Customer Reviews

Growth Management for a Sustainable Future: Ecological Sustainability as the New Growth Management Focus for the 21st Century

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The entire membership of the American Planning Association, every "professional" practicing planner, and every elected official from the local on down to the federal level should read this book. Current growth management efforts that are popping up all over the U.S. serve only as other examples of how our society continues to ignore the real roots of our problems. Growth management does not address carrying capacity or sustainability, instead it is another clever "band-aid" solution to societal ills. Until folks wake up, take action, clean-up corporate America and its destruction of all living organisms (yes, that includes humans!), and their own comsumptive and reproductive practices the picture for the future will only continue to look worse. Essentially, Zovanyi's book is a call for action and a challenge to anyone engaged in the planning profession to dare try anything different than its constant perpetuation of the "there's infinite growth" status quo camp of bureaucrats and special interest money from irresponsible corporations and their greedy businessmen.

The author has a great command of the planning profession as well as case law and its influence on growth patterns in the United States. As someone involved in land use and planning, but not a professional planner I found the book well written and easy to understand. I appreciate the authors argument and concern, however, I was left very disappointed with his concluding chapter as being too radical to every be taken seriously enough to be implemented. Maybe that's the point! We may not open our eyes to his thesis in time to sustain a sustainable future.