Stephen Coyle's Sustainable and Resilient Communities

Sustainable and Resilient Communities: A Comprehensive Action Plan for Towns, Cities, and Regions, the first book from Town Green-founder Stephen Coyle, is a hands-on, sleeves-up text that provides explicit prescriptions for how to fundamentally create the foundations for successful places. As Andres Duany writes in the foreword, Sustainable and Resilient Communities is "not a silver bullet...and for that we must be grateful." Duany contrasts Coyle's meticulous attention to setting conditions in place for organic, harmonious, and contextually-sensitive growth with the "silver bullet wonders" of large-scale events such as World's Fairs, Olympics, or starchitect projects that often fail to deliver residual benefits (and often do disservice to their cities) outside of their immediate impact. Rather, Coyle takes an incredibly textured look at the many systems that make places thrive, and provides a series of action plans, diagrams, and practices to follow when they are ready for implementation.

In light of the still-needed full recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans, the recent tragic events across the tornado ravaged South, and the increasing desire for effective placemaking everywhere, Coyle's book seems a timely addition to the urbanist and development conversation. For those hoping to engage further with this material, Coyle will be conducted a webinar via NCI, this Wednesday, May 4th, from 1:00-2:30 pm EDT. And to get the full picture, copies of Sustainable and Resilient Communities: A Comprehensive Action Plan for Towns, Cities, and Regions are available for sale now.