This excerpted chapter is from a "fix-it manual" for citizen planners working on improving their towns or neighborhoods.
Real Towns is a handbook for real people - people who live in small towns, new suburbs or big cities; in downtown neighborhoods, historic districts or high-rise condos. This fix-it manual can help citizens working on real neighborhoods - places filled with character, families, and history, with people who want to make their communites work better. It gives local government officials, developers and citizen activists the tools needed to apply time-tested principles to revitalize their neighborhoods."This is a fix-it manual for working on real towns or neighborhoods - places filled with character, with families, with history, filled with people who want to make them better. Making towns work isn't exactly rocket science. It is often more complicated -- but some of the basic truths are very simple. Just as owner-builders can learn how to work on their houses, citizens can learn how to work on their communities. The obvious place to start is by looking at the parts that aren't working well, figuring out how they are interrelated, and diagnosing how to fix them together." The Citizen Planner has become an integral chapter in the recently-released book, Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work (Local Government Commission and Citizen Planner Institute, 2000). [Thanks to "Real Towns" author Harrison Bright Rue for contributing the book summary.]
Thanks to The Practice of New Urbanism
FULL STORY: The Citizen Planner

Florida Considers Legalizing ADUs
Current state law allows — but doesn’t require — cities to permit accessory dwelling units in single-family residential neighborhoods.

Manufactured Crisis: Losing the Nation’s Largest Source of Unsubsidized Affordable Housing
Manufactured housing communities have long been an affordable housing option for millions of people living in the U.S., but that affordability is disappearing rapidly. How did we get here?

HUD Announces Plan to Build Housing on Public Lands
The agency will identify federally owned parcels appropriate for housing development and streamline the regulatory process to lease or transfer land to housing authorities and nonprofit developers.

EPA Terminates $116 Million in Grants for Reducing Emissions from Construction Materials
C-MORE grants were earmarked for industry trade groups and universities.

BART Closes $35 Million Deficit
Cost control and revenue generation measures prevented service cuts.

The New Parisian Hearse is a Bicycle
Sleek, silent, and sustainable, a green trip to the graveyard has hit the streets of the French capital.
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