Great piece in the most recent issue of Governing about Bill Fulton’s new book, Place and Prosperity: An Urban Success Formula.  Bill Fulton is former mayor of Ventura, California; former San Diego Planning Director; founder and editor of California Planning & Development Report, and senior fellow at the Terner Housing Center at UC Berkeley. The subtitle to the story says,

Without both (place and prosperity), a new book argues, a community can’t achieve its highest purpose. Some cities and suburbs have managed to combine them. Most are finding it difficult.

Fulton will be one of the keynote speakers at the ULUI Fall Conference, headlining the Wednesday morning session on “What Is It About California that We Do Not Want Utah to Become?”  He has spoken to this topic before, so he’s no stranger to it.  In the Governing review of his new book, it talks about some of the problems faced by Fulton’s previous stomping grounds, which sound pretty similar to some of the issues we face here in the Beehive State as we deal with our rapid economic and population growth:

Southern California, his adopted home, was a rapidly built conurbation with “mile after mile of large-scale suburban subdivisions, punctuated by business parks and shopping centers, all connected by arterial roads that seem, by themselves, to be wider than some entire towns.” Its inhabitants were mostly prosperous. But the towns existed for decades without any real sense of place at all. Now many of them are struggling to create one.

Sound familiar?  Be sure to come listen to Fulton (and many others!), and discuss! at the conference October 25-26 in Sandy.