Rural Planning

There is very little litterature and research on planning in the truely 'rural' regions of the country. Oh, sure there is plenty of information on 'rural' planning, but that is in the context of the suburban fring where the big concern is the conversion of farms lands into residential subdivisions and big box store parking lots. These are typically high density areas where residents are accustom to land use regulation. In the plains and mountain regions where the population denisity of many counties is less that 20 people per square mile, a planner is dealing with a much different set of issues. The land use conflict can be more philosophical than physical and private property rights are aggressively defended. There are significant hurdles in simply adopting a comprehensive plan let alone a zoning ordinance. Our educational institutions and our legal system (in the form of model planning and zoning statutes) have focused primarily on the urban populated base of the country. I am sure that any planner in the west recognizes or has experienced that their background education in urban planning is woefully lack in area of the truely 'rural' planning and that model planning and zoning ordinances designed for the urban core do not necessarily apply out here. Good luck on finding relevant reading materials developed in the United States. Not much exists. Western Euorpe, New Zealand and Austrailia seem to have a bit more on the subject matter.

There are three books I'd direct you to to get started:

The Small Town Planning Handbook, by Thomas Daniels, et al

True West, by Chris Duerksen and James Van Hemert

The Planning for Results Guidebook, by Lee Nellis and Karen Van Gilder

All three of these will give you great info that will help in rural western planning. All should be available on amazon or the APA bookstore. Good luck.