Better, Not Bigger: How To Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community

If You Have Had Enough Of Endless Growth, And Want To Do Something About It, Then Better Not Bigger: How To Take Control Of Urban Growth And Improve Your Community Is The Resource You've Been Searching For. Exploding The Myth That Growth Is Good For Us, This Book Clearly And Convincingly Shows How Urban Growth Can, In Fact, Leave Our Communities Permanently Scarred, And Saddled With Very High Costs. Lively, Accessible, And Packed With Insights, Ideas, Tools, And Resources, Better Not Bigger Is For Both The Professional Planner And The Ordinary Citizen. The Endangered Landscape -- Meet The Urban Growth Machine -- The Twelve Big Myths Of Growth -- The Truth About Jobs, Housing And Growth -- Discovering The Real Cost Of Growth In Your Community -- Putting The Brakes On Growth : What Works? -- The New Millennium Community. Eben Fodor. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 162-169) Contrary to accepted wisdom, rapid urban growth can leave communities permanently scarred, deeply in debt, with unaffordable housing, a lost sense of community, and sacrificed environmental quality. In Better NOT Bigger, Fodor explodes the fundamental myth that growth is good for us and that more development will bring in more tax money, add jobs, lower housing costs, and reduce property taxes. Lively and well-illustrated, Better NOT Bigger provides insights, ideas, and tools to empower citizens to switch off their local "growth machine" by debunking the pro-growth rhetoric. Highly accessible t Cover 1 Title Page 2 Rights Page 3 Contents 4 Where Are You on the Growth Spectrum? 5 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 9 Chapter 1 18 Chapter 2 30 Chapter 3 39 Chapter 4 61 Chapter 5 78 Chapter 6 105 Chapter 7 141 Chapter Notes 155 Appendix A 163 Appendix B 171 Index 176 About the Author 184