Suburb : planning politics and the public interest /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Hanson, Royce, author.
Imprint:Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017.
©2017
Description:1 online resource (xiv, 310 pages)
Language:English
Subject:City planning -- Political aspects -- Maryland -- Silver Spring.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)
City planning -- Political aspects.
Politics and government.
Silver Spring (Md.) -- Politics and government.
Maryland -- Silver Spring.
Electronic books.
Electronic books.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11676100
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781501708084
1501708082
9781501708077
1501708074
9781501705250
1501705253
9781501705250
Digital file characteristics:text file PDF
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
In English.
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on November 16, 2017).
Summary:Land-use policy is at the center of suburban political economies because everything has to happen somewhere but nothing happens by itself. In Suburb, Royce Hanson explores how well a century of strategic land-use decisions served the public interest in Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Transformed from a rural hinterland into the home a million people and a half-million jobs, Montgomery County built a national reputation for innovation in land use policy--including inclusive zoning, linking zoning to master plans, preservation of farmland and open space, growth management, and transit-oriented development. A pervasive theme of Suburb involves the struggle for influence over land use policy between two virtual suburban republics. Developers, their business allies, and sympathetic officials sought a virtuous cycle of market-guided growth in which land was a commodity and residents were customers who voted with their feet. Homeowners, environmentalists, and their allies saw themselves as citizens and stakeholders with moral claims on the way development occurred and made their wishes known at the ballot box. In a book that will be of particular interest to planning practitioners, attorneys, builders, and civic activists, Hanson evaluates how well the development pattern produced by decades of planning decisions served the public interest.
Other form:Print version: Hanson, Royce. Suburb. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017 9781501705250
Standard no.:10.7591/9781501708084
Review by Choice Review

This is an examination of the history of the Montgomery County, Maryland, planning process, in cooperation with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Montgomery County is unique, perhaps, in having a long-term process for determining its future, yet its history is replete with conflicts over the balance between large investments, small and larger homes, and the land reserved for agricultural uses. The regimes that determined these over the past century are the informal arrangements by which private bodies and public agencies carried out the governing decisions for the county. Four regimes presided during this time: that overseen by E. Brooke Lee from 1916 until the 1950s; the builders and bar regime that dominated until about 1970; the progressive regime that followed it, which sought to translate its symbols into policy; and the most recent pure political regime, which lacked a single vision for integrating the planners' views with the many participants. The county has done quite well in its many planning ventures, the author concludes. The survey gives little attention to other counties' planning efforts and is limited to Montgomery County alone. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. --William C. Johnson, independent scholar

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review