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Urban Land Use Planning
Urban Land Use Planning [1995].
Urban Land Use Planning, the book, has evolved and grown as a body of thought for over a half century. The Fourth Edition of Urban Land Use Planning presents the classic approaches to planning theory, city planning and practice. The Fourth Edition is chock full of tables and charts and checklists that provide the framework for comprehensive planning and planning for neighborhoods, downtowns, schools and parks. The fifth edition continues to improve the thought-process.
The City’s Economy: Plan for Prosperity
The city’s economy is designed as the power to harness and enhance the city through an economic policy that plans for success. It combines demographic analysis and economic development planning with long-range, comprehensive financial planning. Capital improvements for infrastructure are important economic development tools along with regulatory packages that provide for vision-consistent private investments in […]
Performance Management; The System for Learning and Innovation Organizations
Performance Management measures activities of the town government with the intent of improving performance; the best systems are not punitive, they are educational. Metrics matter. The system’s purpose is beyond auditing, it has a strong emphasis on learning and innovation. The transparent performance management system evaluates civic actions relative to the vision-driven strategy of the […]
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Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture [2000] by Ross King has given us a highly readable and fascinating story of an extraordinary fellow who produced an enduring work that all thought impossible. The strategic importance of locating civic and cultural buildings downtown becomes obvious. [embeddoc url=”http://www.theamericancity.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BR-Brunelleschis-Dome.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”] FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
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The 2014 Best-Performing Cities Report
Best Performing Cities is a report from the Milkin Institute [2014]. It reports where America’s jobs are created and sustained. The components used to calculate the Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities rankings form an index that measures growth in jobs, wages, salaries, and technology output over five years (2008-2013 for jobs and technology output, and 2007-2012 for wages […]
The Social Infrastructure Plan; An Aspiration of the City’s General Plan
The Social Infrastructure Plan is an important part of The General Plan. It is designed to leverage economic and physical assets to promote civility and sociability throughout the city. Enhancements to the town’s social capital can be programmed and measured. [embeddoc url=”http://www.theamericancity.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-Social-Infrastructure-Aspiration.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”] FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
Critical Thinking; Attributes of Creative Thought
Creative Thinking is a learned skill especially focused on the professions of law, medicine, architecture and planning. Creative thinking and systems thinking are the yin and yang of thoughtfulness; apparently conflicting but actually complementary. Creative thinking is about organic free-form exploration and associative ideating. Systems thinking is about structure and discipline. Like the duality of yin […]
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America’s 25 Most Sociable Cities
Sociable cities are generally character towns. The Social Business Report provides data and analysis on the factors that create settings for community sociability. Civility and sociability are the end result desired by city leaders, residents, business owners and visitors and the product of their nurturing work to set values that are commonly accepted, patterns of behavior […]
A Ton of Greenhouse Gas
A Ton of Carbon Dioxide Gas is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Reports indicate that about 30 billion tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere annually; it seems unfathomable to 30 billion VW Beetles floating aloft each year. This seemingly invisible gas is the by-products of urban life. The sources of CO2 and other Greenhouse […]
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Tomorrow-Land, The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America [2014].
Tomorrow-land by Joseph Tirella gives us a page turner; you want to read every page in this book and every paragraph on every page. The story is valuable. The stream of the book is the conception and execution of the New York World’s Fair that ran for two years in Queens, 1964 and 1965; but the […]