Understanding Urban Ecology by
Over half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. Few who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators, and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more sustainable or "green" future. The authors use a systems approach to explore the complexity and interactions of different components of a city's ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of urban ecosystem structure and function. The chapters describe one by one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their individual components and functions, and the interactions among them that create the social-ecological environments in which we live. The book's emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity, potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability.
Natural City by
Urban and natural environments are often viewed as entirely separate entities -- human settlements as the domain of architects and planners, and natural areas as untouched wilderness. This dichotomy continues to drive decision-making in subtle ways, but with the mounting pressures of global climate change and declining biodiversity, it is no longer viable. New technologies are promising to provide renewable energy sources and greener designs, but real change will require a deeper shift in values, attitudes, and perceptions. A timely and important collection, The Natural City explores how to integrate the natural environment into healthy urban centres from philosophical, religious, socio-political, and planning perspectives. Recognizing the need to better link the humanities with public policy, The Natural City offers unique insights for the development of an alternative vision of urban life.
Unlocking Sustainable Cities by
Our urban spaces today struggle to thrive in the face corporate greed, increasing privatization, and rising inequality. Unlocking Sustainable Cities offers a way forward, challenging the unsustainable and damaging practices our cities are mired in and paving the way for alternative urban futures. Across the world, people are implementing promising new practices--from transforming abandoned public spaces and setting up community co-operatives, to rewilding urban nature and powering up civic energy. Paul Chatterton explores how these grassroots experiments harness the creative power of the collective to transform our city systems, from transportation, energy, and economy, to community, democracy, and nature. Imagining radical alternatives--such as car-free, post-carbon, "bio cities"--this is a toolkit for realizing a better urban future.
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