Land Use Research Guide: Securing a Sufficient Housing Supply

Design family housing that only looks like it cost a fortune. Discover how America's most creative, resourceful builders and communities are solving affordable housing problems by applying the design and construction techniques detailed in Good Neighbors: Affordable Family Housing by Tome Jones, William Pettus, and Michael Pyotok. Filled with real-life examples ranging from small towns to inner-city locations, this hands-on resource gives you a brief history of affordable housing in the USA and shows you how to develop these units with a mix of government and private financing, you get revealing profiles of people who live in affordable housing. . .essential data on the factors that influence affordable housing design. . .and dozens of illustrated case studies of developments from coast to coast. The book showcases the work of William Tawn Associates, Cooper Robertson Partners, Marquis Associates, Solomon, Inc. and other innovative firms.

Written by the chair of the LEED-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) initiative, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature is both an urgent call to action and a comprehensive introduction to "sustainable urbanism"--the emerging and growing design reform movement that combines the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings.

Providing a historic perspective on the standards and regulations that got us to where we are today in terms of urban lifestyle and attempts at reform, Douglas Farr makes a powerful case for sustainable urbanism, showing where we went wrong, and where we need to go. He then explains how to implement sustainable urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Essays written by Farr and others delve into such issues as:

• Increasing sustainability through density.
• Integrating transportation and land use.
• Creating sustainable neighborhoods, including housing, car-free areas, locally-owned stores, walkable neighborhoods, and universal accessibility.
• The health and environmental benefits of linking humans to nature, including walk-to open spaces, neighborhood stormwater systems and waste treatment, and food production.
• High performance buildings and district energy systems.

Enriching the argument are in-depth case studies in sustainable urbanism, from BedZED in London, England and Newington in Sydney, Australia, to New Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, California and Dongtan, Shanghai, China. An epilogue looks to the future of sustainable urbanism over the next 200 years.

At once solidly researched and passionately argued, Sustainable Urbanism is the ideal guidebook for urban designers, planners, and architects who are eager to make a positive impact on our--and our descendants'--buildings, cities, and lives.

Healthy Cities looks at the design of communities in the United States as mandated by law and how that design affects the delivery and cost of health care. This book recommends modifications to reduce health care costs, assure an adequate health infrastructure, and increase disease and trauma prevention through improved urban planning mechanisms. Healthy Cities is the first book in the fields of public health and urban planning to explore legal mechanisms to integrate health and urban design policy. American urban design contributes to obesity, air pollution, and traffic congestion. Imagine if our communities were designed for health, fitness, and convenience. Can housing and neighborhoods be designed for pleasant walks and car-free living? Can streets be tree-lined and attractive? Can pedestrians enjoy their surroundings and experience rather than being sandwiched between traffic and parking lots?

High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post-World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Project is the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex.

Venkatesh draws on his relationships with tenants, gang members, police officers, and local organizations to offer an intimate portrait of an inner-city community that journalists and the public have only viewed from a distance. Challenging the conventional notion of public housing as a failure, this startling book re-creates tenants' thirty-year effort to build a safe and secure neighborhood: their political battles for services from an indifferent city bureaucracy, their daily confrontation with entrenched poverty, their painful decisions about whether to work with or against the street gangs whose drug dealing both sustained and imperiled their lives.

American Project explores the fundamental question of what makes a community viable. In his chronicle of tenants' political and personal struggles to create a decent place to live, Venkatesh brings us to the heart of the matter.

This comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to urban planning and design in America analyzes key projects initiated in 250 U.S. urban areas and details which strategies and programs were successful and which failed.

New to the Second Edition:
* New sections on stadiums, entertainment centers, business improvement districts, tax credit housing
* Checklists and tables for field use
* A review of recent failures and successes

This classic reference, fully revised for the new millennium, provides proven strategies for professionals and invaluable real-world insights for students.