Bøker av Rick Pruetz

Bicycle trails are good for business. They attract restaurants, brewpubs, and retail shops catering to those who walk or pedal for fun, exercise, health, and to get from place to place. When trails connect centers of employment, recreation, education and culture, they also generate residential development aimed at people who increasingly prefer active transportation to fighting traffic. And when trails are extended and linked with one another, they expand tourism revenue from a growing breed of vacationers who want to get out of their cars and experience places at a more leisurely and enjoyable speed. As bicycle trails succeed, they increase business activity, employment, income, property value, and tax revenues in a self-reinforcing upward spiral, motivating additional trail improvements, boosting trail use, growing more trail-adjacent businesses, expanding property investments, enlarging tax revenues, generating public support for further trail improvements, and creating, pardon the pun, a virtuous cycle. Prosperity Comes in Cycles synthesizes numerous studies documenting the success of bikeways and multi-use trails in reducing energy consumption, pollution, transportation costs, and healthcare expenses while increasing economic activity, employment, income, property value, and tax revenues. Summaries of first-hand visits to bikeways in 51 places located in the US and Canada illustrate how communities are expanding trail systems and prospering as a result of this virtuous cycle.

Land use is essential to climate action. We need diverse, compact communities where people can meet their daily needs without a car. We need to preserve our farms, forests, and wetlands, as well as maximize their ability to sequester carbon. We need to secure the embedded energy in older buildings, safeguard our water, restore biodiversity, and adapt to the growing threat from wildfires, floods, and sea level rise. By accomplishing any one of these goals, we often receive many other benefits in addition to the mitigation of greenhouse gases and adaptation to the growing threats of climate change. Transfer of development rights, or TDR, is a cost-effective way of steering growth away from places needed for climate action and into locations where development can be safely and efficiently accommodated. Unlike other preservation tools, TDR is primarily powered by private sector profits rather than taxation. In addition, jurisdictions themselves can engage in the TDR process to transform a limited investment into a perpetual revolving fund for preservation. Smart Climate Action profiles 282 TDR programs and highlights how this market-based tool can and has been used to preserve greenbelts, forests, farms, wetlands, and landmarks as well as reduce vulnerability to wildfire, floods, sea level rise, and water scarcity. Developing a successful TDR program requires extensive community engagement and political will. However, the cost of using TDR for climate action remains much lower than the cost of inaction. Rick Pruetz is a former city planner and planning consultant who continues to write about sustainability in general and TDR in particular. He has authored six books including Lasting Value: Open Space Planning and Preservation Successes and Ecocity Snapshots: Learning from Europe's Greenest Places.