The Small Town Planning Handbook, 3rd Edition

This is the go-to guide for planners in small towns. For decades, this book has helped small towns and rural communities plan for change. It is a step-by-step guide to drafting and implementing a comprehensive plan through zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and capital improvements programs, with sensitivity to local character and limited resources.The third edition shows how technologies such as GIS and the Internet can improve the planning process. This edition contains a wealth of information on ways to maintain or improve the design of small towns and explains how to create a small town economic development plan. The authors emphasize strategic planning for economic, social, and environmental sustainability both in remote towns and in towns on the edge of metropolitan regions.The authors are planners with more than six decades of experience in small towns, rural counties, and planning departments-including hundreds of evenings before rural planning commissions.

Mark B. Lapping is provost and academic vice-president at the University of Southern Maine.