Despite the widespread acceptance of good design and planning principles throughout development professions, too many towns and rural areas remain needlessly unattractive and inefficient. Written by Randall Arendt, Envisioning Better Communities: Seeing More Options, Making Wiser Choices illustrates how local officials, planning commissioners, developers, building owners, and residents can work to make their communities more attractive, more habitable and more sustainable. In a side-by-side comparisons of similar places and kinds of buildings, Arendt shows that people need not live amid sprawling, characterless visual blight. Simple design choices and enlightened municipal and private sector decisions can have tremendous impacts on the quality of communities. The book’s main parts cover five topics: balancing development and conservation; conservation subdivision design; residential neighborhood design principles; improving downtown appearance and viability; and transforming highway commercial strips into mixed-use centers and corridors. The book’s writing style and layout make it useful for a wide audience involved with or interested in achieving sustainable and livable communities.

Envisioning Better Communities, published by the American Planning Association (APA) Planners Press and ULI, provides an easy-to-use reference for protecting and enhancing the character and design of metro-edge and rural communities.

To purchase Envisioning Better Communities: Seeing More Options, Making Wiser Decisions, click here.

Source: ULI – News You Can Use