LibGuides: Smart Growth/Town Planning: Home

About

Welcome to the GCLS Smart Growth/New Urbanism Guide.

This guide provides easy access to authoritative information regarding Smart Growth and New Urbanism.

What is Smart Growth/New Urbanism?

"Smart growth" covers a range of development and conservation strategies that help protect our natural environment and make our communities more attractive, economically stronger, and more socially diverse. - https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth

New Urbanism is the revival of our lost art of place-making, and is essentially a re-ordering of the built environment into the form of complete cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods - the way communities have been built for centuries around the world. - http://www.newurbanism.org/

Selected Websites

American Planning Association
The American Planning Association and its professional institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners, are dedicated to advancing the art, science and profession of good planning — physical, economic and social — to create communities that offer better choices for where and how people work and live.
American Society of Civil Engineers
ASCE stands at the forefront of a profession that plans, designs, constructs, and operates society’s economic and social engine – the built environment – while protecting and restoring the natural environment.
CityLab
CityLab is dedicated to the people who are creating the cities of the future—and those who want to live there. Through sharp analysis, original reporting, and visual storytelling, our coverage focuses on the biggest ideas and most pressing issues facing the world’s metro areas and neighborhoods.
Congress for the New Urbanism
The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the leading organization promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, sustainable communities and healthier living conditions.
EPA: Smart Growth
EPA helps communities grow in ways that expand economic opportunity, protect public health and the environment, and create and enhance the places that people love. Through research, tools, partnerships, case studies, grants, and technical assistance, EPA is helping America's communities turn their visions of the future into reality.
KunstlerCast
The KunstlerCast is a weekly audio program (and now a book) about “the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.” Featuring: James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, the World Made By Hand novels, and other books about suburbia, cities and American culture. Duncan Crary, host/producer, speaks with Kunstler weekly about the failure of suburbia and the inevitable end of this living arrangement with no future.
National Complete Streets Coalition
A nationwide movement launched by the National Complete Streets Coalition in 2004, Complete Streets integrates people and place in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of our transportation networks. The Coalition promotes the development and implementation of policies and professional practices that ensure streets are safe for people of all ages and abilities, balance the needs of different modes, and support local land uses, economies, cultures, and natural environments.
New Jersey FIT: Future In Transportation
NJFIT is about improving the quality of life, safety and ease of travel for New Jersey citizens through making smart, lasting investments in its communities.
Next City
Next City is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities by creating media and events around the world.
NJ Bike & Walk Coalition
http://www.newjerseybikewalk.org/
NJ Safe Routes to School
The NJ SRTS Resource Center and New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center assist public officials, transportation and health professionals, and the general public in creating a safer and more accessible walking and bicycling environment through primary research, education and dissemination of information about best practices in policy and design. The Centers are supported by the New Jersey Department of Transportation through funds provided by the Federal Highway Administration.
Planetizen
Planetizen is a public-interest information exchange for the urban planning, design, and development community. It is a one-stop source for urban planning news, editorials, book reviews, announcements, jobs, education, and more.

Planetizen prides itself on covering a wide number of planning, design, and development issues, from transportation to climate change, architecture to infrastructure, housing and community development to historic preservation. We provide a forum for people across the political and ideological spectrum, ensuring a healthy debate on these and other important issues.
Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is the central hub of the global Placemaking movement, connecting people to ideas, expertise, and partners who share a passion for creating vital places.
PUBLIC SQUARE: A CNU Journal
A publication dedicated to illuminating and cultivating best practices in urbanism in the US and beyond. Powered by the Congress for the New Urbanism, Public Square is built to add depth and rigor to the practice of urbanism and improve our capacity for creating to build inclusive, resilient places—places that people love.
Sierra Club: Sprawl and Population
Suburban sprawl has been rightly blamed for many things: destroying green space, increasing air and water pollution, fracturing our neighborhoods and forcing us to drive gridlocked roads for every chore. But there is one consequence that usually goes unmentioned - sprawl is draining our pocketbooks and raising our taxes.
Smart Growth America
Smart Growth America advocates for people who want to live and work in great neighborhoods. We believe smart growth solutions support thriving businesses and jobs, provide more options for how people get around and make it more affordable to live near work and the grocery store. Our coalition works with communities to fight sprawl and save money. We are making America’s neighborhoods great together.
StreetsBlog USA
Streetsblog is a daily news source connecting people to information about sustainable transportation and livable communities.

Since 2006, Streetsblog has covered the movement to transform our cities by reducing dependence on private automobiles and improving conditions for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders. Our reporters have broken important stories about transit funding, pedestrian safety, and bicycle policy from day one. And our writing makes arcane topics like parking prices and induced traffic accessible to a broad audience.
Strong Towns
Strong Towns is a non-profit organization working to support a model of development that allows America's cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient.
SmartCities Dive
SmartCities Dive is an editorially independent, moderated community for leaders of major metropolitan areas, urban planning and sustainability professionals. We look to aggregate content and provide resources for all who work in or are interested in urban planning, sustainable development and urban economics. Looking at issues such as transportation, building practices, community planning & development, education, water, health and infrastructure, we hope to create a community where people can get involved and learn about the advances in how cities are becoming smarter and greener in the 21st century.
Transportation Alternatives
Transportation Alternatives is a non-profit organization in New York City which seeks to change New York City's transportation priorities to encourage and increase non-polluting, quiet, city-friendly travel and decrease private car use.
Walk Score
Walk Score's mission is to promote walkable neighborhoods. Walkable neighborhoods are one of the simplest and best solutions for the environment, our health, and our economy.

GCLS Catalog Search

Everything Catalog Only

Selected Books Available at GCLS

The End of the Suburbs by Leigh Gallagher
ISBN: 9781591845256
According to Fortune’s Leigh Gallagher, powerful social, economic, and demographic forces are converging to render the suburbs unnecessary, and even undesirable, for an everincreasing number of Americans.

Gallagher introduces us to a cast of innovators who are redefining the American dream away from the traditional bucolic subdivision. She reveals why the decline of the suburbs isn’t a tragedy, but will ultimately lead to stronger, happier, and healthier communities for all of us
Walkable City by Jeff Speck
ISBN: 9780865477728
Speck, coauthor of Suburban Nation (2000), believes America has a problem—actually, lots of problems—that can be solved by improving walkability in our cities. Public health, sustainability, and even the lagging economy, he argues, can be boosted by making cities more friendly for pedestrians. Drawing on his background as a city planner and architectural designer, Speck lays out a 10-step plan for changing the way we build and think about our public spaces. The steps are wide-ranging, from planting more trees and narrowing roads to investing in well-planned public transit systems and designing visually interesting buildings. An engaging book with a powerful message and achievable goals.
The Sprawl Repair Manual by Galina Tachieva
ISBN: 9781597267328
The Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building. The Sprawl Repair Manual is a much-needed, single-volume reference for fixing sprawl, incorporating changes into the regulatory system, and implementing repairs through incentives and permitting strategies. This manual specifies the expertise that’s needed and details the techniques and algorithms of sprawl repair within the context of reducing the financial and ecological footprint of urban growth.
Americans Against the City by Steven Conn
ISBN: 9780199973668
In this provocative and sweeping book, Conn explores the anti-urban impulse across the 20th century, examining how the ideas born of it have shaped both the places in which Americans live and work, and the anti-government politics so strong today. Beginning in the booming industrial cities of the Progressive era at the turn of the 20th century, where debate surrounding these questions first arose, Conn examines the progression of anti-urban movements. Concluding with an exploration of the New Urbanist experiments at the turn of the 21st century, Conn demonstrates the full breadth of the anti-urban impulse, from its inception to the present day. Engagingly written, thoroughly researched, and forcefully argued, Americans Against the City is important reading for anyone who cares not just about the history of our cities, but about their future as well.
The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg
ISBN: 9781569246818
The Great Good Place argues that "third places" - where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation - are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.