This timely Research Handbook examines the evolution of smart growth over the past three decades, mapping the trajectory from its original principles to its position as an important paradigm in urban planning today. Critically analysing the original concept of smart growth and how it has been embedded in state and local plans, contributions from top scholars in the field illustrate what smart growth has accomplished since its conception, as well as to what extent it has achieved its goals. Providing an overview of the history of smart growth, the book further examines its changing governance over time, and the new horizons for smart growth, exploring ways to confront contemporary challenges in urban planning. Illuminating key issues in the field, from urban sprawl to gentrification, that the original principles failed to address, this insightful Handbook advocates for the expansion of smart growth principles to meet the emerging challenges of the modern world, concluding with an agenda for a "smart growth 2.0". Informative and comprehensive, this Handbook will prove to be essential reading for researchers, academics and students of urban planning. Its proposals for the future evolution of smart growth will also serve as an accessible and up-to-date reference point for urban planning professionals, activists and policymakers.

This unique book allows readers to compare analyses of how North American states and European nation-states use incentives, regulations or plans to approach a core set of universal land use issues such as: containing sprawl, mixed use development, transit oriented development, affordable housing, healthy urban designs, and marketing smarter growth. The concept of smart growth has gained in popularity in many countries around the world. From Europe to Asia to North America, planners, citizens, and policy makers have come to realize that patterns of urban development not only matter, but can affect the quality of life of every urban and rural resident. Comparing the approaches and results of policies in different locations is a logical way to assess policy success. While similarities and differences provide the foundation for trans-Atlantic comparisons, the contributions in this book focus on three central themes: smart growth, the role of states and nation-states, and the use of incentives, regulations and plans. Incentives, Regulations and Plans will find an audience in the United States, Canada and Europe, especially from those interested in architecture, planning, engineering, urban studies, agriculture and public policy.

This volume embodies a problem-driven and theoretically informed approach to bridging frontier research in urban economics and urban/regional planning. The authors focus on the interface between these two subdisciplines that have historically had an uneasy relationship.
Although economists were among the early contributors to the literature on urban planning, many economists have been dismissive of a discipline whose leading scholars frequently favor regulations over market institutions,
equity over efficiency, and normative prescriptions over positive analysis. Planners, meanwhile, even as they draw upon economic principles, often view the work of economists as abstract, not sensitive to institutional contexts, and communicated in a formal language spoken by few with decision making authority. Not surprisingly, papers in the leading economic journals rarely cite clearly pertinent papers in planning journals, and vice versa.
Despite the historical divergence in perspectives and methods, urban economics and urban planning share an intense interest in many topic areas: the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the efficient provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and
environmental uses. In bridging this gap, the book highlights the best scholarship in planning and economics that address the most pressing urban problems of our day and stimulates further dialog between scholars in urban planning and urban economics.