In the decades following the first Earth Day in 1970, a generation has been enlightened about the unspeakable damage done to our planet. Federal, state, and local governments generated laws and regulations to control development and protect the environment. Local governments have developed environmental standards addressing their needs. The result-an ecologically incongruous pattern of land development known as urban sprawl. Local land use planners can have a greater effect on the quality of our environment than all of the federal and state regulators combined. Historically, they have existed on the periphery of land management. The author suggests that federal and state environmental regulators need to incorporate local governments into their environmental protection plans. Ecologically Based Municipal Land Use Planning provides easily understood, nuts and bolts solutions for controlling urban sprawl, emphasizing the integration of federal, state, and local land use plans. The book discusses ecological resources and provides practical solutions that municipal planners can implement immediately. It discusses the most recent scientific data, how to extract what is important, and how to apply it to the local land planning process. The author includes the application of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to problem solving. Despite compelling evidence and sound arguments favoring the implementation of an ecologically sensitive approach to land use planning, municipal planners, in general, remain skeptical. It will take considerably more encouragement and education to win them over completely. Ecologically Based Municipal Land Use Planning makes the case for sound land use policies that will reduce sprawl.

This compendium volume, Urban Land Use: Community-Based Planning, covers a range of land use planning and community engagement issues. Part I explores the connections between land use decisions and consequences for urban residents, particularly in the areas of health and health equity. The chapters in Part II provide a closer look at community land use planning practice in several case studies. Part III offers several practical and innovative tools for integrating community decisions into land use planning.

This book reconciles competing and sometimes contradictory forms of land use, while also promoting sustainable land use options. It highlights land use planning, spatial planning, territorial (or regional) planning, and ecosystem-based or environmental land use planning as tools that strengthen land governance. Further, it demonstrates how to use these types of land-use planning to improve economic opportunities based on sustainable management of land resources, and to develop land use options that strike a balance between conservation and development objectives. Competition for land is increasing as demand for multiple land uses and ecosystem services rises. Food security issues, renewable energy and emerging carbon markets are creating pressures for the conversion of agricultural land to other uses such as reforestation and biofuels. At the same time, there is a growing demand for land in connection with urbanization and recreation, mining, food production, and biodiversity conservation. Managing the increasing competition between these services, and balancing different stakeholders’ interests, requires efficient allocation of land resources.

The United States is struggling to control its sprawling land use patterns and to develop a unifying strategy of smart growth. The new millennium has brought with it greater popular understanding of this matter, and it is now known that land use law and practice directly address the problems associated with sprawl. In his new book, Well Grounded, Using Local Land Use Authority to Achieve Smart Growth, John R. Nolon explores the growing interest in land use law and practice that has been stimulated by the public's increasing disfavor with urban sprawl and its support of smart growth initiatives. For land use novices, the book's glossary defines technical terms and each chapter provides basic definitions of all topics before delving into more complicated applications of them. Well Grounded is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and practical reference for land use officials and professionals, academics, and citizens in all states.

Thirteen years ago, the first edition of Land-Use Planning for Sustainable Development examined the question: is the environmental doomsday scenario inevitable? It then presented the underlying concepts of sustainable land-use planning and an array of alternatives for modifying conventional planning for and regulation of the development of land. Th

In this book, a team of scholars from five universities shows how new experiments in growth management can reinvigorate land use planning and help local governments find new solutions to the problems caused by growth and change. Drawing on evidence from five states and scores of cities and counties, the authors show why the benefits of growth are not automatic. Much depends on how well states craft growth management legislation, how amply programs are funded, and how dedicated state officials are to working with localities. By building on these findings, they conclude, states and localities can improve their chances for coping successfully with land use change.