From Sprawl to Smart Growth: Successful Legal, Planning, and Environmental System

Rating:
Summary: Must Read On Urban Sprawl
Review: "From Sprawl To Smart Growth" belongs on the "must read" list of anyone working to combat urban sprawl. Bob Freilich brings 30 years of first-hand experience to this complex topic, and he tackles it with great enthusiasm and a unique historical perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Must Read On Urban Sprawl
Review: "From Sprawl To Smart Growth" belongs on the "must read" list of anyone working to combat urban sprawl. Bob Freilich brings 30 years of first-hand experience to this complex topic, and he tackles it with great enthusiasm and a unique historical perspective.

Rating:
Summary: baby steps
Review: As one of the other reviewers pointed out, this is a good introduction to modest, relatively noncontroversial things local governments can do to slow suburban sprawl, such as requiring development and infrastructure to move together. But I wish Freilich had been a little less optimistic, and focused more on how inadequate such steps sometimes are. For example, Portland and Minneapolis both have variations on urban growth boundaries, and Freilich praises the Minneapolis program. However, the Minneapolis program has basically been a failure: the Twin Cities keep losing people because the growth boundary includes far more land than the Portland version. Also, I would have emphasized that sprawl is a result not only of land use but of highway and education policy.

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Summary: New Sprawl Book Is Best Yet
Review: Finally, a book that really explains how growth management works. From Sprawl To Smart Growth details the important ways in which Bob Freilich has shaped successful growth management programs in this country.

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Summary: Combatting Urban Sprawl
Review: No one but Robert Freilich could maintain that the past 35 years of his life has been dedicated to combatting urban sprawl. When most of us hadn't graduated from law school, he was giving his own unique brand of "thoughtful consideration" to a critical issue which most communities had yet to recognize. Robert's book is an exceptionally informative volume, combining history of law, politics, and planning with a dash of autobiography. A great read!

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Summary: Managing Unbridled Sprawl
Review: Professor Freilich's book, From Sprawl To Smart Growth, is both timely and timeless. It arrives at a time when management of unbridled sprawl has never been higher on the political agendas of all levels of government. It is timeless because it offers a variety of options for effectively controlling urban growth that will be relevant far into the new millenium for fostering the livability of our American communities.

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Summary: Directing and Focusing Development
Review: This book provides an excellent introduction to the planning techniques for directing and focusing development available to state and local governments and a critical assessment of how they have been used in a variety of local and regional settings.At a time when state and local competition for available land has become increasingly intense, an understanding of the legal and policy bases of these approaches and the different ways in which they might be used in planning is critical to finding ways to accommodate legitimate public goals to the expectations of property owners.

Rating:
Summary: Directing and Focusing Development
Review: This book provides an excellent introduction to the planning techniques for directing and focusing development available to state and local governments and a critical assessment of how they have been used in a variety of local and regional settings.At a time when state and local competition for available land has become increasingly intense, an understanding of the legal and policy bases of these approaches and the different ways in which they might be used in planning is critical to finding ways to accommodate legitimate public goals to the expectations of property owners.