PRESS RELEASE

Contact:

Dom Nozzi

3003 Hanover Ave, Apt A

Richmond VA 23221

352.359.5060 (cell)

Email: dom@walkablestreets.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

City Planner Authors Book About Sprawl, Congestion, Quality of Life

(Gainesville FL, October 28, 2003) - A city planner with over 15 years of experience has written an eye-opening book that clarifies the crucial role that auto-oriented road and land use development has played in creating sprawling, auto-dependent communities-a role that is largely unseen by the majority of Americans. The book, Road to Ruin (Praeger, 2003), describes practical strategies that can be used to avert a costly, unpleasant, environmentally disastrous future. In an easy-to-read format, it outlines the origins of sprawl and congestion-the two leading concerns in national opinion polls.

Since approximately WWII, according to author Dom Nozzi, America has been obsessed with a desire to improve conditions for cars, not people, primarily through enormous subsidies for road widening and construction of free parking. Not only does such an obsession worsen conditions for motorists (at great public expense), but it traps a community in a vicious cycle; one that delivers a declining, sprawling, financially bankrupting future.

Designing to "make cars happy" is a recipe for establishing self-perpetuating cycles in which "happy car" design feeds on itself. That is, auto-oriented design inevitably creates barriers to lifestyles that do not rely exclusively on car travel, and thereby continuously recruits motorists and a citizens whose value system is not "what can we do to improve the community for people," but "what can we do to improve the community for cars." In this way, we become our own worst enemy.

A growing number of citizens are motorists first, and environmentalists second. Motorists first, and businessmen second. Increasingly, auto-oriented design makes travel by non-motorized means less possible (and, therefore, walking, bicycling, and transit use decline), and increases the likelihood of community dispersal and therefore the decline in a sense of community.

The book is written, uniquely, by a 16-year practicing professional in the field of urban planning. It therefore brings an up-to-the-minute perspective about what works, what does not work, and the obstacles faced in the real world. It is not, in other words, an academic, pie-in-the-sky, ivory tower treatise that is inaccessible to a non-professional audience-a treatise that does not understand how community planning works "in the trenches." Instead, it is written to be useful to both practicing planners and to citizens concerned about the future of their community. Andres Duany notes that the book "uses plain English and simple drawings to clearly illustrate the origins of the crisis in community we face today."

The book proposes a predictive tool for the extent of urban dispersal based upon the transportation environment of a community.

It does not offer easy, overnight solutions to the many dilemmas and hardships we face in our communities. We spent over 50 years creating (at great public expense, no less) the unfortunate circumstances we are in, and we must therefore expect that solutions will require patience, wisdom and leadership.

The book recommends traditional, people-oriented, human-scaled remedies that are founded on the idea of creating transportation and lifestyle choices. By doing so, communities are able to improve their effectiveness in curtailing urban sprawl and improving their long-term quality of life.

The key is to return at least a portion of the community to a modest, human-scaled design of streets, parking, land uses, and development regulations. Principles that create communities rich in transportation choices. That is, a return to the timeless, traditional development principles beneficially used by towns throughout history. Principles that were largely abandoned following WWII. Abandonment which has led to conditions destroying cities, bankrupting governments, and ruining the reputation of developers.

The time is ripe to return to the tradition of designing to make people, not cars, happy. This book contains the remedies.

Nozzi is available to deliver a speech about the book and answer questions.

The book is now available at amazon.com under the author's name.

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