"This condensation ... reprinted as a contribution to the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements, Vancouver, B.C., June 1976 ... "Initially developed through a grant by the National Science Foundation Research applied to National Needs Program to the University of Minnesota, and subsequently published as Urban Growth Management Systems, an evaluation of policy related research, by the American Society of Planning Officials".

Despite roughly thirty years of experience with growth management programs, which are basically land-use planning tools, most U.S. communities do not plan for how best to limit or manage rapid growth; in fact, most communities do not plan at all. In the absence of planning, land-use boards, regulators, and other governing bodies simply react to initiatives from the private sector. The result is predictably haphazard and does not allow communities to achieve such goals as protecting quality of life, attracting certain types of businesses while discouraging others, conserving wildlife or preserving open spaces, and so forth. In contrast, planning by managing growth can help a town or city achieve any number of goals. But it is a complex task. This book brings the benefit of state and local experiences with growth management to researchers, students, and particularly practitioners who seek guidance in these matters. Kelly provides a much-needed context from which any community can answer the following questions: Does growth management work? Is it appropriate for the community and the particular problems that it is trying to address? Is one type of growth management program more appropriate than another for our community? Will the program in question have undesirable (or desirable) side effects?What are the likely effects of adopting no growth management program at all? This work is invaluable for the citizen volunteers who sit on land-use boards, including planning and zoning commissions, conservation commissions, and inland wetlands agencies. In addition, it can aid mayors, city managers, and city councils in interviewing and selecting candidates for town planner.

This report summarizes the best of current local practice and presents, analyses and comments on research into growth management.

There are specific topics which, in microcosm, bring together many of the strands of a whole society. The pressures at work in responding to the problems involved in these topics both in implementing and retarding their resolution, provide a unique insight into the strains of our time. In many ways, the subject of growth controls is a prime exemplar of this species. Grouped under this rubric are all the environmental concerns which are increasingly prominent: the natural limits of land-holding capacity, the trade-offs between intensive land use, and the physical limitations of earth and space. But these elements, while far from being defined, are much more finite than the particulars at the other end of the spectrum that of the character and individual substance and way of life, which revolve around the level of intensity of land use. For example, as we near the end of the twentieth century, an increasing demand is heard for a return to the simpler, more bucolic environment. Just as the suburb replaced the city as the prime location so the suburb in turn finds it very difficult to compete against the lures of the countryside. The drive towards exurbia, and with is greater levels of decentralization, and with it greater levels of decentralization becomes a dominant theme, at least for the affluent. All these and many other elements are at work within the simple title of Growth Management.