States and their local governments have practical tools to help combat urban sprawl, protect farmland, promote affordable housing, and encourage redevelopment. They appear in the American Planning Association's Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook: Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change. The Guidebook and its accompanying User Manual are the culmination of APA's seven-year Growing Smart project, an effort to draft the next generation of model planning and zoning legislation for the United States. The Guidebook is also pertinent to those who are affected by planning decisions and who have an interest in how the statutes are revised, including: Local planners Builders Developers Real estate and design professionals Smart growth and affordable housing advocates Environmentalists Highway and transit specialists Citizens.
National parks are different from other federal lands in the United States. Beginning in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone, they were largely set aside to preserve for future generations the most spectacular and inspirational features of the country, seeking the best representative examples of major ecosystems such as Yosemite, geologic forms such as the Grand Canyon, archaeological sites such as Mesa Verde, and scenes of human events such as Gettysburg. But one type of habitat--the desert--fell short of that goal in American eyes until travel writers and the Automobile Age began to change that perception. As the Park Service began to explore the better-known Mojave and Colorado deserts of southern California during the 1920s for a possible desert park, many agency leaders still carried the same negative image of arid lands shared by many Americans--that they are hostile and largely useless. But one wealthy woman--Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, from Pasadena--came forward, believing in the value of the desert, and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a national monument that would protect the unique and iconic Joshua trees and other desert flora and fauna. Thus was Joshua Tree National Monument officially established in 1936, with the area later expanded in 1994 when it became Joshua Tree National Park. Since 1936, the National Park Service and a growing cadre of environmentalists and recreationalists have fought to block ongoing proposals from miners, ranchers, private landowners, and real estate developers who historically have refused to accept the idea that any desert is suitable for anything other than their consumptive activities. To their dismay, Joshua Tree National Park, even with its often-conflicting land uses, is more popular today than ever, serving more than one million visitors per year who find the desert to be a place worthy of respect and preservation. Distributed for George Thompson Publishing
The unique cultures of minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide – spanning a wide variety of customs and practices – are under threat. This year’s edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of their identity, including language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality. But while the effects of this attrition can be devastating, minority and indigenous cultures have also been critical in strengthening communities and providing activists with a platform to fight for their rights. As this volume illustrates, ensuring that the cultural freedoms of minorities and indigenous peoples are protected is essential if their other rights are also to be respected.
Capitalism and Classical Social Theory, Second Edition offers solid coverage of the classical triumvirate (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber), but also extends the canon strategically to include Simmel, four early female theorists, and the writings of Du Bois.
The field of historic preservation is becoming more socially and culturally inclusive, through more diversity in the profession and enhanced community engagement. Bringing together a broad range of practitioners, this book documents historic preservation's progress toward inclusivity and explores further steps to be taken.
An anatomy of failed-state Britain, by the author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley skewered New Labour’s architectural legacy in all its witless swagger. Now, in the year of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, he sets out to describe what the Coalition’s altogether different approach to economic mismanagement and civic irresponsibility is doing to the places where the British live. In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, Hatherley takes us from Plymouth and Brighton to Belfast and Aberdeen, by way of the eerie urbanism of the Welsh valleys and the much-mocked splendour of modernist Coventry. Everywhere outside the unreal Southeast, the building has stopped in towns and cities, which languish as they wait for the next bout of self-defeating austerity. Hatherley writes with unrivalled aggression about the disarray of modern Britain, and yet this remains a book about possibilities remembered, about unlikely successes in the midst of seemingly inexorable failure. For as well as trash, ancient and modern, Hatherley finds signs of the hopeful country Britain once was and hints of what it might become.
Water is vital for life, and its availability has been a concern for mankind throughout the ages. Its presence has always been ascertained in a variety of ways and the development of human society everywhere is connected with various forms of water management. Man also needed to manage water to find protection from its dangers and the need for that is increasing. In the coming decades, the impact of climate change is expected to intensify floods and droughts, affect groundwater resources, raise sea levels, increase pollution and enhance the frequency and magnitude of disasters. Societies around the world are challenged to adapt to these threats to ensure water security, economic prosperity and environmental and cultural sustainability. This book deals with the heritage of water management and the use that was made of water, as well as the impact of water management on heritage. An example of the former may be an ancient irrigation system in the Filipines or in the Middle East that still functions today, while the latter may reflect the importance of maintaining groundwater levels for the preservation of organic remains on archaeological sites or of wooden piles underneath standing buildings. In either case the papers in this book reflect the dynamic nature of water, and hence the equally dynamic relation between water management and heritage. This publication follows up on a Heritage and Water conference in Amsterdam, the first of its kind. Its main purpose is to credibly present the importance and value of heritage and historical experience for water and sustainable development, and vice versa, present the importance of water management for the protection of heritage. It presents evolving insights and concepts about Water and about Heritage from a variety of disciplines, policy and public perspectives illustrated with cases studies and aims to connect decision makers with experts such as engineers, archaeologists, historians, geographers, ecologist and landscape architects
