Growth Management for a Sustainable Future

Previous books on growth management in the United States favor balanced growth, which suggests that growth and environmental protection represent equally legitimate objectives. Taking issue with the balanced growth position, this book argues that further growth is unsustainable and that growth management must focus on ensuring ecological sustainability. The book opens with the arguments supporting current global limits to growth, and then shows that the growth management movement in the United States represents an institutionalized form of ongoing growth accommodation, which is incongruous with sustainable behavior.

The book also documents the historical pro-growth tendency of the planning profession and contends that this bias is impeding the necessary transition to a sustainable future. In addition, it presents the standards courts use to decide the legality of growth management programs and suggests that those standards do not present insurmountable obstacles to stopping future growth. In conclusion, this book presents operational measures of ecological sustainability and argues that the growth imperative currently driving the growth management movement must be replaced by the imperative of ecological sustainability.

GABOR ZOVANYI is a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Eastern Washington University. He has also taught in planning programs at California Polytechnic State University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Washington, and has worked for city, county, and federal planning agencies. His specialty areas include growth management, environmental planning, planning implementation, and land-use law.