What's New

January 2002

Built Environment

Portnov, Boris A., and Evyatar Erell. Urban Clustering: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Location. Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2001.

The effect of spatial location on socio-economic development is a critical issue in urban and regional planning. This book examines the success or failure of an urban place in relation to the spatial characteristics of the urban cluster to which it belongs. Employing case studies from a variety of countries, it analyzes relationships between the clustering of towns and their attractiveness to migrants and investors. In addition the book provides a fundamental overview and critical analysis of basic concepts in the field of urban and regional location, introducing new methods for assessing the sustainability of urban growth in central and peripheral regions. It also proposes new planning strategies designed to enhance the potential of urban growth.

Thall, Bob. The New American Village. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

"Surely this isn't the village Hillary Clinton had in mind... Thall, who specializes in photographing architecture in his native Chicago, has ventured out to the environs of O'Hare Airport to look at the transformation of what was once flat farmland into a Brasilia-style 'edge city.' Judging by his pictures, depicting modern buildings in crisp detail, the edge city is a corporate space characterized by anonymous glass-walled office high-rises, shopping malls, parking garages, and town-house condos. Only rarely does a human being appear to inhabit and soften these places, which makes their blankness even more forbidding." —Andy Grundberg, BookForum

Commercial Districts

Glendale Planning Division. Downtown Strategic Plan: Analysis. Glendale, Calif.: The Division, 1994

Glendale Planning Division. Greater Downtown Strategic Plan Report. Glendale, Calif.: The Division, 1994.

Ten Principles for Reinventing America's Suburban Strips. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2001.

Based on a study conducted by a team of planning and development experts, this pamphlet identifies the critical issues and challenges that strips face and provides an action plan to reinvent them to ensure their long-term competitive position. Developers and communities throughout the nation will find this guide an invaluable starting point for creating strategies that fully harness the tremendous market potential of suburban strips.

Disaster Planning

Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room Inside Your House. Washington, D.C.: Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1999.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) "Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room Inside Your House" is a guide to construction plans, materials, designs, and cost estimates for several types of tornado "safe rooms" you can build inside your existing or new home. The guidebook includes a worksheet to help you determine your risk based on your home's location and design. It goes on to recommend the best location in your home for a safe room and the best safe room floor plan for your home, as well as offering planning help to homeowners and contractors.

Environmental Planning

Berke, Philip R., and Timothy Beatley. After the Hurricane: Linking Recovery to Sustainable Development in the Caribbean. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Hugo ... Andrew ... Felix ... Fran ... The names of hurricanes that have devastated the Caribbean region are firmly implanted in the minds of those who survived them. Beyond the scrutiny of the press and television cameras, those survivors often struggle not only with the destruction left in the hurricane's wake but also with the chaotic and disruptive circumstances brought about by massive infusions of well-intentioned "aid." In After the Hurricane, Philip R. Berke and Timothy Beatley present state-of-the-art research on recovery programs that work — programs that provide immediate aid to victims and lay the basis for sustainable development and growth.

Additional reviews may be found in The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance and The Journal of the American Planning Association (Summer 1999).

Center for Watershed Protection. Rapid Watershed Planning Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Managing Urbanizing Watersheds. Silver Spring, Md.: 1998.

This comprehensive, practical manual provides an excellent guide to creating an effective watershed plan quickly and cheaply. Geared towards watershed planning professionals, Rapid Watershed Planning contains everything needed to develop a cost-effective watershed plan, including management options, analysis tools, and case studies of real-world watershed plans. Includes practical techniques for crafting an effective plan as well as guidance on plan mapping, monitoring, and modeling techniques.

Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002.

Articulates priorities and approaches for incorporating ecological principles into the teaching of landscape design and planning. The book explains why landscape architecture and design and planning faculty should include ecology as a standard part of their courses and curricula, provides insights on how that can be done, and offers models from successful programs.

Freyvogle, Eric T., Ed. New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001.

The engaging writings gathered in this new book explore an important but little-publicized movement in American culture — the marked resurgence of agrarian practices and values in rural areas, suburbs, and even cities. It is a movement that in widely varied ways is attempting to strengthen society's roots in the land while bringing greater health to families, neighborhoods, and communities. The New Agrarianism vividly displays the movement's breadth and vigor, with selections by such award-winning writers as Wendell Berry, William Kittredge, Stephanie Mills, David Orr, Scott Russell Sanders, and Donald Worster.

"Here is a book to savor — flavorful and nutritious, it sticks to the mind's ribs. The New Agrarianism is about Americans re-learning to care for the land, and Eric Freyfogle has thoughtfully assembled a banquet of eloquent voices." —Tony Hiss, author of The Experience of Place.

Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. Changing Illinois' Environment: Critical Trends: Volume 1, Air Resources. Springfield, Ill.: The Department, 1994.

This report presents an analysis of climate trends since the late 19th century in Illinois. It includes comprehensive information about Illinois's climate and air quality and the deposition of atmospheric constituents on the earth's surface. In each subject area, currently available data have been assembled to provide a picture of how air resources have changed over time and how they vary spatially from place to place around the state.

Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. Changing Illinois' Environment: Critical Trends: Volume 6, Sources of Environmental Stress. Springfield, Ill.: The Department, 1994.

Discusses manufacturing, transportation, urban dynamics, and electricity generation, in addition to greenhouse gases, indoor radon exposure, accidental releases, and wastewater discharge. Also included is an analysis of human exposure to air and water pollutants.

Land Clearing and Tree Protection Ordinance: Savannah, Georgia. Savannah, Ga.: Chatham-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission, 1995.

New Tools for Improving Government Regulation: An Assessment of Emissions Trading and Other Market-Based Regulatory Tools. Boulder, Colo.: Natural Resources Law Center, 1999.

Operationalizing Concepts of Sustainable Development for the Town of Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Planning Department, 1995.

Growth Management

O'Toole, Randal. The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities. Bandon, Ore.: Thoreau Institute, 2001.

From Harold Henderson's May 2001 review in Planning: "O'Toole in 2001 looks a lot like Jane Jacobs did in 1961. They're both outsiders with a detailed grassroots view of how planners — with the best of intentions — are following a fashion into disaster. If smart growth is to be more than a recapitulation of the urban-renewal catastrophe, then its advocates will publicly engage O'Toole with facts and arguments. If they ignore him, or if they brush him off as a libertarian fanatic with no credentials, then we can be pretty sure that he's on to something."
Available from Planners Book Service. Click on the title above.

Housing

Affordable Housing Needs and Implementation Plan: An Element of the City of Highland Park Master Plan. Highland Park, Ill.: City Council, 2001

Institutional Districts

Memorials and Museums Master Plan: Draft. Washington, D.C.: National Capital Planning Commission, 2000.

Municipal Planning

Camiros, Ltd. Comprehensive Plan: Village of Lansing, Illinois. Chicago: Camiros, Ltd., 1995

Neo-Traditional Planning

Dutton, John A. New American Urbanism: Re-Forming the Suburban Metropolis. New York: Skira, 2000.

John Dutton shows how American Urban Models, whose influence has been essential in the shaping of cities worldwide since 1945, are currently recovering at home from the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. He masterfully analyzes the theoretical inputs and the design solutions that have shaped a collection of experimental town landscapes that deserve all of our attention today.

Reviewed in New Urban News, April/May 2001.

Open Space

Greenways Plan: City of Highland Park. Highland Park, Ill.: Highland Park Community Action Association, 2000.

Parking

Barton-Aschman Associates. Fargo Downtown Parking Study. Fargo, N.D.: City of Fargo, 1999.

Planning and Zoning Legislation

Unified Development Ordinance: Town of Cary, North Carolina. Cary, N.C.: The Town of Cary, 1992.

Professional Practice

Barrett, Carol D. Everyday Ethics for Practicing Planners. Chicago: American Planning Association on behalf of the American Institute of Certified Planners, 2001.

As veteran planner Carol Barrett points out, the most troublesome conflicts for planners aren't between good and bad, they're between competing good, neither of which can be fully achieved. The 54 real-world scenarios described here typify the tough moral dilemmas that confront today's practitioners. Individuals studying for the AICP exam will find this book indispensable. But it also should be required reading for every planner who struggles to act ethically and planning student who wants to understand how professionals define and serve the public interest. Planning agencies, private consulting firms, and planning commissions can use its realistic scenarios to jump start group discussions and workshops on ethical planning.
Available from Planners Book Service. Click on the title above.

Clark, Terry A. Project Management for Planners. Chicago: Planners Press, 2002.

Busy urban planners who increasingly are required to do more, faster, with less are uniquely qualified to use structured project management, a technique long practiced by the military and the construction and information technology industries. AICP member and certified project manager Terry Clark tell planners how to use this proven system to write comprehensive plans, review development proposals, and complete other important planning projects on schedule and within budget.
Available from Planners Book Service. Click on the title above.

Redevelopment

Sagalyn, Lynne B. Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

From Publishers Weekly: Lynne B. Sagalyn, director of the MBA real estate program at Columbia University's business school, explores the underpinnings of New York's concerted mid-1990s gentrification efforts in Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon. Alongside the usual suspects Giuliani, Disney, the ousted peep shows and porn venues Sagalyn places Koch, the Broadway Association, "maverick realtor" Irving Maidman, Frederic S. Papert and his not-for-profit 42nd Street Development Corp., and a host of other major and minor players in the continual plans for redeveloping Times Square. By the 1960s, '70s and '80s, the area had become a blatant symbol of the decline of urban America, a far cry from its glory days in the 1920s as the pinnacle of theatrical couture. On the other hand, when redevelopment plans threatened too drastic a face-lift, critics waxed nostalgic about "the symbolic soul of New York." The jumble of symbolisms, politics, policies, and business plans characterizing 20th-century 42nd Street has never before been subject to such thorough and perspicacious scrutiny. 175 illus., 25 in color. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Additional review in the New York Review of Books, February 14, 2002.

St. Louis Development Corporation. Riverfront Master Plan Report: St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis, Mo.: The Corporation, 1995

Site Planning

Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. Site Plan Review: Optional Design Standards. Arkville, N.Y.: 199?.