Product Description

Increasing numbers of Americans are fleeing cities and suburbs for the small towns and open spaces that surround national and state parks, wildlife refuges, historic sites, and other public lands. With their scenic beauty and high quality of life, these "gateway communities" have become a magnet for those looking to escape the congestion and fast tempo of contemporary American society.

Yet without savvy planning, gateway communities could easily meet the same fate as the suburban communities that were the promised land of an earlier generation. This volume can help prevent that from happening.

The authors offer practical and proven lessons on how residents of gateway communities can protect their community's identity while stimulating a healthy economy and safeguarding nearby natural and historic resources. They describe economic development strategies, land-use planning processes, and conservation tools that communities from all over the country have found effective. Each strategy or process is explained with specific examples, and numerous profiles and case studies clearly demonstrate how different communities have coped with the challenges of growth and development. Among the cities profiled are Boulder, Colorado; Townsend and Pittman Center Tennessee; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Tyrrell County, North Carolina; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Sanibel Island, Florida; Calvert County, Maryland; Tuscon, Arizona; and Mount Desert Island, Maine.

Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities provides important lessons in how to preserve the character and integrity of communities and landscapes without sacrificing local economic well-being. It is an important resource for planners, developers, local officials, and concerned citizens working to retain the high quality of life and natural beauty of these cities and towns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #896068 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
"...critical reading for the managers of parks and other public lands, as well as for the leaders in the communities..." -- Frances H. Kennedy, author of Dollar$ and Sense of Battlefield Protection

"...essential for anyone concerned with preserving community character and healthy natural systems while promoting a vibrant local economy." -- Lucy Blake, Sierra Business Council

"...highlights the practical, offers specific prescriptions, and emphasizes the positive opportunities of managing change..." -- William K. Reilly, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

About the Author
Jim Howe, formerly Director of Conservation Programs with the Sonoran Institute, now works with the Nature Conservancy in Rochester, New York. Ed McMahon is Director of Land Use Programs at The Conservation Fund in Arlington, Virginia. Luther Propst is Executive Director of the Sonoran Institute in Tuscon, Arizona.

Customer Reviews

An excellent resource
Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities is a must read for anyone who still believes that environmentalism and economic development are fundamentally opposed propositions. This book of case studies and analysis describes several successful ways in which communities created new jobs and economic opportunities while celebrating and protecting, rather than exploiting, their area's natural resources.

Case studies of overdevelopment, with some wishful thinking about community involvement
As the title suggests, this book addresses the challenges of gateway communities, defined as communities next to a national park, national forest, or national wildlife refuge. These communities are growing very rapidly, which risks damaging the natural resources that attract people there in the first place. The book emphasizes the problems that these communities face, and does not really address the effects on the resources (despite what the title might imply).

The analysis presents pretty standard stuff. They discuss economic growth and the trade-offs with quality of life, as well as the economic problems of a one-dimensional economy built on tourism. More than half the book consists of case studies from around the country. These case studies yield lessons about the importance of involving the local community, developing a vision for the community, getting information about the community's existing resources, building on local assets, and working with the adjacent parks as well as with non-governmental organizations. Conspicuous in their absence are the possibilities of working with business, state government, or adjacent communities.

I'm pretty skeptical of the kinds of solutions offered in this book. For example, the authors believe that community involvement in development is a panacea. I'm sure that it *can* help - - but such proposals can also create a situation in which outsiders (such as our authors) parachute into a community and act as if they know better than the locals. Remember, the growth wouldn't be happening in the first place unless many people in the community wanted it. An outsider trying to encourage community involvement in managing growth will probably have allies, but will also spark opposition from the people making money from growth.

Getting people involved can also surprise you. An urban planner friend of mine working with a depressed town was surprised when the local community wanted strip malls and fast food joints, which was not at all what she had in mind. From the standpoint of protecting natural resources, the community may well be part of the problem.

One might also quibble with the cases. For example, I was surprised to see Boulder presented as a success story, since I would view it as a failure. It's depressingly overdeveloped, looks like Anytown California, and its "successful" restrictions on further growth have simply caused that growth to spill over into its neighbors. This spillover makes existing traffic problems worse, as people drive from place to place.

In fact, the authors prefer to ignore the fact that limiting growth in one community often leads to the same undesirable growth happening next door instead. That may be good for the original community, but it's hardly good policy for a region or state.

Criticisms aside, the book has quite a bit of information about the challenges faced by the communities that they studied. It doesn't have so much information about the challenges in the nation as a whole; this is a book of case studies. It's a decent place to start when thinking about these problems.

A feel-good land use/planning guide
- A feel-good land use/planning guide produced by the Conservation Fund and the Sonoran Institute. Examples show how communities can work together to protect parks and environmental refuges..