The Smart Growth Manual 1st Edition
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With their landmark book Suburban Nation, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck "set forth more clearly than anyone has done in our time the elements of good town planning" (The New Yorker). With this long-awaited companion volume, the authors have organized the latest contributions of new urbanism, green design, and healthy communities into a comprehensive handbook, fully illustrated with the built work of the nation's leading practitioners.
"The Smart Growth Manual is an indispensable guide to city planning. This kind of progressive development is the only way to fully restore our economic strength and create new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete in the first rank of world economies." -- Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco
"Authors Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon have created The Smart Growth Manual, a resource which not only explains the overarching ideals of smart growth, but a manual that takes the time to show smart growth principles at each geographic scale (region, neighborhood, street, building). I highly recommend [it] as a part of any community participant’s or urban planner’s desktop references." -- LocalPlan.org
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Andres Duany, FAIA, CNU, is a founding principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ). DPZ is a leader of the New Urbanism, an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. Since 1980, DPZ has designed more than 300 new towns, regional plans, and community revitalization projects. Duany is cofounder of the Congress for New Urbanism and the recipient of several honorary doctorates and awards, including the National Building Museum’s Vincent J. Scully Prize and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize.
Jeff Speck AICP, CNU, LEED-AP, Hon. ASLA, spent 10 years as director of town planning at DPZ, where he led or managed more than 40 of the firm’s projects. Subsequent to the publication of Suburban Nation, he was appointed director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, a program that brings smart growth techniques to state leadership. After four years at the Endowment, he founded Speck & Associates, a design consultancy serving public officials and the real estate industry. He is a contributing editor to Metropolis magazine.
Mike Lydon CNU, is an urban planner, writer, and livable streets activist. Before founding The Street Plans Collaborative, an urban planning firm specializing in alternative transportation and the public realm, he worked for DPZ, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and Smart Growth Vermont. He is currently a Next American City Urban Vanguard and serves as a board member for the Miami Bicycle Coalition.
About the Author
Andres Duany, FAIA, CNU, is a founding principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ). DPZ is a leader of the New Urbanism, an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. Since 1980, DPZ has designed more than 300 new towns, regional plans, and community revitalization projects. Duany is cofounder of the Congress for New Urbanism and the recipient of several honorary doctorates and awards, including the National Building Museum’s Vincent J. Scully Prize and the Richard H. Driehaus Prize.
Jeff Speck AICP, CNU, LEED-AP, Hon. ASLA, spent 10 years as director of town planning at DPZ, where he led or managed more than 40 of the firm’s projects. Subsequent to the publication of Suburban Nation, he was appointed director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, a program that brings smart growth techniques to state leadership. After four years at the Endowment, he founded Speck & Associates, a design consultancy serving public officials and the real estate industry. He is a contributing editor to Metropolis magazine.
Mike Lydon CNU, is an urban planner, writer, and livable streets activist. Before founding The Street Plans Collaborative, an urban planning firm specializing in alternative transportation and the public realm, he worked for DPZ, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and Smart Growth Vermont. He is currently a Next American City Urban Vanguard and serves as a board member for the Miami Bicycle Coalition.
Jeff Speck (Miami, FL), is the Director of Town Planning for Duany Plater-Zyberk. They are the coauthors of the acclaimed book suburban Nation (published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux in 2000).
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Product details
- Publisher : McGraw Hill; 1st edition (October 15, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0071376755
- ISBN-13 : 978-0071376754
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 7.2 x 0.55 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #152,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #81 in Urban & Land Use Planning (Books)
- #103 in Urban Planning and Development
- #104 in City Planning & Urban Development
- Customer Reviews:
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More than that, though, the content is minimal. Text covers at most 30-40% of each page, so at 1 topic/page, no topic receives more than 100-200 words or so. The advice is often extremely general, e.g., "Identify and rank the areas best suited for growth," "Provide {bigger buildings; apartments; lofts; live/work buildings; etc. } in the appropriate locations," or "Design buildings to have good air quality."
The book appears to be more for beginners who haven't previously thought much about regional or urban planning -- and who don't mind paying for such a miserably produced work. I can't claim that more experienced readers will find it a precisely 100% waste of time (whence 2 stars), but the signal:noise ratio is low. Particularly if you live outside the US in a country with a long history (I live in Japan), note that this book has next to nothing about conserving and living with the past. In that regard, Italian planning ideas are much more sophisticated.
an addition after a few years: One of the virtues of this book is that it consists of bite size, one- page, picture and text presentation of principles. It is a necklace of beautifully written pearls , each readable alone. It can be picked up and absorbed in brief 5 minute readings. And it is relevant to anyone's life, so it can be read by any person interested in improving our communities, i.e. anyone from 13 to 99 years old.
If the authors ever read customer comments, I would like to suggest the following should the book be updated:
1. Our country's population is growing, but it also aging. Over the next 20 years, the aging of the population may be more significant to planners than "just" growth (which is inevitable, despite the silly claims of other reviewers). There has to be a "Smart Aging" perspective this country needs to adopt because older Americans have different needs--not lesser needs, different needs that should be addressed.
2. Include a section on the behavioral side of Smart Growth--while a necessary component of getting people out of their cars, design by itself is insufficient to get people out of their cars. What incentives, what kind of education and outreach needs to take place for the public and, perhaps most importantly, elected officials. Most local officials aren't particularly brave. They need help.
I would specially point out its nicely exposed logical ordered of the elements of the city which brings their interconection without needing to explain it; very clear, brief and understandable definition of the elements and the concepts to consider, and finally useful links to the technical references to take a look to.
Highly recommendable and a "keep in shelf" reference book!!







