Handbook on Smart Growth: Promise, Principles, and Prospects for Planning

This timely Research Handbook examines the evolution of smart growth over the past three decades, mapping the trajectory from its original principles to its position as an important paradigm in urban planning today. Critically analysing the original concept of smart growth and how it has been embedded in state and local plans, contributions from top scholars in the field illustrate what smart growth has accomplished since its conception, as well as to what extent it has achieved its goals.

Providing an overview of the history of smart growth, the book further examines its changing governance over time, and the new horizons for smart growth, exploring ways to confront contemporary challenges in urban planning. Illuminating key issues in the field, from urban sprawl to gentrification, that the original principles failed to address, this insightful Handbook advocates for the expansion of smart growth principles to meet the emerging challenges of the modern world, concluding with an agenda for a “smart growth 2.0”. 

Informative and comprehensive, this Handbook will prove to be essential reading for researchers, academics and students of urban planning. Its proposals for the future evolution of smart growth will also serve as an accessible and up-to-date reference point for urban planning professionals, activists and policymakers.

Edited by Gerrit-Jan Knaap, Professor, Urban Studies and Planning, Director, National Center for Smart Growth, Associate Dean, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland, Rebecca Lewis, Associate Professor, Planning, Public Policy and Management, Co-Director, Institute for Policy Research and Engagement, University of Oregon, Arnab Chakraborty, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Katy June-Friesen, Ph.D. candidate, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Editor, National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland, US