Includes entries for maps and atlases.

Facing cutbacks in federal and state assistance and a new wave of taxpayer revolts, local governments have renewed interest in local government consolidation as a way of achieving efficiencies of scale in response to citizen demands for services. Yet the vast majority of consolidation efforts fail, either during the process of drafting a charter or once they reach the ballot - only five have passed since 1990; only thirty-two have been successfully implemented since the first, when the city of New Orleans merged with Orleans Parish in 1805. What accounts for the high failure rate and what factors led to successful consolidations? This volume presents thirteen comparable case studies of consolidation campaigns and distills the findings.

State-by-state listings and explanations of municipal landscape ordinances In U.S. Landscape Ordinances, Buck Abbey furnishes landscape architects, planners, land-use attorneys, and students with a much-needed resource. This state-by-state presentation demystifies the complex planning laws and ordinances that determine landscape design parameters for more than 300 American cities. The author highlights sections of each ordinance that pertain to landscape architecture, boils the legalese down to plain English, explains the law's main purpose and regulatory function, and spells out the practical implications from a design perspective. With the help of more than fifty diagrams and drawings that clarify complex spatial concepts, U.S. Landscape Ordinances reviews the entire spectrum of green laws currently on the books, including ordinances that cover: * Parking lots and vehicular use areas * Landscape buffers and screens * Street tree plantings * Open space design * Irrigation * Land clearing and building sites The product of ten years of painstaking research and analysis, U.S. Landscape Ordinances is a unique and invaluable tool for professionals in landscape design and municipal planning. It also offers a deep reservoir of information for students, municipal legislators, community activists, and anyone interested in understanding or developing a community's landscape ordinances.