Smarter Land Use, by Karl Kehde
Review by Eric Miller
Sometimes it goes like this: you’re living your life peacefully, taking care of your home, and being a general good citizen when a letter, red flag, newspaper article, surveyor, or even construction equipment alerts you to a planned project that rattles your world.
Smarter Land Use is a book aimed at making sure things don’t happen that way. If you’ve ever been in the heat of a project planning meeting, you know the fireworks fly, different interests are demonized, and its hard to come to an acceptable compromise. Kehde, however, shows there are ways to make the meetings productive, and ways to devise projects and solutions that benefit all interests.
The book is in an educational “how-to” format aimed at teaching how to design projects to improve neighborhoods, turn hostility into productive collaboration, reduce traffic congestion, revise projects so they enhance the environment, and generate master plans that have public support.
The book includes a glossary, forms, procedures, and other tools that can help you go from the stage of alarmed couch potato to effective community advocate. Includes audio and video cd.
Available through Atlas Books.
