The Book

Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, by Thomas Hylton, with color photographs by Blair Seitz, is a coffee table book with a message. Designed to appeal to everyone from soccer moms to policy makers, it can be skimmed in 15 minutes or fully read in two hours.

The book vividly explains the relationship between sprawling development and declining cities. It provides attractive alternatives to the car-dependent lifestyle, and it shows how to reverse 50 years of sprawl.

"Tom's book, as many of us have come to call it, may be the most cited authority in Pennsylvania's recent struggle to restore itself."

— James Seif, Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection

Hylton spent a year studying how forward-looking states from Vermont to Oregon have adopted statewide planning guidelines to promote real communities instead of suburban sprawl.

With the help of 152 full-color photographs and illustrations, Hylton shows how state planning guidelines can:

• Lower our cost of living
• Preserve our farms and forests
• Revive our cities
• Protect our environment
• Provide more secure, neighborly communities
• Provide equal opportunities for all our children

Now in its sixth printing, Save Our Land has been eagerly read by conservationists, farmers, city dwellers, and others looking for ways America can protect its cities, towns, and countryside.

The book was given to each of the nation's governors by the National Governors' Association. It was sent to every Pennsylvania legislator and 500 other state and local officials by James Seif, Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection. It has helped make sprawl a major "quality of life" issue in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

"An excellent introduction to the problem of sprawl in Pennsylvania and the need for multi-municipal land use regulation..."

— Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 2003

"A thought-provoking book for everyone who cares about Pennsylvania's future."

— Ed Rendell, former Governor of Pennsylvania