Across the country, communities rely on their planning commissions for guidance. But who guides the planning commissioners?This step-by-step guidebook gets new commissioners off on the right foot and helps experienced commission members navigate their roles. The authors, all practicing planners, have worked extensively with planning commissions for decades. They have watched commissioners scramble up a steep learning curve, sit in the hot seat of controversy, and strive to make sou...

How to create the world's new urban futureWith the majority of the world's population shifting to urban centres, urban planning—the practice of land-use and transportation planning to help shape cities structurally, economically, and socially—has become an increasingly vital profession. In Urban Planning For Dummies, readers will get a practical overview of this fascinating field, including studying community demographics, determining the best uses for lan...

Government Alone Can’t Solve Society’s Biggest ProblemsWorld hunger. Climate change. Crumbling infrastructure. It’s clear that in today’s era of fiscal constraints and political gridlock, we can no longer turn to government alone to tackle these and other towering social problems. What’s required is a new, more collaborative and productive economic system. The Solution Revolution brings hope-revealing just such a burgeoning new economy where players from a...

From one of America's foremost economic and political thinkers comes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive and turbo-charged global economy and the effect it is having on American democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich shows how widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical results of a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influence of business lobbyists than to the voters who electe...

Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central Americ...

There is no longer such a thing as an American economy, say Robert Reich at the beginning of this brilliant book. What does it mean to be a nation when money, goods, and services know no borders? What skills will be the most valuable in the coming century? And how can our country best ensure that all its citizen have a share in the new global economy? Robert B. Reich, the widely respected and bestselling author of The Next American Frontier and The Resurgent Liberal,

After a quarter century of serving in the credit union movement-industry by this author, this book is more comprehensive than his first book on credit unions in 1994THE CREDIT UNION DIRECTOR: Roles, Duties, and Responsibilities. This work examines the milieu of the credit union world as related to current theory, process, and practice.In addition, fictional, composite cases provide the reader with the opportunity, through the application process,to analyze the performance and beha...

The federal government is ailing and needs a cure. The cure lies in embracing a principle long known to the American people but little recognized by Washington—until now: common sense.In this pathbreaking report, Vice President Al Gore, presiding over the National Performance Review, at the request of President Clinton, charts a fundamental shift in how government conducts itself. This report understands that a government that recognizes who its real customers are, works with them ...

Community Planning: How to Solve Urban and Environmental Problems covers the basic theoretical principles of community planning and how planning has evolved in the United States. The book defines the interdisciplinary nature of the field, identifies the forces that shape the planning process, and explains the sub-specialized areas of community planning.Throughout the text, the author draws connections between the theoretical principles of planning and their practical appli...

Resource Management for School Administrators is the only comprehensive book covering all school resources—fiscal, facilities and human resources. Each chapter has objectives that are aligned with the new ELCC and ISLCC standards on accreditation. Many of the federal and various state policies and laws are included. Everything you need to know on managing school resources are covered: national and state perspectives, future challenges to funding public education, resource allocation, devel...

Small scale producers in developing countries lack easy access to efficient logistics services. They are faced with long distances from both domestic and international markets. Unless they consolidate their trade volumes they face high costs which diminish their ability to trade. However the process of consolidation is not without cost nor does it occur on its own accord. As a result the consolidation is typically handled by intermediaries. Using case studies of sisal and soybean supply chain...

The electricity sector is vulnerable to a broad range of risks that can threaten development effectiveness. Risks can spring from the magnitude of the sector's capital investments, opportunities for discretionary decision making and rent seeking by stakeholders, weak policy and regulatory frameworks, capacity weaknesses of sector entities, and inefficient systems. Governance risk vulnerabilities can cut across policy formulation, regulation, planning, financial management, procurement, and...