Creating Successful Communities: A Guidebook to Growth Management Strategies

Developed for civic activists, policymakers, and planners, this useful volume gives practical guidelines for developing workable action plans for restoring distinctiveness and livability to communities, and provides strategies for effective participation in growth-management decisionmaking. It includes profiles of communities that are already putting growth-management strategies to work. Produced by The Conservation Foundation. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Luther Propst co-founded and directs the Sonoran Institute, with offices in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona; Bozeman and Helena, Montana; Grand Junction, Colorado; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Mexicali, Mexico. The Sonoran Institute’s mission is to inspire and enable community decisions and public policies that respect the land and people of the West. Under his guidance the Institute has grown to an annual budget of $5.2 million and is now recognized as a leading practitioner of community-based, collaborative, and innovative conservation efforts to integrate conservation and economic values throughout the West. The Sonoran Institute also works throughout the West on policies to improve the management of state trust lands, to better integrate conservation into land development, and to assist cities and counties better manage growth.  Previously, Propst practiced law, where he represented landowners, local governments, and organizations nationwide in land-use matters, and with World Wildlife Fund in Washington D.C. Propst received his law degree and master’s in regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Propst has co-authored three books, and frequently speaks and writes on Western conservation, growth management, economic development, and state trust lands. In addition, he serves on the boards of the National Conservation System Foundation, High Country News, the Murie Center, the Rincon Institute, and the Arizona League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.


Stephen F. Harper is a Washington-based environment policy and planning consultant and writer. He formerly directed the Nonprofit Organization Assistance Program of the California State Coastal Conservancy and served as assistant director of the American Farmland Trust. He has also served in staff capacities with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Colorado State Legislative Council, and in several state agencies in New Jersey. He authored The Nonprofit Primer, a guidebook to management of citizen conservation organizations, published by the California State Conservancy. Stephen F. Harper has a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a B.A. from University of Colorado, and has completed additional studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael A. Mantell was general counsel of World Wildlife Fund and The Conservation Foundation, where he oversaw legal and congressional affairs for the two affiliated organizations. He directed the Successful Communities Program and the Land, Heritage and Wildlife Program of the foundation in Washington, D.C., and managed its State of the Environment and National Parks Projects. A principle author of National Parks for a New Generation and A Handbook on Historic Preservation Law, he has also been involved in foundation work on wetland and floodplain protection, industrial siting, and environmental dispute resolution. Before joining the foundation in 1979, he was with the city attorney's office in Los Angeles, where he worked on various environmental matters. Michael Mantell is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Lewis and Clark College Law School, and was chairman of an American Bar Association Subcommittee on Federal Land-Use Policy.