For America's rural and suburban areas, new challenges demand new solutions. Author Randall Arendt meets them in an entirely new edition of Rural by Design. When this planning classic first appeared 20 years ago, it showed how creative, practical land-use planning can preserve open space and keep communit

Because the world of community planning has evolved over the past two decades, the new edition of this book has been re-tooled and largely rewritten to reflect changes in land development patterns across the U.S., providing a greater amount of information on a wider range of topics. This edition expands coverage of town centers, commercial corridors, housing options, village and hamlet planning, and individual case studies. It also contains entirely new chapters on subjects not addressed in the first edition: form-based coding, visioning, sustainability, low-impact development, green infrastructure networks, and transfers of development rights. Additional new topics addressed include complete streets, pocket neighborhoods, official mapping, gateway planning, redeveloping commercial corridors, mitigation banking, vernal pool protection, waterway day-lighting, and restoring wetlands, grasslands, woodlands, and floodplains. Seventy new case studies have been also added to enrich the learning experience.

Randall Arendt's work has shaped a generation of planners, designers, and landscape architects. In Envisioning Better Communities, he brings his insights to a broader public, with a profusely illustrated demonstration of how local officials, planning commissioners, and everyday citizens can work to make their communities more attractive, more habitable, and more sustainable. Despite the widespread acceptance of good design and planning principles throughout the professions, too many of our towns and rural areas remain needlessly ugly and inefficient. In side by side comparisons of similar places and kinds of buildings, Arendt shows that we need not live amid sprawling, characterless visual blight. Simple design choices and effective municipal decisions can have tremendous impacts on the quality of our communities. Written in Arendt's well-known clear, accessible, nontechnical style, this book creates a sense of hope for those who face the everyday challenges of working with developers and landowners to create places that make economic, environmental, and aesthetic sense.Arendt shows us that with diligence, thoughtfulness, and care, we can make our communities better in countless ways.