Subtitle: The Future of the Fastest Growing Communities in America
Author: Peter Wolf
Subject: Urban Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2696-5
Pages: 288 pp.
Description: An overview of the problems facing the fastest-growing communities in the U.S.which have expanded due to a vast national migration. NEW IN PAPERBACK!

Hot Towns is about the vast, current national relocation of one million Americans a year. Successful, accomplished, and well-financed people of all ages are moving to communities they view as choice-places distinguished by fine climate, physical beauty, abundant natural recreation resources, and minimal social problems and low crime. Towns in this elite roster include Santa Fe; Aspen and Denver; Seattle; Bozeman; Chapel Hill; East Hampton; Tucson; Atlanta; Washington, Utah; and Anchorage.

These American boom towns, Peter Wolf writes, have grown in jobs and population at two to three times the national average. But warning signs of deterioration are already evident: overbuilding, failing natural resources, rising taxes, and traffic congestion are all taking a toll on these communities. Rapid migration can enhance or swamp America's fastest-growing and most desirable communities

Wolf examines the choices that people in these areas can make to both effectively accommodate growth and yet ensure their economic futures. A wise town undergoing growth will realize that what must be preserved is not the growth in and for itself, but the qualities which attract people in the first place. Wolf demonstrates how it is possible-even during a town's rapid expansion-to enhance the quality of residents' lives, to incorporate aesthetics and design into town evolution, to protect what is precious in nature, and to preserve the best that has already been built.

Wolf concludes with a practical checklist for the residents of hot towns, allowing them to evaluate how their communities are coping with growth.

Peter Wolf is a nationally recognized land planning asset management and urban policy authority, and manages his own investment advisory firm. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Van Alen Institute and the author of The Future of the City and Land in America.

"Peter Wolf has written a fascinating and perceptive book about the new migration that is changing America."

-Robert A. Caro, author of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

"Peter Wolf's Hot Towns is mistitled; it is not just about the booming places of the next half century but about the entire conurbation that our vast continent threatens to become. Neatly dissecting many cherished beliefs of architects, urban planners and 'informed citizens' alike, it should be essential reading for everyone who cares about land use and land abuse. Interpreted properly, it could be a useful field guide for the survival of our countryside, our cities, and our suburban towns."

-Robert A. M. Stern