This book on urban design extends and develops the widely accepted 'compact city' solution. It provides a design proposal for a new kind of sustainable urban landscape: Urban Agriculture. By growing food within an urban rather than exclusively rural environment, urban agriculture would reduce the need for industrialized production, packaging and transportation of foodstuffs to the city dwelling consumers. The revolutionary and innovative concepts put forth in this book have potential to shape the future of our cities quality of life within them. Urban design is shown in practice through international case studies and the arguments presented are supported by quantified economic, environmental and social justifications.
This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences, this edited collection brings attention to place-based approaches across the Pacific Rim and makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-landscape development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity, energy, water, health, and planning and engagement. This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers, professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL) Program and its global network, facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors from more than 30 institutions. The Open Access version of chapters 1, 2, 4, 11, 17, 23, 30, 37, 42, 49, and 56 of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003033530, have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This book provides a unique contribution to the science of sustainable societies by challenging the traditional concept of rural-urban dichotomy. It combines environmental engineering and landscape sciences perspectives on urban region issues, making the book a unique work in urban study literatures. Today’s extended urban regions often maintain rural features within their boundaries and also have strong social, economic, and environmental linkages with the surrounding rural areas. These intra- and inter- linkages between urban and rural systems produce complex interdependences with global and local sustainability issues, including those of climate change, resource exploitation, ecosystem degradation and human wellbeing. Planning and other prospective actions for the sustainability of urban regions, therefore, cannot solely depend on “urban” approaches; rather, they need to integrate broader landscape perspectives that take extended social and ecological systems into consideration. This volume shows how to untangle, diagnose, and transform urban regions through distinctive thematic contributions across a variety of academic disciplines ranging from environmental engineering and geography to landscape ecology and urban planning. Case studies, selected from across the world and investigating urban regions in East Asia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia, collectively illustrate shared and differentiated drivers of sustainability challenges and provide informative inputs to global and local sustainability initiatives.
The growth of cities poses ever-increasing challenges for the natural environment on which they impact and depend, not only within their boundaries but also in surrounding peri-urban areas. Landscape ecology – the study of interactions across space and time between the structure and function of physical, biological and cultural components of landscapes – has a pivotal role to play in identifying sustainable solutions. This book brings together examples of research at the cutting edge of urban landscape ecology across multiple contexts that investigate the state, maintenance and restoration of healthy and functional natural environments across urban and peri-urban landscapes. An explicit focus is on urban landscapes in contrast to other books which have considered urban ecosystems and ecology without specific focus on spatial connections. It integrates research and perspectives from across academia, public and private practitioners of urban conservation, planning and design. It provides a much needed summary of current thinking on how urban landscapes can provide the foundation of sustained economic growth, prospering communities and personal well-being.
The urban environment – buildings, cities and infrastructure – represents one of the most important contributors to climate change, while at the same time holding the key to a more sustainable way of living. The transformation from traditional to sustainable systems requires interdisciplinary knowledge of the re-design, construction, operation and maintenance of the built environment. Sustainable Urban Environments: An Ecosystem Approach presents fundamental knowledge of the built environment. Approaching the topic from an ecosystems perspective, it shows the reader how to combine diverse practical elements into sustainable solutions for future buildings and cities. You’ll learn to connect problems and solutions at different spatial scales, from urban ecology to material, water and energy use, from urban transport to livability and health. The authors introduce and explore a variety of governance tools that support the transformation process, and show how they can help overcome institutional barriers. The book concludes with an account of promising perspectives for achieving a sustainable built environment in industrialized countries. Offering a unique overview and understanding of the most pressing challenges in the built environment, Sustainable Urban Environments helps the reader grasp opportunities for integration of knowledge and technologies in the design, construction and management of the built environment. Students and practitioners who are eager to look beyond their own fields of interest will appreciate this book because of its depth and breadth of coverage.
By the end of the twenty-first century it is thought that three-quarters of the world’s population will be urban; our future is in cities. Making these cities healthy, vibrant and sustainable is an exceptional challenge which this book addresses. It sets out some of the basic principles of the design of our future cities and, through a series of carefully-selected case studies from leading designers’ experience, illustrates how these ideas can be put into practice. Building on the first edition's original format of design guidance and case studies, this new edition updates the ideas and techniques resulting from further research and practice by the contributors. This book emphasises the enormous progress made towards exciting new designs that integrate good design with resource efficiency.
Urban greening policies and measures have recently shown a high potential impact on the design and reshaping of the built environment, especially in urban regeneration processes. This book provides insights on analytical methods, planning strategies and shared governance tools for successfully integrating Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in the urban planning practice. The selected contributions present real-life application cases, in which the mainstreaming of NBS are investigated according to two main challenges: the planning and designing of physical and spatial integration of NBS in cities on one side, and the implementation of suitable shared governance models and co-creation pathways on the other. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
As urban populations rise rapidly and concerns about food security increase, interest in urban agriculture has been renewed in both developed and developing countries. This book focuses on the sustainable development of urban agriculture and its relationship to food planning in cities. It brings together the best revised and updated papers from the Sixth Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) conference on Sustainable Food Planning. The main emphasis is on the latest research and thinking on spatial planning and design, showing how urban agriculture provides opportunities to develop and enhance the spatial quality of urban environments. Chapters address various topics such as a new theoretical model for understanding urban agriculture, how urban agriculture contributes to restoring our connections to nature, and the limitations of the garden city concept to food security. Case studies are included from several European countries, including Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the UK, as well as Australia, Canada, Cameroon, Ethiopia and the United States (New York and Los Angeles).
