What's New

December 2003

Economic Development

Nevarez, Leonard. New Money, Nice Town: How Capital Works in the New Urban Economy. New York: Routledge, 2003.

"A detailed, thoroughly researched work on the new 'softer' face of corporate power in the emerging era of Creative Capitalism. Leonard Nevarez provides a comprehensive, well-written account of how corporations in software, entertainment and tourism shape communities and influence urban politics in light of their new needs to harness and mobilize skilled and talented people." —Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

See the author's discussion of the book's thesis which he states, "is rooted in a neomarxist political economy perspective that jettisons the crude determinism and revolutionary baggage and retains the primary concern for economic structure and the unanticipated outcomes of class and elite action."

Environmental Planning

France, Robert L. Wetland Design: Principles and Practices for Landscape Architects and Land-Use Planners. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.

"In Wetland Design, Robert L. France of the Harvard Graduate School of Design offers concepts for planning wetlands that will be both beautiful and useful. ... France's writing style is to the point; illustrations, diagrams, and photographs are plentiful; and there are numerous case studies (with citations to the original literature) on both area-wide planning and site design."–– Harold Henderson, Planning, April 2003

Spangle Associates. Redevelopment after Earthquakes. Portola Valley, Cal.: Spangle Associates, 2002.

This study explores the role that redevelopment can play in reconstruction and considers possibilities for improvement. The data comes from 11 case studies of cities recovering from major disasters and an examination of redevelopment laws in 10 different states. Eight of the case study communities, located in Alaska and California, suffered damaged caused by earthquakes. The remaining three case studies evaluated reconstruction and redevelopment after a hurricane or floods in Florida, North Dakota, and North Carolina. Reviewed in Planning, November 2003.

Housing

Clark County Department of Comprehensive Planning. Las Vegas Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report: A Report on Housing and Community Development Activities in Clark County, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Boulder City, and Mesquite. Las Vegas, Nev.: Clark County Department of Comprehensive Planning, 2000.

Housing — Federal Programs

Ohm, Brian W., John Merrill, and Erich Schmidke. Housing Wisconsin: A Guide to Preparing a Housing Element of a Local Comprehensive Plan. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Extension, 2000.

Housing — Housing Elements (Comprehensive Plan)

Schoenauer, Norbert. 6,000 Years of Housing. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Part architecture, part history, and part anthropology, this encyclopedic book limns the story of housing around the world from the pre-urban dwellings of nomadic, semi-nomadic, and sedentary agricultural societies to the present.

Planning Law

Land Use and Environment Law Review: 2003. St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson-West, 2003.

According to West's homepage, "Each year, the country's top professors and practitioners select the best of hundreds of articles appearing in the past year's law review literature. The resulting anthology represents the most insightful thinking on a wide range of current and emerging land use and development issues. See if you agree."

Planning Methodology

Dandekar, Hemalata C., ed. The Planner's Use of Information. 2nd ed. Chicago: Planners Press, 2003.

The completely revised and updated second edition of this popular book will serve the new generation of planners who work in a world where computers, the Internet, telecommunications networks, and a changing population have revolutionized the practice of planning. The Planner's Use of Information fully describes the capabilities, uses, and impacts of 21st century technologies.

Planning Movements

Kelbaugh, Douglas S. Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited. Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2002.

Repairing the American Metropolis is based on Douglas Kelbaugh's Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design first published in 1997. It is more timely and significant than ever, with new text, charts, and images on architecture, sprawl, and New Urbanism, a movement that he helped pioneer. Theory and policies have been revised, refined, updated, and developed as compelling ways to plan design the built environment.

Regional Planning

Agranoff, Robert, and Michael McGuire. Collaborative Public Management: New Strategies for Local Governments . Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003.

Local governments do not stand alone—they find themselves in new relationships not only with state and federal government, but often with a widening spectrum of other public and private organizations as well. The result of this re-forming of local governments calls for new collaborations and managerial responses that occur in addition to governmental and bureaucratic processes-as-usual, bringing locally generated strategies or what the authors call "jurisdiction-based management" into play. Based on an extensive study of 237 cities within five states, Collaborative Public Management provides an in-depth look at how city officials work with other governments and organizations to develop their city economies and what makes these collaborations work.

Porter, Douglas R., and Allan D. Wallis. Exploring Ad Hoc Regionalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2002.

A growing number of urban challenges — from threats of environmental degradation and sprawl, to social and fiscal disparity, to economic transformation and globalization — call for action at a regional scale. But regions in the United States largely lack governance capacity to formulate and execute plans to respond to these challenges. Some recent experiments aimed at developing governance capacity to address regional challenges rely on augmenting existing government institutions — councils of government, regional planning councils, and the like. But more often they involve interest groups from multiple sectors — public, private and nonprofit — operating in loose-knit, collaborative relations.

Other

Schumacher, E.F. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered: 25 Years Later with Commentaries . Point Roberts, Wash.: Hartley & Marks, 1999.

Small Is Beautiful is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher's ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common-sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. American Ruins. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.

Once proud and often eloquent sentinels of economic prosperity, America's deteriorating inner-city buildings are, in this unflinching socio-photodocumentary, caught in their death throes. Continuing Vergara's poignant eulogy to urban decay — begun with The New American Ghetto (1995) and Silent Cities (1989) — this project features 300 exteriors and interiors of 70 ghostly ruins. His camera deftly captures squalid Beaux Arts public palaces, reinforced-concrete industrial complexes, high-rise housing projects, and the flotsam of stores, factories, and homes. The accompanying text provides building and neighborhood histories, notes on style, an account of the way the buildings changed over separate visits, recitations of local reactions and responses, anecdotes about ghetto photography, and blistering social critique. Vergara proves a knowledgeable and engaging guide throughout. Highly recommended for all academic and specialized architecture, planning, and sociology collections. —Russell T. Clement, University of Tennessee Library, Knoxville