<p>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.\nTransfer 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.\nSmart 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.\nRick 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.</p>

Smart Climate Action Through Transfer of Development Rights

Arts & Photography

Pruetz, Rick

Architecture

Arje Press

<p>Americans are committing country-cide. Our land-wasting development habits are taking the farms that give us fresh, locally-grown food and converting them to super-sized yards planted with chemical-dependent, inedible grass. We are channeling our streams and paving the watersheds that once protected our water supplies free of charge. We are destroying the hillsides and forests that give us refuge from everyday life as well as preserve habitat for endangered species, which could include Homo sapiens sooner than we think. Many of us accept this wastefulness as an inevitable byproduct of progress. This book is about those who do not. With that introduction, Green Legacy proceeds to celebrate conservation programs in 42 communities that are succeeding in saving natural areas, farmland and open space. The author, a planning consultant specializing in land preservation strategies, aims to recognize these communities for a job well done and encourage other cities and counties to also leave future generations a green legacy.</p>

Green Legacy: Communities Worth Leaving to Future Generations

Rick Pruetz

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Books by Arje Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Arje Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Smart Climate Action Through Transfer of Development Rights

Green Legacy: Communities Worth Leaving to Future Generations