Walk
for Your Life! Restoring Neighborhood Walkways to Enhance Community
Life, Improve Street Safety and Reduce Obesity
Marie Demers
With
obesity at an all-time high, America's sidewalks vanishing from our
suburbs, pedestrians and bicyclists at risk along many thoroughfares,
and a looming fuel crisis on the horizon, we need to reevaluate personal
and societal walking values. This thought-provoking book calls for the
restoration of a walkable environment as a starting point for addressing
these pressing issues.
Building a Community from the Inside Out: A Path Towards Finding and
Mobilizing a Community’s Assets
John Kretzman and John McKnight
This guide to what the authors call "asset-based community development"
summarizes lessons learned by studying successful community-building
initiatives in hundreds of neighborhoods across the United States. It
outlines in simple, "neighborhood-friendly" terms what local communities
can do to start their own journey down the path of asset-based
development.
This book will be helpful to local community leaders, leaders of local
associations and institutions, government officials, and leaders in the
philanthropic and business communities who wish to support effective
community-building strategies.
The
Guide to Community Preventive Services: What Works to Promote Health?
Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Stephanie
Zaza, Peter A. Briss, and Kate W. Harris
As the gold standard for evidence-based public health,
this book will be a primary resource for improving health and preventing
disease, whether in states, communities, local organizations, healthcare
organizations, worksites, or schools. Developed under the leadership of
the independent, non-federal Task Force on Community Preventive
Services, the Guide is based on comprehensive, systematic review methods
for evaluating population-oriented health interventions.
Great
Neighborhood Book: A Doityourself Guide to Placemaking
by Jay Walljasper
Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their
connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that
sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a
civic garden or placing some benches in a park.
The
Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be
revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the
people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic
control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality.
Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming
public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples
that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and
motivate others to make change.
This book will motivate not only neighborhood activists and concerned
citizens but also urban planners, developers and policy-makers.
Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto
by David Tracey
The term "guerrilla" may bring to mind a small band of
armed soldiers, moving in the dead of night on a stealth mission. In the
case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are
shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing
of beauty. Once an environmentalist's nonviolent direct action for
inner-city renewal, this approach to urban beautification is spreading
to all types of people in cities around the world.
