NEW YORK -- Voters across the country considered 240 ballot referendums last year aimed at containing urban sprawl. Traffic and smog are covering outlying areas that were once open farmland. And the question of how to make communities livable once again has entered the speeches of presidential candidates.

To help Americans understand this emerging national issue, Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation have published a readable, nonpartisan guide, A Nice Place to Live: Creating Communities, Fighting Sprawl, that will let citizens make up their own minds on the issue.

To ensure accuracy and fairness, A Nice Place to Live was reviewed by a panel of experts. One of the panelists, Professor Robert Fishman of Rutgers University, said the guide, does a remarkably good job not only in presenting the complex issue of sprawl but doing so in a fair-minded way that almost compels a lively discussion of these issues.

Written by Michael deCourcy Hinds, a Public Agenda vice president and former New York Times correspondent, the 28-page guide examines various problems associated with sprawl such as traffic, pollution, strip malls and loss of community. While not advocating one side over another, A Nice Place to Live explains three possible approaches to dealing with sprawl, each illustrated with examples from around the country:

• Fulfill the Suburban American Dream: This approach calls for investments in existing suburbs that are losing population, leaving half-empty schools even as millions of dollars are spent on new schools further out. Dundalk, a Baltimore suburb dating from the 1920s, faced such a fate until the Maryland legislature passed the Smart Growth initiative in 1997. State funds that were used to develop new suburbs in outlying areas are now concentrated on established ones, providing low-interest loans to home buyers and renovating schools and other public works. This approach also favors greater local control over development and the preservation of open space for parks and other uses.
• Strengthen Cities, Stop Sprawl at Its Source: As far back as 1973, Oregon drew a greenbelt around Portland and prohibited development outside of it. That move concentrated investment in the city and immediate suburbs, which in turn has kept the middle class from fleeing. Dallas adopted a similar strategy when it constructed a light rail system in 1996 that provides commuters an alternative to driving. Supporters of this approach also believe in making cities attractive by enforcing quality of life laws-such as no drinking in public-and by protecting historical buildings.
• Free Americans to Choose Lifestyles: A completely different approach is taken by the city of Houston, where the absence of zoning restrictions encourages development to proceed in an unfettered manner. The Houston example shows that businesses will naturally congregate on busy streets and residences on quieter ones-and the city boasts lower housing prices than in comparable cities with zoning. Supporters of this strategy say that government regulation has caused many aspects of sprawl in the first place, such as cookie-cutter strip malls, and that any attempt to undo those effects with more regulation may backfire.

A Nice Place to Live is one of several dozen guides that Public Agenda has produced with Kettering over the past 15 years. The guides are used by the National Issues Forums, a network of civic, religious and community groups around the country that convene to discuss questions of policy. Individual copies of A Nice Place to Live may be ordered for $5, plus $2.50 for shipping and handling, by calling Public Agenda at (212) 686-6610. An order form, as well as a listing of other issues guides, is also available on Public Agenda Online.

Public Agenda was founded in 1975 by Cyrus R. Vance, the former U.S. secretary of state, and Daniel Yankelovich, the social scientist and author. Public Agenda Online provides opinion data and background information on 19 issues that help inform interested citizens about the country's major concerns as the 2000 election gets underway.