One approach to transforming potential disagreements into cooperative action is discussed. The value of neglected, historic, urban areas for focusing community members on neighborhood revitalization is illustrated through case studies from Colorado and Georgia. The authors demonstrate how historic commercial districts can play a central role in creating the useful illusion that various stakeholders agree on what should happen in their favorite neighborhoods. While many thinkers on the subject are reviewed, the work of Herman Daly forms the core of this treatment. An outline of a sustainable economics is offered as an antidote to the insanity of growth mania.
Planners can use familiar tools in new ways.
Land use planning can influence migration patterns and birth rates for example. Economic planning can include Economic development that primarily serves people instead of corporations and the tax base, redefining economic indicators, discounting, and the next step to simply internalizing externalities. Reframing economics into a more sustainable form that is not addicted to economic and population increases can have profound effects. We are not chained to a steamroller of economic or population growth that threatens our environment and leaves the majority of the world's population in poverty. However, particularly in local economic development efforts, this assumption is likely to be at best only partially fulfilled.