Better Not Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community

by Eben Fodor

Contrary to accepted wisdom, rapid urban growth can leave communities permanently scarred, deeply in debt, with unaffordable housing, a lost sense of community, and sacrificed environmental quality. In Better NOT Bigger , Fodor explodes the fundamental myth that growth is good for us and that more development will bring in more tax money, add jobs, lower housing costs, and reduce property taxes. Lively and well-illustrated, Better NOT Bigger provides insights, ideas, and tools to empower citizens to switch off their local "growth machine" by debunking the pro-growth rhetoric. Highly accessible to ordinary citizens as well as professional planners. Better NOT Bigger has been made available through New Catalyst Books. New Catalyst Books is an imprint of New Society Publishers, aimed at providing readers with access to a wider range of books dealing with sustainability issues by bringing books back into print that have enduring value in the field. For more information on New Catalyst Books .

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jody MacPherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been a huge influence in my life as a resident of Okotoks and now, living in the inner city of Calgary.

[Sylvester · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author should have gone back to being a physicists. There was a lot of dribble with no sources to back up claims. For example, Fodor talked about ecological land is beneficial but how? Not explained. How did he come up with the quantity of ecological land needed for each person's consumption? Not explained. How can India support a large population with relatively little use of land? Not explained. Any comments given for supporting more land regulation is simply: feelings of "ugly" land use (basically anything that the author disagrees with). There were also many quotes from books that have no relation to urban planning at all. Well tough luck, nature will not allow humans to survive if we don't adapt to it by improving it to accommodate our needs. I was hoping to learn more about planning but I've learnt nothing other than "primitive Buddhists have amazing planning" despite being completely stagnated and isolated, at the brink of starvation.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most absurd theories I've read in some time. Basically isolationist, as presented this concept of stopping growth completely ignores the population surge that the world has been experiencing for well over a century. Sure, this is likely targeted at a few Oregon communities but this has little value to the rest of the world. I would ask the author to visit some of the communities that have indeed stopped growth - Detroit and East St. Louis for instance - to see how beneficial a detachment from the growth trends of much of the rest of the nation might be.

[Stephen]

Fuck you Dan. Whatever your last name was!