Publisher's Synopsis
The Financial Geography of Community Development provides an uncommon perspective on managing community development and local governmental finance. It examines the role of public finance in the management of community development from a geographical point of view. This book describes how geography has influenced, and will continue to influence, the physical development our nation's communities and their fiscal capacities. It focuses on the dynamic and symbiotic relationships between a community's geographical character and its fiscal capacity that creates a community's physical form. The book offers a conceptual model for managing the process of community development, and applies this model to various planning issues and objectives. Among the insights suggested by this book are; - the "sprawl" in urban sprawl should be treated as more as a verb than a noun, - The Costs of Sprawl change with different phases of development, - the price of public facilities is disconnected to their costs, creating land use inefficiencies, -economies of density interact with economies of scale, - effective planning is a delicate balance between prescription and prediction, - public finance is a more powerful tool for shaping urban forms than zoning, - fiscal capacities and hence the capacity to manage community development varies widely between communities, - in community development there are no silver bullets and the answer to most issues is "it depends," - the burden of maintaining public facilities constrains our ability to afford new facilities, and - expecting developers to help finance public facilities is not new.
