Best of
Urban-Planning

2016

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution


Janette Sadik-Khan - 2016
    Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that’s already there.      Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates, with step-by-step visuals, how to rewrite the underlying “source code” of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn’t easy, and Streetfight pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. She includes examples of how this new way to read the streets has already made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. Many are inspired by the changes taking place in New York City and are based on the same techniques. Streetfight deconstructs, reassembles, and reinvents the street, inviting readers to see it in ways they never imagined.

Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs


Jane Jacobs - 2016
    It offers readers a unique survey of her entire career in forty short pieces that have never been collected in a single volume, from charming and incisive urban vignettes from the 1930s to the raw materials of her two unfinished books of the 2000s, together with introductions and annotations by editors Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring. Readers will find classics here, including Jacobs's breakout article "Downtown Is for People," as well as lesser-known gems like her speech at the inaugural Earth Day and a host of other rare or previously unavailable essays, articles, speeches, interviews, and lectures. Some pieces shed light on the development of her most famous insights, while others explore topics rarely dissected in her major works, from globalization to feminism to universal health care.With this book, published in Jacobs's centenary year, contemporary readers--whether well versed in her ideas or new to her writing--are finally able to appreciate the full scope of her remarkable voice and vision. At a time when urban life is booming and people all over the world are moving to cities, the words of Jane Jacobs have never been more significant. Vital Little Plans weaves a lifetime of ideas from the most prominent urbanist of the twentieth century into a book that's indispensable to life in the twenty-first.Praise for Vital Little Plans"Jacobs's work . . . was a singularly accurate prediction of the future we live in."--The New Republic"In Vital Little Plans, a new collection of the short writings and speeches of Jane Jacobs, one of the most influential thinkers on the built environment, editors Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring have done readers a great service."--The Huffington Post"A wonderful new anthology that captures [Jacobs's] confident prose and her empathetic, patient eye for the way humans live and work together."--The Globe and Mail"[A timely reminder] of the clarity and originality of [Jane Jacobs's] thought."--Toronto Star"[Vital Little Plans] comes to the foreground for [Jane Jacobs's] centennial, and in a time when more of Jacobs's prescient wisdom is needed."--Metropolis"[Jacobs] changed the debate on urban planning. . . . As [Vital Little Plans] shows, she never stopped refining her observations about how cities thrived."--Minneapolis Star Tribune"[Jane Jacobs] was one of three people I have met in a lifetime of meeting people who had an aura of sainthood about them. . . . The ability to radiate certainty without condescension, to be both very sure and very simple, is a potent one, and witnessing it in life explains a lot in history that might otherwise be inexplicable."--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker"A rich, provocative, and insightful collection."--Reason

In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis


Peter Marcuse - 2016
    How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Households are subjected to eviction and foreclosure. Communities face gentrification and displacement. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement by leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They diagnose the causes and consequences of the housing crisis and detail the need for progressive alternatives. Minor policy changes will not solve they problem, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots, and therefore requries a radical response.

Subdivided: Building Inclusion into the Global City


Jay PitterBeyhan Farhadi - 2016
    With essays contributed by an array of city-builders, it proposes solutions for fully inclusive communities that respond to the complexities of a global city.John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist who writes about urban affairs, politics, and business. He co-edited The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood (Coach House, 2015).Jay Pitter is a writer and professor based in Toronto. She holds a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University.

Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives, and Local Placemaking


Faranak Miraftab - 2016
    The meat processing plant that is the town’s main employer replaced its white, native-born workforce by recruiting laborers from Mexico, West Africa, and Detroit, and the newcomers transformed and revitalized this former “sundown town.” Faranak Miraftab draws on ethnographic research in Beardstown, Mexico, and Togo to analyze a space that is often overlooked in scholarship on globalization. Tracing the global processes that produce displaced workers and the social relationships that maintain them, she offers a fresh perspective on place and placemaking.

Toward an Urban Ecology: SCAPE / Landscape Architecture


Kate Orff - 2016
       In purely practical terms, SCAPE has already generated numerous tools and techniques that designers, policy makers, and communities can use to address some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the loss of biodiversity, the loss of social cohesion, and ecological degradation conceptualize. Toward an Urban Ecology features numerous projects and select research from SCAPE, and conveys a range of strategies to engender a more resilient and inclusive built environment.

Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and City Planning in New York City


Tom Angotti - 2016
    Race matters but the city ignores it when shaping land use and housing policies. The city promises “affordable housing” that is not truly affordable. Zoned Out! shows how this has played in Williamsburg, Harlem and Chinatown, neighborhoods facing massive displacement of people of color. It looks at ways the city can address inequalities, promote authentic community-based planning and develop housing in the public domain.

Handbook of Biophilic City Planning Design


Timothy Beatley - 2016
      The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism. Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources.   As the most comprehensive reference on the emerging field of biophilic urbanism, the Handbook is essential reading for students and practitioners looking to place nature at the core of their planning and design ideas and encourage what preeminent biologist E.O. Wilson described as "the innate emotional connection of humans to all living things."

Closer Together: This Is the Future of Cities


Alexander Stahle - 2016
    Nearness to work, friends and culture has always been a driving force in urban development, from the first cities in which people walked everywhere to today s car-powered cities with their scattered suburbs, highways and narrow pavements. Many scholars, politicians and civic groups are beginning to question the way cities are adapted to car traffic as it causes distance rather than proximity. As a result, a radical urban transformation has begun. What will the cities of the future look like? How will we live our lives and how will new technologies self-driving cars for example and new city planning ideals affect urban development? What would happen in the event of a major fuel shortage or climate change? Closer Together presents a unique future study and trend analysis developed by 400 experts and scholars. Three potential scenarios selected by 5,000 people through their vote in the media are presented via text and images. The result of their vote is as clear as the emerging trend: cities will have to change. They will need to be more condensed and user-friendly for pedestrians and people who travel by bike. Alexander Stahle s book Closer Together explains the political and economic forces and the subcultures that drive change in terms of urban environment and transport, as well as the way cities need to transform in order to bring people closer together and, not least, the way it will bring about greater equality and prosperity."

DIY Detroit: Making Do in a City without Services


Kimberley Kinder - 2016
    But what of Robertson’s Detroit neighbors, likewise stuck in a blighted city without services as basic as a bus line? What they’re left with, after decades of disinvestment and decline, is DIY urbanism—sweeping their own streets, maintaining public parks, planting community gardens, boarding up empty buildings, even acting as real estate agents and landlords for abandoned homes.DIY Detroit describes a phenomenon that, in our times of austerity measures and market-based governance, has become woefully routine as inhabitants of deteriorating cities “domesticate” public services in order to get by. The voices that animate this book humanize Detroit’s troubles—from a middle-class African American civic activist drawn back by a crisis of conscience; to a young Latina stay-at-home mom who has never left the city and whose husband works in construction; to a European woman with a mixed-race adopted family and a passion for social reform, who introduces a chicken coop, goat shed, and market garden into the neighborhood. These people show firsthand how living with disinvestment means getting organized to manage public works on a neighborhood scale, helping friends and family members solve logistical problems, and promoting creativity, compassion, and self-direction as an alternative to broken dreams and passive lifestyles.Kimberley Kinder reveals how the efforts of these Detroiters and others like them create new urban logics and transform the expectations residents have about their environments. At the same time she cautions against romanticizing such acts, which are, after all, short-term solutions to a deep and spreading social injustice that demands comprehensive change.

Never Built New York


Greg Goldin - 2016
    Nearly 200 proposals spanning 200 years encompass bridges, skyscrapers, master plans, parks, transit schemes, amusements, airports, plans to fill in rivers and extend Manhattan, and much, much more. Included are alternate visions for Central Park, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the UN, Grand Central Terminal, the World Trade Center site and other highlights such as: Alfred Ely Beach's system of airtight subway cars propelled via atmospheric pressure; Frank Lloyd Wright's last project, his Key Plan for Ellis Island, on which he would have developed his dream city; Buckminster Fuller's design for Brooklyn's Dodger Stadium, complete with giant geodesic dome to shield players and fans from the rain; developer William Zeckendorf's Rooftop Airport, perched on steel columns 200 feet above street level, spanning from 24th to 71st Street, Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River; John Johansen's Leapfrog City proposal to create an entirely new neighborhood atop the tenements of East Harlem; and Stephen Holl's Bridge of Houses, offering options from SROs to modest studios to luxury apartments on a segment of what is now the High Line.Fact-filled and entertaining texts, plus sketches, renderings, prints and models drawn from archives across the country tell stories of ideas that would have drastically transformed the way we inhabit and move through the city.

Transit Street Design Guide


National Association of City Transportation Officials - 2016
    As cities work to become more compact, sustainable, and healthy, their work is paying dividends: in 2014, Americans took 10.8 billion trips on public transit, the highest since the dawn of the highway era. But most of these trips are on streets that were designed to move private cars, with transit as an afterthought. The NACTO Transit Street Design Guide places transit where it belongs, at the heart of street design. The guide shows how streets of every size can be redesigned to create great transit streets, supporting great neighborhoods and downtowns.   The Transit Street Design Guide is a well-illustrated, detailed introduction to designing streets for high-quality transit, from local buses to BRT, from streetcars to light rail. Drawing on the expertise of a peer network and case studies from across North America, the guide provides a much-needed link between transit planning, transportation engineering, and street design. The Transit Street Design Guide presents a new set of core principles, street typologies, and design strategies that shift the paradigm for streets, from merely accommodating service to actively prioritizing great transit. The book expands on the transit information in the acclaimed Urban Street Design Guide, with sections on comprehensive transit street design, lane design and materials, stations and stops, intersection strategies, and city transit networks. It also details performance measures and outlines how to make the case for great transit street design in cities.   The guide is built on simple math: allocating scarce space to transit instead of private automobiles greatly expands the number of people a street can move. Street design and decisions made by cities, from how to time signals to where bus stops are placed, can dramatically change how transit works and how people use it.   The Transit Street Design Guide is a vital resource for every transportation planner, transit operations planner, and city traffic engineer working on making streets that move more people more efficiently and affordably.

Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation: Biking for all? (Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City series)


Aaron Golub - 2016
    This stereotype evolves just as investments in cycling play an increasingly important role in neighborhood transformations. However, despite stereotypes, the cycling public is actually quite diverse, with the greatest share falling into the lowest income categories. Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation demonstrates that for those with privilege, bicycling can be liberatory, a lifestyle choice, whereas for those surviving at the margins, cycling is not a choice, but an often oppressive necessity. Ignoring these "invisible" cyclists skews bicycle improvements towards those with choices. This book argues that it is vital to contextualize bicycling within a broader social justice framework if investments are to serve all street users equitably. "Bicycle justice" is an inclusionary social movement based on furthering material equity and the recognition that qualitative differences matter. This book illustrates equitable bicycle advocacy, policy and planning. In synthesizing the projects of critical cultural studies, transportation justice and planning, the book reveals the relevance of social justice to public and community-driven investments in cycling. This book will interest professionals, advocates, academics and students in the fields of transportation planning, urban planning, community development, urban geography, sociology and policy.

This City


Claudia Castro Luna - 2016
    She explores how everyday language fuels both spaces of alienation and belonging and writes about the way memory anchors us to place, how it provides each of us with an individual road map to the city we inhabit. Castro Luna’s poems invite the reader to consider his/her personal implication in the status quo and to envision possibilities for change to engender saner, safer, more welcoming spaces for everyone.

Urban Design Thinking: A Conceptual Toolkit


Kim Dovey - 2016
    Bridging the gap between theory and practice, it shows how the design of our cities and urban spaces can be interpreted and informed through contemporary theories of urbanism, architecture and spatial analysis.Relating abstract ideas to real-world examples, and taking assemblage thinking as its critical framework, the book introduces an array of key theoretical principles and demonstrates how theory is central to urban design critique and practice. Thirty short chapters can be read alone or in sequence, each opening a different kind of conceptual window onto how cities work and how they are transformed through design practice. Chapters range from explorations of urban morphology, typology, meaning and place identity to particular issues such as urban design codes, informal settlements, globalization, transit and creative clusters.This book is essential reading for those engaged with the practice of urban design and planning, as well as for anyone interested in the theoretical side of urbanism, architecture, and related disciplines.

Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary


Jil Desimini - 2016
    While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the depiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic techniques to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself.Each of the ten chapters focuses on a single cartographic technique—sounding/spot elevation, isobath/contour, hachure/hatch, shaded relief, land classification, figure-ground, stratigraphic column, cross-section, line symbol, conventional sign—and illustrates it through beautiful maps and plans from notable designers and cartographers throughout history, from Leonardo da Vinci to James Corner Field Operations. Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, introduces the book.

The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix


Grady Gammage - 2016
    These suburban cities arose in the last half of twentieth-century America, based largely on the success of the single-family home, shopping centers, and the automobile. The low-density, auto-centric development of suburban cities, which are largely in the arid West, presents challenges for urban sustainability as it is traditionally measured. Yet, some of these cities—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake, Dallas, Tucson, San Bernardino, and San Diego—continue to be among the fastest growing places in the United States.  In The Future of the Suburban City, Phoenix native Grady Gammage, Jr. looks at the promise of the suburban city as well as the challenges. He argues that places that grew up based on the automobile and the single-family home need to dramatically change and evolve. But suburban cities have some advantages in an era of climate change, and many suburban cities are already making strides in increasing their resilience. Gammage focuses on the story of Phoenix, which shows the power of collective action — government action — to confront the challenges of geography and respond through public policy. He takes a fresh look at what it means to be sustainable and examines issues facing most suburban cities around water supply, heat, transportation, housing, density, urban form, jobs, economics, and politics.The Future of the Suburban City is a realistic yet hopeful story of what is possible for any suburban city.

Governors Island Explorer's Guide: Adventure & History in New York Harbor


Kevin C Fitzpatrick - 2016
    It was a military base for 200 years and only opened to the public in 2004. Today it draws 500,000 visitors a season. This insightful guidebook is for any visitor to the island: a bicyclist who just wants to enjoy five miles of car-free biking, the Civil War enthusiast that wants to visit Castle Williams and see where 1,000 Confederate soldiers were imprisoned, or families on a picnic. The author explores the history of the island, its place in New York and American government, and its long and distinguished military past. More than 80 locations are featured that visitors can explore--from forts to officers housing and much more.

Cycling Cities: The European Experience


Ruth OldenzielKatalin Tóth - 2016
    

Nature and Cities: The Ecological Imperative in Urban Design and Planning


Frederick R. Steiner - 2016
    Deemed “one of the best books of 2016” by the American Society of Landscape Architects’ The Dirt, this illustrated collection of essays by leading international architects, landscape architects, city planners, and urban designers demonstrates the economic, environmental, and public health benefits of integrating nature more fully into cities.

Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State


Gareth Doherty - 2016
    Although green is often celebrated in cities as a counter to gray urban environments, green has not always been good for cities. Similarly, manifestation of the color green in arid urban environments is often in direct conflict with the practice of green from an environmental point of view. This paradox is at the heart of the book. In arid environments such as Bahrain, the contradiction becomes extreme and even unsustainable.Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Gareth Doherty explores the landscapes of Bahrain, where green represents a plethora of implicit human values and exists in dialectical tension with other culturally and environmentally significant colors and hues. Explicit in his book is the argument that concepts of color and object are mutually defining and thus a discussion about green becomes a discussion about the creation of space and place.

The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities


Stephanie Meeks - 2016
    As cities across America experience a remarkable renaissance, and more and more young, diverse families choose to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods, the promise and potential of using our older and historic buildings to revitalize our cities is stronger than ever.   This urban resurgence is a national phenomenon, boosting cities from Cleveland to Buffalo and Portland to Pittsburgh. Experts offer a range of theories on what is driving the return to the city—from the impact of the recent housing crisis to a desire to be socially engaged, live near work, and reduce automobile use. But there’s also more to it. Time and again, when asked why they moved to the city, people talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. Often these distinguishing urban landmarks are exciting neighborhoods—Miami boasts its Art Deco district, New Orleans the French Quarter. Sometimes, as in the case of Baltimore’s historic rowhouses, the most distinguishing feature is the urban fabric itself. While many aspects of this urban resurgence are a cause for celebration, the changes have also brought to the forefront issues of access, affordable housing, inequality, sustainability, and how we should commemorate difficult history. This book speaks directly to all of these issues.   In The Past and Future City, Stephanie Meeks, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, describes in detail, and with unique empirical research, the many ways that saving and restoring historic fabric can help a city create thriving neighborhoods, good jobs, and a vibrant economy. She explains the critical importance of preservation for all our communities, the ways the historic preservation field has evolved to embrace the challenges of the twenty-first century, and the innovative work being done in the preservation space now.   This book is for anyone who cares about cities, places, and saving America’s diverse stories, in a way that will bring us together and help us better understand our past, present, and future.

Getting to Know Arcgis Pro


Michael Law - 2016
    This book teaches the basic functions and capabilities of ArcGIS Pro through practical project workflows and shows how it is an essential component of the ArcGIS platform. Data for completing the exercises and trial software are available for download (esri.com/esripress-resources). A supplement based on ArcGIS Pro 2.2 to help you complete exercises in the book is also available.

City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age


Richard C. Schragger - 2016
    In City Power, Richard C. Schragger challenges the existing assumptions, arguing that cities can govern, but only if we let them. In thepast decade, city leaders across the country have raised the minimum wage, expanded social services, and engaged in social welfare redistribution. These cities have not suffered capital flight. In fact, many are experiencing an economic renaissance. Schragger argues that city policies are notlimited by the demands of mobile capital, but instead by constitutional restraints serving the interests of state and federal officials. Maintaining weak cities is a political choice. In this new era of global capital, the power of cities is more relevant to citizen well-being than ever before. Adynamic vision of city politics for our new urban age, City Power reveals how cities can govern despite these constitutional limits - and why we should want them to.

Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work


Eugenie L. Birch - 2016
    Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work shows that unauthorized settlements in rapidly growing cities are not divorced from market forces; rather, they must be understood as complex environments where state policies and market actors still do play a role. In this volume, contributors examine how the form and function of informal real estate markets are shaped by legal systems governing property rights, by national and local policy, and by historical and geographic particularities of specific neighborhoods. Their essays provide detailed portraits of individuals and community organizations, revealing in granular detail the working of informal real estate markets, and they review programs that have been implemented in unconventional settlements to provide lessons about the effectiveness and implementation challenges of different approaches.Chapters explore the relationships between informality, state policies, and market forces from a range of disciplinary perspectives and on different scales, from an analysis of the relationship between regulations and housing in 600 developing world cities to an ethnographic account of the buying and selling of houses in Rio de Janeiro's favelas. While many of the book's contributors focus on the emerging economies of India and Brazil, the conclusions drawn illustrate dynamics relevant to developing countries throughout the Global South. The diversity of perspectives combines to create a rich understanding of an important, complex, and understudied topic.Contributors: Arthur Acolin, Sai Balakrishnan, Eugenie L. Birch, José Brakarz, Shahana Chattaraj, Sebastian Galiani, David Gouverneur, Yvonne Mautner, Paavo Monkkonen, Vinit Mukhija, Janice E. Perlman, Lucas Ronconi, Bish Sanyal, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Patrícia Cezário Silva, Susan M. WachterEugenie L. Birch is Lawrence W. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education; Chair of the Graduate Group in City and Regional Planning, School of Design; and Codirector, Penn Institute for Urban Research, at the University of Pennsylvania.Susan M. Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance, The Wharton School; Professor of City and Regional Planning, School of Design; and Codirector, Penn Institute for Urban Research, at the University of Pennsylvania.Shahana Chattaraj teaches comparative public policy at the University of Oxford.

Saving Our Cities: A Progressive Plan to Transform Urban America


William W Goldsmith - 2016
    Goldsmith shows how cities can be places of opportunity rather than places with problems. With strongly revived cities and suburbs, working as places that serve all their residents, metropolitan areas will thrive, thus making the national economy more productive, the environment better protected, the citizenry better educated, and the society more reflective, sensitive, and humane.Goldsmith argues that America has been in the habit of abusing its cities and their poorest suburbs, which are always the first to be blamed for society's ills and the last to be helped. As federal and state budgets, regulations, and programs line up with the interests of giant corporations and privileged citizens, they impose austerity on cities, shortchange public schools, make it hard to get nutritious food, and inflict the drug war on unlucky neighborhoods.Frustration with inequality is spreading. Parents and teachers call persistently for improvements in public schooling, and education experiments abound. Nutrition indicators have begun to improve, as rising health costs and epidemic obesity have led to widespread attention to food. The futility of the drug war and the high costs of unwarranted, unprecedented prison growth have become clear. Goldsmith documents a positive development: progressive politicians in many cities and some states are proposing far-reaching improvements, supported by advocacy groups that form powerful voting blocs, ensuring that Congress takes notice. When more cities forcefully demand enlightened federal and state action on these four interrelated problems--inequality, schools, food, and the drug war--positive movement will occur in traditional urban planning as well, so as to meet the needs of most residents for improved housing, better transportation, and enhanced public spaces.

Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach


Ren Thomas - 2016
    Featuring over thirty compelling case studies, this engaging resource illustrates the multidisciplinary and participatory approach that planners use in developing and implementing policies, plans, and programs. Practical and accessible, Planning Canada helps students think critically about the current challenges and opportunities planners face as they work to meet the diverse needs of communities across Canada.

Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment


Sherilyn Macgregor - 2016
    Over the course of the book, these contributors provide critical analyses of the gender dimensions of a wide range of timely and challenging topics, from sustainable development and climate change politics, to queer ecology and interspecies ethics in the so-called Anthropocene.Presenting a comprehensive overview of the development of the field from early political critiques of the male domination of women and nature in the 1980s to the sophisticated intersectional and inclusive analyses of the present, the volume is divided into four parts: Part I: Foundations Part II: Approaches Part III: Politics, policy and practice Part IV: Futures. Comprising chapters written by forty contributors with different perspectives and working in a wide range of research contexts around the world, this Handbook will serve as a vital resource for scholars, students, and practitioners in environmental studies, gender studies, human geography, and the environmental humanities and social sciences more broadly.

Thinking the Contemporary Landscape


Christopher Girot - 2016
    Examining our shifting perceptions of nature and place in the context of environmental challenges and how these affect urbanism and architecture, the seventeen essayists in argue for an all-encompassing view of landscape that integrates the scientific, intellectual, aesthetic, and mythic into a new multidisciplinary understanding of the contemporary landscape. A must-read for anyone concerned about the changing nature of our landscape in a time of climate crisis.

Green Gentrification: Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice (Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City series)


Kenneth A. Gould - 2016
    Through a comparative examination of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, it demonstrates that such initiatives, while positive for the environment, tend to increase inequality and thus undermine the social pillar of sustainable development. Although greening is ostensibly intended to improve environmental conditions in neighborhoods, it generates green gentrification that pushes out the working-class, and people of color, and attracts white, wealthier in-migrants. Simply put, urban greening "richens and whitens," remaking the city for the sustainability class. Without equity-oriented public policy intervention, urban greening is negatively redistributive in global cities.This book argues that environmental injustice outcomes are not inevitable. Early public policy interventions aimed at neighborhood stabilization can create more just sustainability outcomes. It highlights the negative social consequences of green growth coalition efforts to green the global city, and suggests policy choices to address them.The book applies the lessons learned from green gentrification in Brooklyn to urban greening initiatives globally. It offers comparison with other greening global cities. This is a timely and original book for all those studying environmental justice, urban planning, environmental sociology, and sustainable development as well as urban environmental activists, city planners and policy makers interested in issues of urban greening and gentrification.

The Brooklyn Wars


Neil deMause - 2016
    But most of the world doesn't see the price that local residents pay as their neighborhoods are swallowed by change. Masterful storyteller and award-winning journalist Neil deMause turns a spotlight on how the New Brooklyn came to be, who shaped it - and the winners and losers when "urban renaissance" comes to town.