Schultz, Jack. Boom Town USA: The 71/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns. Herndon, Va.: National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, 2004.

This book examines how small towns best prosper by leveraging their resources and working with local and state officials to break through the "one company town" mindset to attract industry and new business relocations. In the book, Jack Schultz identifies seven and one-half factors that small towns must employ to attract new business relocations or spur new business start-ups, including a collective vision, local support and an entrepreneurial spirit.

France, Robert L., ed. Handbook of Water Sensitive Planning and Design. Boca Raton, Fla.: Lewis Publishers, 2002.

Presents the history of water as a design and planning element in landscape architecture and describes new interpretations of water management. This text pushes the frontiers of standard water management in new directions, challenging readers into abandoning the comfortable safety of conducting business-as-usual within narrow disciplinary confines, and instead directing views outward to the exciting and incompletely mapped regions of true interdisciplinary water sensitive planning and design. Part I provides 17 chapters addressing the subject of site-specific water sensitive design and Part II presents another 17 chapters focusing on issues relating to the water sensitive planning of riparian buffers and watersheds.

Hallsmith, Gwendolyn. The Key to Sustainable Cities: Meeting Human Needs, Transforming Community Systems. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2003.

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

Hanak, Ellen. Water for Growth: California's New Frontier. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2005.

In this report, the author examines how well California is faring in meeting the water supply challenges of growth throughout the state and the extent to which local governments are integrating water supply concerns into their land-use planning. The report also evaluates progress in implementing the new "show me the water" laws, SB 610 and SB 221, which require up-front screening of water availability for large development projects.

Meffe, Gary K., Larry A. Nielsen, Richard L. Knight, and Dennis A. Schenborn. Ecosystem Management: Adaptive, Community-Based Conservation. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002.

A new textbook that engages students in active problem solving by using detailed landscape scenarios that reflect the complex issues and conflicting interests that face today's resource managers and scientists. Focusing on the application of the sciences of ecology and conservation biology to real-world concerns, it emphasizes the intricate ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional matrix in which natural resource management functions, and illustrates how to be more effective in that challenging arena. Each chapter is rich with exercises to help facilitate problem-based learning. The main text is supplemented by boxes and figures that provide examples, perspectives, definitions, summaries, and learning tools, along with a variety of essays written by practitioners with on-the-ground experience in applying the principles of ecosystem management.

Porter, Douglas R. Making Smart Growth Work. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2002.

This new book provides an in-depth look at the underlying principles of smart growth, explains how developers and planners have applied them, and how the public and private sectors can collaborate to make smart growth effective. Topics include economically viable compact mixed-use development, conserving open space, expanding mobility options, creating livable communities, smart growth in suburban greenfields and infill areas, and the role of the players involved in putting smart growth to work.

Downs, Anthony, ed. Growth Management and Affordable Housing: Do They Conflict? Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004.

Can growth management and smart growth promote policies that help increase the supply of affordable housing? These issues are critical to the future of affordable housing because so many local communities are adopting various forms of growth management or smart growth in response to growth-related problems. Those problems include rising traffic congestion, the absorption of open space by new subdivisions, and higher taxes to pay for new infrastructures. This book explores the relationship between growth management and smart growth and affordable housing in depth. It draws from material presented at a symposium on these subjects held at the Brookings Institution in May 2003, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Association of Realtors, and the Fannie Mae Foundation.

Scotthanson, Chris, and Kelly Scotthanson. The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2005.

As pioneers in the development of cohousing in North America, Chris and Kelly ScottHanson offer individuals and new groups a wealth of information and practical hints on how the process works. The Cohousing Handbook covers every element that goes into the creation of a cohousing project, including group processes, land acquisition, finance and budgets, construction, development professionals, design considerations, permits, approvals and membership.

Fleming, Cory, ed. The GIS Guide for Local Government Officials. Redlands, Cal.: ESRI Press, 2005.

Municipal GIS experts suggest practical approaches for incorporating this powerful mapping technology into a city or county, no matter what size. Case studies drawn from throughout North America illustrate how officials have successfully applied GIS to their specific needs, from monitoring storm drains in Hawaii to fixing potholes in Canada.

Parsons Brinckerhoff. Improving the Pedestrian Environment through Innovative Transportation Design. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Transportation Engineers, 2005.

In this survey, the reader can view the richness of the state of the practice. It also provides a retrospective of the past decade to appreciate how our communities are harvesting the benefits of a change in national, state and local transportation investment policies. The report has four sections: Pedestrian Safety Awareness Programs; Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridges and Tunnels; Pedestrian and Bicycle Corridors; and Policies, Plans, Guidelines and Design Standards.

Lawson, Laura J. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardens in America. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 2005.

Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens — each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, the most comprehensive review of the greening of urban communities to date, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States.

Callies, David L., Daniel J. Curtin, Jr., and Julie A. Tappendorf. Bargaining for Development: A Handbook on Development Agreements, Annexation Agreements, Land Development Conditions, Vested Rights, and the Provision of Public Facilities. Washington, D.C.: Environmental Law Institute, 2003.

Sets out the basic law of land development conditions, particularly as it has evolved following the U.S. Supreme Court Nollan and Dolan decisions. It features an extensive categorization of land development conditions by type of public facility and an extensive discussion of ways in which impact fees can be calculated. It discusses the basic legal foundations and parameters of the annexation agreement and the development agreement, along with an in-depth analysis of legal issues. Model statutes and implementing ordinances enabling and setting standards for land development conditions, development agreements, and annexation agreements are included. Sample or model agreements drafted from the landowner/developer and the local government perspectives; both in long (for complex phased developments) and short form, together with appropriate checklists are included.

Voelker, David H., Peter Z. Orton, and Scott V. Adams. CliffsQuickReview: Statistics. New York: Wiley, 2004.

Many people find statistics confusing and intimidating; however, whether you're new to statistics or need to review for an important test, this reference will easily help clarify some of the elements of statistical reasoning and analysis.

Crow, Ed. Paths and Pitfalls on the Way to a New Vibrancy in Older Retail Districts. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Dorrance Publishing Co., 2003.

Ed Crow has spent his career studying what works — and what doesn't. He was instrumental in the revitalization of Manayunk; a decaying mill town has been turned into a vibrant restaurant and shopping district. In this book, Crow shows how it was done, but he doesn't stop there. He gives other examples to show what can go wrong. All this is distilled into an action plan that can be applied elsewhere.

Paumier, Cy. Creating a Vibrant City Center: Urban Design and Regeneration Principles. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2004.

This book will give you the key planning and design guidelines you need to create a lively, appealing city center in any metropolitan area. The author, a leading expert in urban design, explains techniques for designing a complementary mix of uses and inviting public spaces that will be a magnet for continued economic development, attracting people to live, work, and visit.

Sobel, Lee S., Ellen Greenberg, and Steven Bodzin. Greyfields into Goldfields: Dead malls Become Living Neighborhoods. San Francisco: Congress for New Urbanism, 2002.

Successfully turning a dead shopping mall, or greyfield, into a thriving neighborhood requires innovation in design, development, financing, and municipal leadership. This book gives mall redevelopers the tools they need to get started and warnings of potential problems. Includes six detailed case studies and extensive development data on 12 projects.

Civilizing Downtown Highways: Putting New Urbanism to Work on California's Highways. San Francisco: Congress for New Urbanism, 2002.

Using California as a case study this book discusses the struggle New Urbanists face in reconstructing inner-city super highways into walkable, business friendly, thoroughfares. Meanwhile, state and local highway authorities (worried about increasing congestion) are reluctant to rethink their roadways. The results are some creative collaborations.

Arnott, Richard, Tilmann Rave, and Ronnie Schoeb. Alleviating Urban Traffic Congestion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.

For 50 years, economists have been advocating congestion pricing as the way to deal with urban traffic congestion; but today, even after some successes, congestion pricing is encountering considerable political resistance. The authors of Alleviating Urban Traffic Congestion advocate active consideration of more microscopic policies that attack the problem at the scale at which actual policy decisions are made. Microscopic models, rather than macroscopic models that are too simplified and too aggregated, they argue, will lead to the analysis of a wider and more creative range of policies, at least some of which should work well and be politically acceptable. After developing the themes of the book, the authors illustrate them by examining some areas of urban transport policy that have been neglected by the macroscopic approach. These include downtown parking policy, the encouragement of bicycling, the staggering of work hours by dominant employers, and the use by medium-sized cities of a "multimode" ticket that charges cars entering the city center a toll equal to the transit fare.

Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Free Press, 2003.

During the past 30 years or so, diffusion research has grown to be widely recognized, applied and admired, but it has also been subjected to both constructive and destructive criticism. This criticism is due in large part to the stereotyped and limited ways in which many diffusion scholars have defined the scope and method of their field of study. Rogers analyzes the limitations of previous diffusion studies, showing, for example, that the convergence model, by which participants create and share information to reach a mutual understanding, more accurately describes diffusion in most cases than the linear model. Rogers provides an entirely new set of case examples, from the Balinese Water Temple to Nintendo videogames that beautifully illustrate his expansive research, as well as a completely revised bibliography covering all relevant diffusion scholarship in the past decade. Most important, he discusses recent research and current topics, including social marketing, forecasting the rate of adoption, technology transfer, and more.