What's New

March 2004

Books and Documents

Citizen Participation

Lukas, Carol, and Linda Hoskins. Conducting Community Forums: Engaging Citizens, Mobilizing Communities. St. Paul, Minn.: Wilder Publishing Center, 2003.

Community forums are powerful tools for educating the public, building consensus, focusing action, and influencing public policy. This book provides step-by-step instructions to plan and carry out effective community forums with lasting results. It is based on the authors' experience with more than 70 community forums on a wide variety of topics.

Environmental Planning

Freyfogle, Eric T. The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good. Washington, D.C.: Shearwater Books, 2003.

Bringing together insights from history, law, philosophy, and ecology, Freyfogle undertakes a fascinating inquiry into the ownership of nature, leading us behind publicized and contentious disputes over open-space regulation, wetlands protection, and wildlife habitat to reveal the foundations of and changing ideas about private ownership in America. Drawing upon ideas from Thomas Jefferson, Henry George, and Aldo Leopold and interweaving engaging accounts of actual disputes over land-use issues, Freyfogle develops a powerful vision of what private ownership in America could mean — an ownership system, fair to owners and taxpayers alike, that fosters healthy land and healthy economies.

Reviewed in the January 2004 issue of Planning magazine.

Housing

Goetz, Edward G. Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2003.

Over the past three decades, the concentration of poverty in America's inner cities has exacerbated a wide range of social problems. In response, policymakers have embarked on a large and coordinated effort to "deconcentrate" the urban poor by dispersing the residents of subsidized housing. Despite the clean logic of these policies, however, deconcentration is not a clean process. In Clearing the Way, Edward Goetz goes beyond the narrow analysis that has informed the debate so far, using the experience of Minneapolis-Saint Paul to explore the fierce political debate and complicated issues that arise when public housing residents are dispersed, sometimes against their will. Along the way, he explores the cases for and against deconcentrating the poor, the programs used to pursue this goal, and the research used to evaluate their success. Clearing the Way offers important lessons for policymakers, activists, and anyone interested in poverty in America.

Reviewed in January 2004 issue of Planning magazine.

Information Technology

Mitchell, William J. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003.

With Me++ the author of City of Bits and e-topia completes an informal trilogy examining the ramifications of information technology in everyday life. William Mitchell describes the transformation of wireless technology in the hundred years since Marconi — the scaling up of networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission and reception. In Me++ Mitchell examines the effects of wireless linkage, global interconnection, miniaturization, and portability on our bodies, our clothing, our architecture, our cities, and our uses of space and time.

Planning magazine review of December 2003. A technogeek review may be found here.

Other

Municipal Year Book: 2003. Washington, D.C.: International City County Management Association, 2003.

This complete source of information about local government contains hundreds of pages of facts and figures; explains basic statistical computations; contains easy-to-read tables and graphs that accompany research-based articles; and includes a five-year cumulative index. The 10 directories in the book list nearly 70,000 local government officials in the most extensive listing available anywhere. Articles of particular interest to planners include, "Development Impact Fee Use by Local Governments," and "E-Government: Trends, Opportunities, and Challenges."

Planning Outside the United States

Punter, John. The Vancouver Achievement: Urban Planning and Design. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003.

The Vancouver Achievement explains the evolution and evaluates the outcomes of Vancouver's unique system of discretionary zoning. The introductory chapters set the context for the study: they cover the invention and refinement of this system in the reform movement, its development of policies, guidelines, and control processes, and its translation into official development plans and neighborhood design in the 1970s. Subsequent chapters focus upon the downtown, waterfront mega projects, single-family neighborhoods, the citywide strategic planning program, CityPlan), pressures for reform of control processes, and current downtown and inner city developments, especially issues of affordable housing, social exclusion, and multiple deprivation. The concluding chapter summarizes "the Vancouver Achievement," explains the keys to its success, and evaluates its design success against internationally accepted criteria.

Reviewed in January 2004 issue of Planning magazine.

Redevelopment

Ford, Larry R. America's New Downtowns: Revitalization or Reinvention? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

In this book, noted urban scholar Larry Ford casts a critical and practiced eye on sixteen contemporary urban centers to offer an expert's view of the best — and worst — of downtown America. Ford begins with a brief history of U.S. urban development. He then explains his criteria for evaluating downtowns before proceeding with an on-the-street examination of the featured sixteen cities. Each is rated based on use of physical site, particularly for housing (unlike suburbs, Ford notes, most downtowns are located in challenging physical locales, such as harbors, rivers, hills, or peninsulas), street morphology, civic space, functional aspects (office space, retail stores, and convention centers), and the support districts in the fringe areas surrounding the downtown core. Ford concludes with a suggested model of downtown structure based upon the case studies and with a look at the possible effects of increasing globalization on the downtowns of the late twenty-first century. Featured cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis.

Planning magazine review of December 2003.

Sorkin, Michael. Starting from Zero: Reconstructing Downtown New York. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Sorkin develops his own vision of the future lower Manhattan. His transformed Ground Zero features a low rise, multi-use neighborhood that is heavily quilted with green space. Central to it is a globe-like memorial, with no rebuilt towers. New office space, he argues, should be decentralized to New York's outer boroughs, where so many office workers actually live. Following this path will help create a more equitable New York. Mixing his inimitable brand of social criticism with more personal reflections, Starting From Zero offers a striving challenge to the Ground Zero redevelopment plan recently chosen by New York's establishment insiders.

Reviewed in January 2004 issue of Planning magazine.

Urban Sociology

Murphy, Patricia Watkins, and James V. Cunningham. Organizing for Community Controlled Development: Renewing Civil Society. Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage Press, 2003.

"Cunningham and Murphy have made a unique contribution to our understanding of economic development at the community level. For practitioners, students, and academicians, no other book connects the practical aspects of building an economic foundation and weaving the social fabric with such an inspiring sense of purpose. This is a work that is not only rigorous and useful, but is fun to read. Anyone who has ever tried to revive a blighted neighborhood will want to read this book." --David M. Feehan, International Downtown Association. Shelterforce review here.

Compiled by Shannon Paul, Librarian, Merriam Center Library, American Planning Association, library@planning.org