The recent recession is one result of how local planning laws and practices have stifled competition, discouraged innovation, and artificially pushed up prices in America's most economically vibrant regions. Economist and consultant Claude Gruen unravels the story behind how these unintended consequences have resulted from the evolution of local zoning, growth controls, and laws intended to increase housing affordability. New Urban Development traces how locally induced housing cost increases led federal policy-makers to toss out the safeguards against lending excesses that had been put in place during the 1930s. But the story begins much earlier, during the colonial era, continuing up through the mortgage collapse that ushered in the recession of 2008. In his sweeping history of these issues, Gruen considers gentrification, environmentalism, sprawl, anti-sprawl movements, and more. His clarification of how urban development change occurs backs up his recommendations for increasing the production of housing and replacing obsolete commercial and industrial spaces with development that serves the twenty-first-century economy. New Urban Development specifies thirteen changes to policies at the federal, state, and local levels to provide better and less expensive urban housing, desirable neighborhoods, and thriving workplaces across the country.

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.

Housing policy not only aff ects all Americans' quality of life, but has a direct impact on their fi nancial well being. About 70 percent of American households own their own homes, and for most, their homes represent the majority of their net worth. Renters are aff ected by housing policy. Even the small minority of Americans who are homeless are aff ected by housing policies specifi cally targeted to low-income individuals.The government's increasing involvement in housing markets, fed by popular demand that government "do something" to address real problems of mortgage defaults and loans, provides good reason to take a new look at the public sector in housing markets. Crises in prime mortgage lending may lower the cost of housing, but the poor and homeless cannot benefi t because of increases in unemployment. Even the private market is heavily regulated. Government policies dictate whether people can build new housing on their land, what type of housing they can build, the terms allowed in rental contracts, and much more.This volume considers the eff ects of government housing policies and what can be done to make them work better. It shows that many problems are the result of government rules and regulations. Even in a time of foreclosures, the market can still do a crucial a job of allocating resources, just as it does in other markets. Consequently, the appropriate policy response may well be to signifi cantly reduce, not increase, government presence in housing markets. Housing America is a courageous and comprehensive eff ort to examine housing policies in the United States and to show how such policies aff ect the housing market.

City and Regional Planning provides a clearly written and lavishly illustrated overview of the theory and practice of city and regional planning. With material on globalization and the world city system, and with examples from a number of countries, the book has been written to meet the needs of readers worldwide who seek an overview of city and regional planning. Chapters cover the history of cities and city and regional planning, urban design and placemaking, comprehensive plans, planning politics and plan implementation, planning visions, and environmental, transportation, and housing planning. The book pays special attention to diversity, social justice, and collaborative planning. Topics include current practice in resilience, transit-oriented development, complexity in planning, spatial equity, globalization, and advances in planning methods. It is aimed at U.S. graduate and undergraduate city and regional planning, geography, urban design, urban studies, civil engineering, and other students and practitioners. It includes extensive material on current practice in planning for climate change. Each chapter includes a case study, a biography of an important planner, lists of concepts and important people, and a list of books, articles, videos, and other suggestions for further learning.

A Time 100 Must-Read Book of 2020 • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • California Book Award Silver Medal in Nonfiction • Finalist for The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism • Named a top 30 must-read Book of 2020 by the New York Post • Named one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2020 by Fortune • Named A Must-Read Book of 2020 by Apartment Therapy • Runner-Up General Nonfiction: San Francisco Book Festival • A Planetizen Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice “Tells the story of housing in all its complexity.” —NPR Spacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. Nowhere is this more visible than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties of the homeless. The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation’s future has become a cautionary tale. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty chronicles America’s housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist movements that have risen in tandem with housing costs.