a free 51-page guide designed and published by the Center for Ecoliteracy in collaboration with Life Lab Science Program, a national leader in garden-based education.
Getting the Growth You Want: A Citizens Guide to Subdivisions and Smart Growth
Getting the Growth You Want: A Citizens Guide to Subdivisions and Smart Growth is the first of a two-part series from the Montana Smart Growth Coalition and the Great Yellowstone Coalition designed to help communities approve good subdivisions and deny bad ones.
Getting to Smart Growth
This popular, 100-page primer from the ongoing series by ICMA and the Smart Growth Network describes concrete techniques of putting the ten smart growth principles into practice. The policies and guidelines presented in this primer have proven successful in communities across the United States, and range from formal legislative or regulatory efforts to informal approaches, plans, and programs.
Getting to Smart Growth II
Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for Implementation is the newest primer
in the ongoing series from the Smart Growth Network and
ICMA, and follows on the heels of the extremely popular first volume of
Getting to Smart Growth. The publication serves as a road map for states
and communities that have recognized the need for smart growth but are
unclear on how to achieve it. Spanish language version now available!
Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Policies for Implementation (Spanish Version)
Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Polices for Implementation has been made accessible for Spanish readers and speakers. The document has been translated in its entirety, complete with all policies and practice tips.
Getting to Smart Growth: Puerto Rico
Getting to Smart Growth has been adapted for Puerto Rico. Hacia el desarrollo inteligente: 10 principios y 100 estrategias para Puerto Rico is an adaptation of the popular, 100-page primer from the ongoing series by ICMA and the Smart Growth Network.
GIS and Brownfields
International City/County Management Association (ICMA) has produced a brochure that provides an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS) products and their importance in the brownfields redevelopment systems.
Going Comprehensive -- Guidebook on Comprehensive Community Development
In Going Comprehensive, a guidebook on comprehensive community development from the Local Initiatives Support Corp., expert practitioners Anita Miller and Tom Burns examine the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program that produced one of America's most remarkable urban turnaround stories -- New York's once-stricken South Bronx.
Great Neighborhoods: How to Bring them Home
The 1000 Friends Great Neighborhoods Project is intended to help teach the residents and developers in Wisconsin about the social, environmental and economic benefits of building compact, mixed-use, aesthetically appealing neighborhoods; and to offer professional and layperson guidance for how to advocate for and create these neighborhoods.
Green Government Initiative Publications
NACo's Green Government Initiative Publications are free resources for local governments on all things green, including energy, air quality, transportation, water quality, land use, purchasing and recycling. Includes fact sheets, guidebooks, and case studies of Green Initiatives from throughout the country.
Green Trails Guidebook
The Green Trails guidebook, published by Portland, Oregon's Metro organization, provides a comprehensive source of information about planning, construction and maintenance of environmentally friendly or ''green trails'' -- trails that avoid or minimize impacts to water resources and fish and wildlife habitat.
Greening Parking Lots
The City of Toronto's draft Design Guidelines for 'Greening' Surface Parking Lots provide specific strategies and measures which developers, designers and reviewers of surface parking lots can apply to help meet Official Plan policies and environmental performance targets of the Toronto Green Development Standard.
Growing Smarter, Living Healthier: Age-Friendly Neighborhood Design Guidebook
Growing Smarter, Living Healthier is a guidebook from the U.S. EPA intended for older adults who are interested in how our communities work and how we might help them become more ''age-friendly.''
Guide to Complete Streets Campaigns (2006)
The Thunderhead Alliance has completed the second edition of the Guide to Complete Streets Campaigns. This guide is a roadmap to winning a complete streets policy in your jurisdiction.
Guide to Greener Living
This web resource includes tips on how to save energy at home, work, and on the road.
Guide to Neighborhood Placemaking in Chicago
Guide to Placemaking in Chicago provides basic instruction on Placemaking at the local level and highlights specific examples of citizen-led Placemaking that has already led to sweeping improvements in Chicago neighborhoods. The book encourages citizen action and provides a framework to engage local businesses and government in helping create positive change.
Guiding Growth and Development in Georgia Handbook
Georgia's land use laws, together with innovative planning and fresh approaches to community engagement, provide the tools needed to build strong communities that are sustainable both economically and environmentally. Guiding Growth and Development in Georgia: A Handbook on Planning and Land Use Law and Practices was created by the Livable Communities Coalition for elected officials and interested citizens. This guide is intended to provide an overview of those planning tools and the laws, terms, and concepts essential for using them wisely.
Healthy Kids Healthy Communities
The Local Government Commission (LGC) offers Healthy Kids Healthy Communities, a brochure that provides examples of cities, counties and school districts working together to address childhood obesity. It offers ideas and guidance that will help local government officials leverage community resources and identify opportunities for collaboration, and also provides resources and references to assist policy-makers in developing and implementing new initiatives.
High Performance School Buildings Resource and Strategy Guide
The second edition of this nationally vetted and easy-to-read guidebook describes the characteristics and benefits of high-performance school buildings and details the process to help school planners ask the right questions of their design professionals to ensure the best school design possible.
Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism
Preserving America is a how-to guide to promote historic preservation and tourism from the Homes & Communities Division of Housing and Urban Development. This guide is intended to help state and local governments access funding through the Department's Community Development Block Grant program as a vehicle for historic preservation consistent with the national objectives of the program.
Historic Schools Day
Historic Schools Day is April 24, 2004. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, with Geraldine Hastings, the 2003-2004 National Secondary Social Studies Teacher of the Year, has prepared a Teacher's Resource Guide to help use your school building as a starting point for a lesson plan in history and social studies.
Housing and Mortgages for People with Disabilities
Housing & Mortgages for People with Disabilities, a guide from Mortgageloan.com, was been created to help individuals living with disabilities, and their family members, in the process of buying a home of their own.
How Architects Can Become Advocates for Livable Communities
How Architects Can Become Advocates for Livable Communities is the new advocacy guide from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) offering architects the tools they will need to advocate for livable communities.
How to Create a Vibrant Waterfront
This resource from the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) offers 19 tips on how to create a vibrant waterfront, drawing on success stories from around the world.
How to Develop a Pedestrian Safety Action Plan
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) have produced this guidebook to help state and local officials address pedestrian safety issues.
How To Turn a Place Around: A Handbook for Creating Successful Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces, 2000. A user-friendly and common sense guide for everyone from community residents to mayors on how to create successful places. The community-based and ''place oriented'' process outlined in this book is organized around the eleven basic principles of creating successful public spaces along with methods that anyone can use to evaluate a space.
Illinois Resource Guide for Healthy, High Performance Schools
The Illinois Healthy Schools Campaign has partnered with the Illinois Capital Development Board to create a Healthy and High Performing School Building Taskforce. The taskforce has produced this guidebook to identify best practices and develop a school specific guidance document for healthy and energy efficient construction for Illinois schools.
Improving Conditions for Bicycling and Walking
A best practices report that provides information on pedestrian and bicycle projects that have been recognized for increasing walking and bicycling and improving user safety in communities across the US.
Increasing Physical Activity Through Community Design
Increasing Physical Activity Through Community Design focuses on how to make communities more bicycle-friendly and walkable.
International Making Cities Livable Image Sets
Image Sets from International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) are groups of photos that illustrate essential features of livable cities, selected from the IMCL Council's extensive image library.
Is Your City a Great City?
The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) offers a checklist on its website that provides benchmarks of a Great City.
Land Bank Authorities
Land Bank Authorities: A Guide for the Creation and Operation of Local Land Banks from Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) explores the development of land banks in St. Louis, Cleveland, Louisville, Atlanta, and Genesee County, Mich., addressing the conditions, history, and legal structures of each.
Landscape Rating System
The Sustainable Sites Initiative has released the nation's first rating system for the design, construction and maintenance of sustainable landscapes, with or without buildings. A partnership of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanic Garden, the Initiative's rating system represents four years of work by dozens of the country's leading sustainability experts, scientists and design professionals, as well as public input from hundreds of individuals and dozens of organizations to create this essential missing link in green design.
The rating system works on a 250-point scale, with levels of achievement for obtaining 40, 50, 60 or 80 percent of available points, recognized with one through four stars, respectively. If prerequisites are met, points are awarded through the 51 credits covering areas such as the use of greenfields, brownfields or greyfields; materials; soils and vegetation; construction and maintenance. These credits can apply to projects ranging from corporate campuses, transportation corridors, public parks and single-family residences. The rating system is part of two new reports issued from the Initiative, The Case for Sustainable Landscapes and Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009, both available for download at www.sustainablesites.org.
To test the rating system, the Sustainable Sites Initiative opened a call for pilot projects in conjunction with the release of the rating system. Any type of designed landscape is eligible, so long as the project size is at least 2,000 square feet. The call will remain open until February 15, 2010, and the initiative will work with and oversee the projects during the two-year process. More information about the pilot projects is available at www.sustainablesites.org/pilot.
Leadership for Active Living Strategies
One of the most important issues our communities face today is a staggering increase in the rates of obesity and chronic disease. Active living offers an opportunity for leaders to address this issue and to help improve the health and vitality of our communities. The 22-page Action Strategies Booklet lists more than 25 strategies and tactics local and state governments can use to support active living.
Leading the Field 2
Leading the Field 2 from the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities’ profiles more than two dozen North American community foundations that have moved beyond grantmaking to actively help shape the future of their communities and help them to grow smarter.
Learning by Design
Learning By Design is the award-winning annual guide that showcases outstanding school and university facility design and construction projects.
LEED for Schools Second Public Comment Period Now Open
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) invites the public and USGBC members to comment on the second draft of LEED for Schools. The public comment period will be open for 15 days, starting Thursday, February 9, 2007 and continuing through Friday, February 23, 2007 at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Any member of the public is welcome to submit comments.
Livability 101
Livability 101: What Makes a Community Livable? is designed by the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Communities by Design to help public officials, and all others actively engaged in this civic dialogue, understand the basic elements of community design and take advantage of existing tools, strategies, and synergies at the policy, planning, and design levels so that their communities can reach their full potential.
Livable Communities: An Evaluation Guide
The AARP Public Policy Institute developed this evaluation guide to help residents, advocates, and local leaders identify areas of success and potential opportunities for improvement in their community.
Livable Communities@Work #1: Community Organizing
A Populist Base for Social Equity and Smart Growth
This paper, released in November 2002, is the first in a new series being published by the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. The Livable Communities@Work series will focus on the practical aspects of how we create smarter, more livable communities for all and will highlight successful strategies, explore tensions created by competing issues, and generally help spur informed debate on critical topics.
Livable Communities@Work #5: Urban Forests
Livable Communities@Work #5: Urban Forests from the Funders' Network outlines how to improve urban environments and make cities better places to live by fitting natural resources more effectively into the foundation of the city, its infrastructure.
Local Governments and Schools
Local Governments and Schools from ICMA Press is a guide that offers strategies for how local governments and schools can bring their respective planning efforts together to take a more community-oriented approach to schools and reach multiple community goals -- educational, environmental, economic, social, and fiscal.
Local Greenprinting for Growth
Local Greenprinting for Growth is now available from the Trust for Public Land. This four-volume, fully revised workbook series is a guide for communities seeking to create a greenprint conservation program.
Local Planning Handbook
The Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities area in Minnesota has produced a Local Planning Handbook to guide and support local municipalities in developing and amending their comprehensive plans.
Local Tools for Smart Growth: Practical Strategies and Techniques to Improve Our Communities
Stories, tools and lessons learned from communities thoughout the nation on how to employ planning and development policy to improve quality of life and achieve smart growth goals.
''Main Street... when a highway runs through it A Handbook for Oregon Communities''
The Main Street Handbook was created to assist local communities in their efforts to balance often competing interests: the desire for a vital, pedestrian-friendly downtown with the desire for efficient movement of through traffic.
Maintaining Community Character: How to Establish a Local Historic District
National Trust for Historic Preservation.1992,revised 2001. Proactive strategies for influencing local policy and opinions about the creation of a local historic district.
Maintaining Neighborhood Character
Many historic neighborhoods are experiencing rapid teardowns and the rebuilding of monster homes or other buildings that undermine smart growth principles. In Maintaining Neighborhood Character, a new publication from the American Planning Association and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, you can learn how communities have developed codes, guidelines, and community visioning programs that successfully link historic preservation to new development.
Malls into Mainstreets
Malls Into Mainstreets, the third installment in the Congress for the New Urbanism’s greyfield mall series, serves as a resource for developers, community leaders, property owners and planners frustrated with dead or dying shopping centers.
Maryland Safe Routes to School
The Maryland Department of Transportation's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee recently released the Maryland Safe Routes to School Guidebook. The Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene's (DHMH) Center for Preventive Health Services participated in the development of the guidebook.
Massachusetts Agency Sustainability Planning and Implementation Guide
The Massachusetts State Sustainability Planning and Implementation Guide is a comprehensive guidance document written by the State Sustainability Council in collaboration with Program staff.
Michigan Safe Routes to School Handbook
The Michigan Safe Routes to School Handbook is a comprehensive resource that will help your school start and sustain a Safe Routes to School program. The Handbook includes information on:
Minneapolis Sustainability Indicators
Produced by the City of Minneapolis, this publication list steps to creating a sustainable Minneapolis.
Model Smart Land Development Regulations
The American Planning Association's (APA's) Research Department has created 11 model Smart Growth Codes for Land Development. The model codes are ordinances and regulations that advance smart growth objectives in towns, cities, and counties. This project goes well beyond promoting the concepts of smart growth and moves into fundamental repair of the regulatory system.
Montana's Smart Growth Coalition Checklist
The Montana Smart Growth Coalition has created a quantitative checklist of criteria to determine if a development project is truly smart growth and deserves MSGC's support during permitting and marketing. A developer may use an MSGC endorsement for marketing purposes after the development is half built out.
New Life for White Elephants: Adapting Historic Buildings for New Uses
National Trust for Historic Preservation. 1996. Learn about projects around the country that were once seen as white elephants and are now examples of successful renovation and reuse.
No Student Left Indoors
No Student Left Indoors is your opportunity to learn and teach about our planet by helping your students to create a field guide to your schoolyard. Whether you're a nature buff or nature-phobe, a literary genius or writing impaired, artistically talented or one who can't draw a straight line with a ruler, and teaching gift or challenged students in an urban, suburban, or rural school -- you'll wonder why you didn't think of this before.
O, Say Can You See: A Visual Awareness Tool Kit for Communities
Scenic America.1999. This collection of visual assessment exercises helps community members to open their eyes, assess local visual assets and think about how to preserve and enhance them.
One Future, Different Paths
The UK Government and Devolved Administrations has launched their new Strategic Framework, One Future -- Different Paths. This was launched in conjunction with the UK Government's new strategy for sustainable development, Securing the Future.
Overcoming Obstacles to Smart Growth Through Code Reform
The Local Government Commission’s Smart Growth Zoning Codes: A Resource Guide is intended to help local officials improve community livability through code reform.
Pedestrian Policies and Design Guidelines
The Pedestrian Area Policies and Design Guidelines, produced by the The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), a Council of Governments (COG) that serves as the regional agency for the metropolitan Phoenix area, are intended to provide a source of information and design assistance to support walking as an alternative transportation mode.
Pennsylvania Rail-Trail Guide
Rails to Trails Conservancy has released the 9th Edition of its Pennsylvania Rails-Trails Guidebook. The 2004 edition provides all the details necessary to enjoy more than 1,200 miles of rail-trail in the Keystone State.
PLACEmaking Guidebook
PLACEmaking, published annually in England by RUDI Ltd. (Resource for Urban Design Information) with the Academy of Urbanism, is a guidebook that presents a series of contemporary place-making examples and identifies key issues for designers, planners, and developers alike.
Placemaking: Tools for Community Action
This guide provides a starter kit for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues, alone or in combination.
Planning for a Disaster-Resistant Community
This workbook from the Planning for a Disaster-Resistant Community AICP Workshop at the 2005 American Planning Association's (APA) National Planning Conference contains information to help you learn about hazards and how they affect communities and how risk assessment is the fact base for mitigation planning.
Planning for an Agricultural Future: A Guide for North Carolina Farmers and Local Governments
Planning for an Agricultural Future: A Guide for North Carolina Farmers and Local Governments from the American Farmland Trust mixes general discussion of existing tools with specific examples from communities around the state that have developed innovative ways to support their agricultural sector.
Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning
The American Planning Association (APA) offers a Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning, which provides a vision and suggests ways for planners to become engaged in community and regional food planning.
Priorities for a Healthful Illinois
The Illinois Environmental Council has released Priorities for a Healthful Illinois: 2009 Illinois Environmental Briefing Book, a policy agenda to address five critical environmental issues in Illinois that will also help the state rebuild its ailing economy.
Promoting Active Communities Resource Guide
Promoting Active Communities (PAC) has distilled many policy guidelines to help create a more active community and posted them as a resource guide on their website.
Promoting Active Living Communities
This guide is designed to help you use communication tools to sell your community on the value of active living.
Protecting Florida's Springs
Protecting Florida's Springs: Land Use Planning Strategies and Best Management Practices is the award-winning, hands-on protection guide from 1000 Friends of Florida that addresses the problems faced at Florida's freshwater springs.
Public Markets and Community Revitalization
Project for Public Spaces, Inc., and the Urban Land Institute, 1994. This book is meant to encourage people concerned about local economic development, urban and regional planning, and the vitality of cities and nearby agriculture to take an informed look at creating new public markets or expanding their cities' existing markets or market programs.
Purchasing Power: Harnessing Institutional Procurement for People and the Planet
Nearly every institutional purchase, from office paper to buildings, entails hidden costs for the natural environment and the world's people. Shifting just a portion of that spending away from harmful goods and services to more environmentally friendly alternatives can benefit ecosystems and communities, save money, and send a powerful message to markets on behalf of more sustainable options. This guidebook outlines steps to achieve that goal.
Rails-Trails Southeast Guidebook
Looking for a level trail where you can enjoy a brisk fitness walk, bike ride, or stroll with the family? All across the country, unused railroad corridors have been converted to public, multiuse trails. Here the experts from Rails-to-Trails Conservancy present the best of these rail-trails in the Southeast.
Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work
San Francisco,CA: Local Government Commission.This book gives local government officials, developers and citizen activists the tools needed to apply time-tested principles to revitalize their neighborhoods.
Reality Check Guide
Reality Check, a one-day, participatory, regional visioning exercise, is a tool for ULI District Councils and their partners to engage leaders in a regional dialogue on growth issues. ULI's Community Outreach staff are available to counsel each District Council to determine if they should explore Reality Check as part of their program of work and also during the exercise planning and implementation stages.
Realizing the Vision: 2040 Regional Framework Plan
An important new set of tools to help local elected officials and planners make land-use decisions is available from the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC). The 2040 Regional Framework Plan plan is the culmination of an extensive public-involvement process that included 200 workshops where 4,000 participants expressed their vision of how the region should address growth through the year 2040.
Regional Comprehensive Plan: Charting a Course for Southern California's Future
The Regional Comprehensive Plan (RCP) is a problem-solving guidance document that responds to what the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has learned about the region's challenges through the annual State of the Region report card. Through extensive outreach and input from the RCP Task Force, SCAG's policy committees, subregions, local governments and other key stakeholders, the RCP is a collaborative effort to address our region's challenges and set a path forward.
Regional Indicators: Telling Stories, Measuring Trends, Inspiring Action
Regional indicators are a set of specific measurements, pieces of information, which provide a picture of a place over time. This monograph from the Alliance for Regional Stewardship examines how indicators are being used at the regional level for a variety of purposes.
Removing the Roadblocks: How to Make Sustainable Development Happen Now
Removing the Roadblocks: How to Make Sustainable Development Happen Now, from UCLA School of Law and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, presents a comprehensive guide for federal, state, and local governments and business leaders to follow to make sustainable development easier, more affordable, and more widespread.
Renovate or Replace: The Case for Restoring and Reusing Older School Buildings
Renovate or Replace: The Case for Restoring and Reusing Older School Buildings, published by Save Our Land, Save Our Towns Inc. on behalf of The Pennsylvania Historic Schools Task Force, is a guidebook intended to help school boards and communities fully assess their options and to consider their decisions in the context of community revitalization efforts.
Revitalizing America's Mills
Creative communities throughout the United States have developed innovative approaches to revitalizing abandoned and potentially contaminated mills. Revitalizing America's Mills: A Report on Brownfields Mill Projects is a 32-page booklet published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that relates case histories chronicling some of the challenges faced and solutions found during the EPA-supported revitalization of more than 350 mill sites (so far) throughout the nation.
Road Map to Understanding Innovative Technology Options for Brownfields Investigation and Cleanup
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) produced the fourth edition of the Road Map to Understanding Innovative Technology Options for Brownfields Investigation and Cleanup to assist a broad audience of brownfields stakeholders in identifying and selecting innovative site characterization and cleanup technologies during the redevelopment process.
Rocky Mountain Agricultural Landowners Guide to Conservation and Sustainability
The purpose of the Rocky Mountain Agricultural Landowners Guide is to provide ranchers and farmers in the seven Rocky Mountain states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming -- with information and tools to augment both the productivity and stewardship of their land. The guide gives an overview of the variety of private options and public programs that are available to landowners who want to conserve their land and use innovative and sustainable practices to improve its productivity.
Safe Routes to School Program
The Safe Routes to School National Partnership offers guidance to help shape the Safe Routes to School program in your state. These guiding principles will help you or your coalition to focus your discussion with your state Department of Transportation.
Safe Spaces: Designing for Security and Civic Values
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has posted the complete abstracts from its July 2004 security design symposium on its web site for free viewing and download.
Safe Streets, Sound Communities
Safe Streets, Sound Communities from the Local Initiatives Support Corp. is a guidebook that explores LISC's role in promoting community safety through partnerships between police and community organizations.
Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America’s Older Core Cities
Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America’s Older Core Cities is a report from PolicyLink demonstrating that, despite significant challenges, older core cities can become economically competitive places where all residents can participate and prosper. Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions looks closely at five cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and examines how innovative economic development, land use, transportation, neighborhood revitalization, and housing policies are bringing about significant economic and social revitalization.
Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability
Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability offers firsthand accounts and strategies for greening campuses, rethinking school food, and transforming schools into model sustainable communities.
Smart Bylaws Guide
West Coast Environmental Law has developed a Smart Bylaws Guide to assist local governments to implement smart growth strategies through policy and bylaw changes. The Guide brings together the best practices of municipalities across British Columbia, and highlights other innovators in the United States.
Smart Growth at the Frontier
This 84-page publication examines how rural areas may use urban and suburban smart growth strategies to combat sprawl.
Smart Growth Checklist
New Westminster, British Columbia, has developed a Smart Growth Checklist to assist landowners or developers and their consultants to create the most sustainable project possible.
Smart Growth for Coastal and Waterfront Communities
Smart Growth for Coastal and Waterfront Communities, an interagency guide developed in consultation with the national Smart Growth Network, builds on the network's ten smart growth principles to create coastal and waterfront-specific strategies for development.
Smart Growth Guidelines for Sustainable Design & Development
In Connecticut, the Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCOG) partnered with the U.S. EPA to address the challenges and opportunities of growing smarter and building greener. Many of these challenges and opportunities are shared by communities and regions around the country. CRCOG collaborated with EPA’s Smart Growth Program to identify tools and strategies for implementing a state affordable housing program, HOMEConnecticut, to grow smarter, ensure healthy and affordable housing, and support long-term economic competitiveness at the local and regional levels.
The guidelines were developed for communities in Connecticut and around the country striving to get development and future growth that result in stronger neighborhoods, protected open space and watersheds, and healthier and more affordable homes. The guidelines also are applied to site-level conceptual plans for development that are featured in a companion report, Together We Can Grow Better: Smart Growth for a Sustainable Region.
Smart Growth Primer
The purpose of this Smart Growth Primer is to describe what kinds of strategies make up a smart growth approach to urban and near-urban development. At the same time, the Primer is an opportunity to share examples from the many communities in British Columbia that are already successfully using smart growth techniques.
Smart Growth Resources for Massachusetts Cities and Towns
This booklet from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides a comprehensive listing of financial and technical resources for cities and towns interested in promoting smart growth. The publication is produced by the Office of Commonwealth Development (OCD), which integrates energy, environmental, housing, and transportation policies, programs, and
Smart Growth Shareware
Smart Growth America offers Smart Growth Shareware, a free CD-ROM featuring 100 smart growth publications.
Smart Growth Zoning Codes: A Resource Guide
This guidebook
will help planners design a zoning code that encourages the
construction of walkable, mixed use neighborhoods and the
revitalization of existing places.
Smart Growth, Community Planning and Public School Construction
Supporting Governor Martin O'Malley’s efforts to distinguish Maryland's Smart Sustainable Growth initiatives, the Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) has issued its 27th publication of Models and Guidelines. This guide focuses on Maryland's Public Schools Construction Program, supporting sustainable schools within planned growth and Priority Funding Areas across the state.
Smart Growth: A Guide to Developing and Implementing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs
Smart growth development, based on 10 key principles, benefits the economy, the community, the environment, and public health. This guide provides information on how local governments have planned, designed, and implemented approaches that encourage smart growth in their communities.
The guide is designed to be used by city planners, local energy managers and sustainability directors, local elected officials, regional planning agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, and citizen groups. Readers of the guide should come away with an understanding of smart growth principles and how they can be applied in practice, foundations and strategies for smart growth development, expected costs, and potential funding opportunities.
The guide describes the benefits of smart growth (section 2); planning and design approaches to smart growth (section 3); key participants and their roles (section 4); foundations for smart growth program development (section 5); implementation strategies for effective programs (section 6); investment and funding opportunities (section 7); federal, state, and other programs that may be able to help local governments with information or financial and technical assistance (section 8), and finally two case studies of local governments that have successfully implemented smart growth principles in their communities (section 9). Additional examples of successful implementation are provided throughout the guide.
The guide can be downloaded free at the link below.
This Smart Growth guide is one in a series of Local Climate and Energy Strategy Guides produced by EPA. While each guide stands on its own, the entire series contains many interrelated strategies that can be combined to create comprehensive, cost-effective programs that generate multiple benefits. Access the guides at www.epa.gov/statelocalclimate/resources/strategy-guides.html.
Smart Scorecard for Development Projects
The purpose of a Smart Project Scorecard (SPS) is to assist elected local officials, developers, investors, neighborhood groups and designers make better project-level decisions that achieve the Smart Growth objectives.
Smart, Green & Growing Planning Guide
This publication outlines Maryland’s long-range, multi-agency initiative focused on protecting the state's precious, yet limited, air, water and land resources in every region of the state. It’s time to move from 20 years of treading water to 20 years of cleaner water, healthier communities and more sustainable growth. Sound land use planning, from State smart growth programs to local government and citizen actions, is a critical piece in this Smart, Green & Growing strategy.
By reducing sprawl development and concentrating new housing in our existing communities, we will protect irreplaceable forests and farmland and continue to improve the health of Maryland’s Chesapeake and Coastal Bays.
The guide provides you with a brief introduction to planning in Maryland, emphasizing key planning laws and tools that guide smart, sustainable growth. While not designed to be an exhaustive reference, the guide presents an overview of land use planning in Maryland, providing background on the State’s enabling legislation and significant laws governing planning. This includes the 1992 Planning Act, the 1997 Priority Funding Areas Act and the 2006 laws expanding the scope of local comprehensive plans. This is followed by summaries of Governor O’Malley’s Smart, Green & Growing legislative package, which was passed in the 2009 session of the General Assembly and signed into law.
Smart, Green and Growing Planning Guide
The Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) created the Smart, Green & Growing Planning Guide in response to the many requests from State and local government officials, smart growth advocates and interested citizens to produce a concise reference to planning and smart growth in Maryland. This guide provides you with a brief introduction to planning in Maryland, emphasizing key planning laws and tools that guide smart, sustainable growth.
SmartCode
This resource has been updated. Please see SmartCode V9.0 at the resource link below.
Strategies to Revitalize Rural Communities
The Center for Rural Affairs has created a series of strategies designed to address the needs of America's struggling rural communities. The strategies range from agricultural and small business development to state and federal policy revisions.
Stream Protection Strategies Guide Available
The Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the Univ. of Virginia has
produced a guide to assist local governments develop protection
strategies for streams to protect the health of their communities. Copies are
available by calling (434)924-1970 or you can download a PDF version
from http://www.virginia.edu/~envneg/stream%20guide_final.pdf%202
Streets and Sidewalks, People and Cars: The Citizens’ Guide to Traffic Calming
Streets and Sidewalks, People and Cars: The Citizens' Guide to Traffic Calming is written specifically for residents who want to create safer neighborhood streets. This hands-on guide gives citizens the tools they need to evaluate and improve the safety of their neighborhood residential and commercial streets.
Sustainable Community Development Code -- Beta
The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute has released a beta version of the Sustainable Community Development Code, a guidebook that provides extensive resources encompassing the broad scope of sustainable living.
Sustainable Prosperity: Grow Smart Rhode Island's Briefing Book for Candidates
A Blueprint for Sustainable Prosperity and Enhanced Quality of Place is Grow Smart Rhode Island's 2008 Candidates' Briefing Book, a nonpartisan effort to promote better understanding of growth and development issues and various strategies and best practices to tap Rhode Island's full economic, environmental and social potential.
Sustainable Table
Sustainable Table celebrates local sustainable food, educates consumers on food-related issues and works to build community through food.
Take Back Your Streets: How to Protect Communities from Asphalt and Traffic.
Boston, MA: Conservation Law Foundation, 1998. This is an essential guide for any community activist, local policymaker or concerned citizen interested in knowing how to use existing laws and regulations to persuade public highway officials to design and widen streets and bridges in ways that don't harm the natural environment, destroy community character and create unsafe neighborhood speedways.
Teardowns Resource Guide
The National Trust for Historic Preservation's Teardowns Resource Guide is a one-stop-shop for information on teardowns and the tools that are available for use to best manage this trend. The Guide shows how communities from across the country have worked to put in place and adopt tools to manage teardowns and retain the character of historic neighborhoods.
Ten Principles for Coastal Development
The Urban Land Institute's booklet Ten Principles for Coastal Development provides guidelines for balancing the demand for coastal development with resource conservation, including public access vs. private property, sustainability, enhancing value through conservation, siting and construction, and more.
Ten Principles for Developing Affordable Housing
The Urban Land Institute's Ten Principles for Developing Affordable Housing provides a road map for affordable housing a reality in your community. The principles address building community support, leveraging public incentives and financing, creating effective partnerships, understanding your market and your customer, and the importance of good design and sustainability.
Ten Principles for Rebuilding Neighborhood Retail
This booklet will help you identify the key issues that neighborhood streets face, determine the most effective ways to rebuild them and ensure their long-term competitive position, and set strategic principles to guide the community, public planners, retailers, and developers.
Ten Principles for Reinventing America's Suburban Business Districts
Fresh ideas and development opportunities are emerging
in response to trends in demographics, traffic congestion,
fiscal constraints, and opposition to suburban development.
Based on a study conducted by a team of planning and
development experts, this booklet describes how reinventing
suburban business districts can deal with these trends and
issues and can address the changing needs of the community.
Ten Principles for Suburban Smart Growth on the Fringe
Based on contributions from experts in the real estate industry as well as conservationists, Ten Principles for Suburban Smart Growth on the Fringe takes a fresh, realistic approach to suburban development, providing guidelines to make new development more attractive, accessible, efficient, environmentally sensitive, livable, and profitable.
The Charrette Handbook
New from the APA Planners Press is The Charrette Handbook, a step-by-step guide to a successful charrette that offers practical tips on everything from pre-charrette preparations to project implementation.
The Chicago Green Alley Handbook
The Chicago Green Alley Handbook is a manual promoting the City's use of best management practices within public alleyways. The handbook outlines sustainable techniques that adjacent property owners can implement on their own commercial, industrial, and residential properties. Crafted with a clear and transferable message, it serves as a model to create greener, environmentally sustainable urban places.
The Citizen's Guide to Planning
For decades, planning officials and engaged citizens have relied on The Citizens Guide to Planning for a better understanding of the basics of planning. The newly released Fourth edition describes the land-use planning process, the key players in that process, and the legal framework in which decisions are made.
The Cleanup War Chest: State Bond Financing for Environmental Initiatives and Brownfields Redevelopment
While many states have incentives for cleanup of contamination, only a few are regarded as funded at a level that approaches the vast need. The Cleanup War Chest: State Bond Financing for Environmental Initiatives and Brownfields Redevelopment from Northeast-Midwest Institute (NEMW) details some of the largest state-level financial commitments to brownfield remediation and environmental protection.
The Colorado Brownfields Handbook
The Colorado Brownfields Handbook is the culmination of a three-year partnership between Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and the Office of Smart Growth in DOLA to promote the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites around the state.
The Creative Community Builder's Handbook
The Creative Community Builder's Handbook: How To Transform Communities Using Local Assets, Arts, and Culture, by Tom Borrup with Partners for Livable Communities, is a guidebook for putting the power of arts and culture to work in your community.
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Touchstone Books, 1994. James Kunstler examines the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is beginning to pay for sprawl and calls for community values that reinforce main street's role as the center of community life and identity.
The Great American Neighborhood
Great American Neighborhoods from GrowSmart Maine is a two-page information sheet that describes the Great American Neighborhood as a place where people of all ages can live, meet their daily needs, and spend their leisure time, all within walking distance; a place where kids can walk or bike to school and play with friends in the neighborhood; a place where people are brought together in their day-to-day lives, creating a sense of shared community.
The Roadscape Guide
As part of the Vermont Forum on Sprawl's new Community Planning Toolbox, the Forum announces publication of The Roadscape Guide: Tools to Preserve Scenic Road Corridors. This new resource helps communities conserve areas of open space between cities and villages to permanently preserve viewsheds and scenic gateways along road corridors.
The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl
The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) is a practical guide to changing unsustainable land use patterns. The SmartCode is a comprehensive zoning tool designed by a diverse group of planners, designers, attorneys, developers, and concerned citizens led by Andres Duany, the noted land use expert and one of today's foremost urban planners.
The Top Schools for Urban Planners
The Planetizen 2009 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs -- the essential resource for prospective planning students -- is now available. Covering 100 programs in the United States and Canada, the Guide features detailed program profiles, listings of the best schools and the insights of current students and planning professionals.
TOD 101: Why Transit-Oriented Development And Why Now?
Reconnecting America presents TOD 101: Why Transit-Oriented Development And Why Now?, a colorful 24-page ''picture book'' designed in an easy-to-read format that illustrates how shifting demographics and the changing real estate market have opened up an unprecedented window of opportunity for transit-oriented development.
TOD 202: Station Area Planning
Station Area Planning: How To Make Great Transit-Oriented Places is the first in a series of ''TOD 202'' guidebooks from Reconnecting America that promote best practices in transit-oriented development.
Tools for Trails
The National Trails Training Partnership offers an an illustrated compendium of many of the tools commonly used in trail building and maintenance.
Traffic Calming Design Manual
This manual provides the administrative procedures needed to evaluate and implement traffic calming measures, provide guidance on applications for traffic calming, and provide guidance on geometric design and signing.
Trails & Greenways: Advancing the Smart Growth Agenda
This paper draws on existing research and case studies to provide comprehensive documentation of the benefits green infrastructure can bring to a community and a region, and the impact trails and greenways have on advancing smart growth
objectives. In addition, transportation planning
theories of induced demand and system extent, as
well as social justice issues associated with
regional trail development, are explored. 43 pages, PDF format.
Transportation Improvement Program
''A Guide for Municipal Officials, Special Interest Groups, and Citizens.'' A pamphlet explaining how municipalities and interest groups can get involved in the region's transportation project development process.
Turning Bases into Great Places: New Life for Closed Military Facilities
Turning Bases into Great Places: New Life for Closed Military Facilities, a guidebook from the U.S. EPA, discusses how to create a vision for former installations that provides housing and transportation choices, creates a mix of jobs and housing, and makes the most of natural assets.
Unlocking the Promise
Unlocking the Promise: A Guide for Funders Interested in Transformational Grantmaking from the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities focuses on the intersection of race, class, and access to opportunity, as related to growth and development decisions made by governments, private developers, and not for profit organizations in communities of all sizes.
Urban Design Guidelines -- Pittsburgh
This document from the city of Pittsburgh's Department of City Planning is an easy-to-read, visually appealing overview of principles and standards to be applied to development in the city's downtown region.
Vision Dixie 2035
Vision Dixie is a historic effort by leaders throughout Utah's Washington County to build a vision for tomorrow based on the ideas and values of county residents. Through Vision Dixie, more than three thousand residents created a framework in which future development and transportation work together to create communities, and a region, that preserve Southern Utah's quality of life, along with an affordable, livable future.
Youth VOICES in Community Design Handbook
Youth VOICES in Community Design Handbook, a how-to guide on getting youth involved in local policymaking and community planning, provides a step-by-step guide to youth engagement and is supported by an extensive online library of articles and activities.
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