Rural areas worldwide are undergoing profound change creating considerable challenges and stress for its residents and on the ecosystems upon which they depend. Rural design brings design thinking and the problem-solving process of design to rural issues recognizing that human and natural systems are inextricably coupled and engaged in continuous cycles of mutual influence and response. This book is the first step along the path for rural design to emerge as an important new design discipline. Rural Design: A New Design Discipline establishes the theoretical base for rural design and the importance of looking at connecting issues to create synergy and optimal solutions from a global, national, state, region, and local perspective. To be effective and relevant, this new discipline must be founded on solid research, and practice must be based on data-driven evidence that will result in transformational changes. These directions and others will enable rural design to: help rural communities make land use, architectural, and aesthetic decisions that enhance their quality of life and the environment connect social, artistic, cultural, technological, and environmental issues that create rural place promote sustainable economic development for rural communities and improve human, livestock, crop, and ecosystem health and integrate research and practice across the many disciplines involved in rural issues to meet rural needs, provide new data, and provoke new research questions. Written by a world leading expert in rural design, who is director and founder of the University of Minnesota Center for Rural Design, the book is oriented toward students, academics and design professionals involved with rural design at any level.

Conscious of the frequent co-option of the idea of participation by official development agencies, and of the other pitfalls that participatory development can run into, the author provides a hardheaded and practical education about the role of change agents; their recruitment, training and support; how to get started; working with groups; handling relations with government officials and local power holders; and a full range of other relevant issues.

This book is recommended reading for planners preparing to take the AICP exam. Conventional planning techniques just aren't working in many rural and suburbanizing areas. Developments where people merely exist have replaced neighborhoods where people once thrived. Strip malls and checkerboard subdivisions prevail. Randall Arendt argues convincingly that this scenario is not inevitable. In Rural by Design he advocates creative, practical land-use planning techniques to preserve open space and community character. He shows how developments all across America have used these techniques successfully. This book examines a broad spectrum of nitty-gritty design topics in a lively, readable style. Topics range from sewage disposal and farmland preservation to greenway planning for interconnected open space and the design of rural subdivision streets. The book includes numerous case examples of residential, commercial, and mixed-use projects that have used these innovative design techniques. And it takes an in-depth look at the design elements of the traditional town-and how to reinvent those elements in today's communities. Rural by Design appeals to a wide audience. Planners in small towns as well as rural and suburbanizing areas will find practical information to guide them on the job. Planning board members and interested laypeople will find a highly readable, nontechnical reference. And instructors in planning and allied fields will find a valuable textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses.

" The New World -- this empty land dazzlingly rich in forests, soils, rainfall, and mineral wealth -- was to represent a new beginning for civilized humanity. Unfortunately, even the best of the European settlers had a stronger eye for conquest than for justice. Natives were in the way -- surplus people who must be literally displaced. Now, as ecologist West Jackson points out, descendants of those early beneficiaries of conquest find themselves the displaced persons, forced to vacate the family farmsteads and small towns of our heartland, leaving vacant the schools, churches, hardware stores, and barber shops. In a ringing cry for a changed relation to the land, Jackson urges modern Americans to become truly native to this place -- to base our culture and agriculture on nature's principles, to recycle as natural ecosystems have for millions of years. The task is more difficult now, he argues, because so much cultural information has been lost and because the ecological capital necessary to grow food in a sustainable way has been seriously eroded. Where to begin? Jackson suggests we start with those thousands of small towns and rural communities literally falling down or apart. We have no money to pay for the process and little cultural awareness to support it, but here are the places where a new generation of homecomers -- people who want to go to a place and dig in -- can become the new pioneers, operating on a set of assumptions and aspirations different from those of their ancestors. These new pioneers will have to "set up the books" for ecological community accounting. If they dig deep enough and long enough, urges Jackson, a new kind of economy will emerge. So will a rich culture with its own art and artifacts.

Based on more than ten years of study among the Harasiis, a Middle Eastern tribe living in the Sultanate of Oman, Mobile Pastoralists is a powerful statement on the importance of grassroots, people-based development and on the inadequacy of conventional responses for such a community by the international aid bureaucracy.Dawn Chatty's work is the product of years of research among the Harasiis, during which she headed an international development project aiming to provide basic social services to the tribe without disturbing their traditional nomadic pastoral way of life. Mobile Pastoralists provides readers with a detailed description of the conception, drafting, implementation, and completion of Chatty's aid project. The book also includes nuanced case studies of individual Harasiis men and women, showing how development efforts and the complex forces of modernization have affected members on a personal level.Supplemented by a group of photographs of the tribe and their environment, along with seven detailed regional maps, Mobile Pastoralists is a study with valuable applications for anthropology, cultural geography, development planning, and Middle Eastern affairs.

Similar to large cities, rural towns have undergone dramatic change since mid-century. The decline in retailing, changes in manufacturing, and jobs moving abroad have had a tremendous impact. Yet while rural and industrial areas have similar concerns about adjusting to a changing economy, successful urban strategies cannot be blindly transferred to rural areas. Nor can rural areas be considered homogeneous. They differ in ethnic makeup, industrial structure, topography, and natural and human resources. Appreciating the diversity of rural areas, this book presents case studies from different industries, regions, and cultures, providing examples of the activity in small town and rural development, and reflecting on how these strategies might be pursued elsewhere.This collection provides examples of communities that have attempted to affect their future. Telling the stories of small towns that do not attract the attention of national media, this book celebrates the success, creativity, and vision of rural residents. Also included are examples of less effective rural development initiatives, which can be lessons to analyze and avoid mistakes. Ultimately, what is best in small town and rural development is the result of community engagement. This volume will help people to begin, or strengthen, that process of engagement.

Farmers, who own or rent most of the private land in America, hold the key not only to the nation's food supply, but also to managing community growth, maintaining an attractive landscape, and protecting water and wildlife resources.While the issue of protecting farmland and open space is not new, the intensity of the challenge has increased. Farmers are harder pressed to make a living, and rural and suburban communities are struggling to accommodate increasing populations and the development that comes with them. Holding Our Ground can help landowners and communities devise and implement effective strategies for protecting farmland. The book: discusses the reasons for protecting farmland and how to make those reasons widely known and understood describes the business of farming, federal government farm programs, and the role of land in farmers's decisions analyzes federal, state, and local farmland protection efforts and techniques explores a variety of land protection options including purchase of development rights; transfer of development rights; private land trusts; and financial, tax, and estate planning reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the farmland protection tools available The authors describe the many challenges involved in protecting farmland and explain how to create a package of techniques that can meet those challenges. In addition, they offer appendixes with model zoning ordinances, nuisance disclaimers, conservation easements, and other documents that individuals and communities need to carry out the programs discussed.Holding Our Ground provides citizens, elected officials, planners, and landowners with a solid basis for understanding the issues behind farmland protection, and will be an invaluable resource in developing techniques and programs for achieving long-term protection goals.

This book recounts the drama of a remarkably successful experiment that introduced farmer organization for self-managed development in the largest and most run-down conflict-ridden irrigation system in Sri Lanka.

Views From the Road is a practical handbook to guide local land trusts, planning agencies, and other community organizations in preparing inventories of rural hsitoric resources based on scenic roads. It rpovides a rational basis for land conservation efforts by integrating visual and aesthetic qualities of rural road corridors with the history of land use.The book focuses primarily on two case studies, one in Georgia dn Florida and one in Kentucky, and presents a grassroots methodology for: defining and determining visual resources creating data inventories through collection techniques conducting surveys to select, rank, and apply criteria for landscape classification determining protection options formulating corridor management plans