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The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom
Essential Lessons for Collective Action
Erik Nordman
Island Press, 2021
In the 1970s, the accepted environmental thinking was that overpopulation was destroying the earth. Prominent economists and environmentalists agreed that the only way to stem the tide was to impose restrictions on how we used resources, such as land, water, and fish, from either the free market or the government. This notion was upended by Elinor Ostrom, whose work to show that regular people could sustainably manage their community resources eventually won her the Nobel Prize. Ostrom’s revolutionary proposition fundamentally changed the way we think about environmental governance. 
 
In The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, author Erik Nordman brings to life Ostrom’s brilliant mind. Half a century ago, she was rejected from doctoral programs because she was a woman; in 2009, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Her research challenged the long-held dogma championed by Garrett Hardin in his famous 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” which argued that only market forces or government regulation can prevent the degradation of common pool resources. The concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons” was built on scarcity and the assumption that individuals only act out of self-interest. Ostrom’s research proved that people can and do act in collective interest, coming from a place of shared abundance. Ostrom’s ideas about common resources have played out around the world, from Maine lobster fisheries, to ancient waterways in Spain, to taxicabs in Nairobi. In writing The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, Nordman traveled extensively to interview community leaders and stakeholders who have spearheaded innovative resource-sharing systems, some new, some centuries old. Through expressing Ostrom’s ideas and research, he also reveals the remarkable story of her life.
 
Ostrom broke barriers at a time when women were regularly excluded from academia and her research challenged conventional thinking. Elinor Ostrom proved that regular people can come together to act sustainably—if we let them. This message of shared collective action is more relevant than ever for solving today’s most pressing environmental problems.
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Under Ground
How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World
Yvonne Baskin
Island Press, 2005
Let's get dirty. In childhood, the back yard, the flowerbed, the beach, the mucky place where land slips into puddles, lakes, and streams are infinitely fascinating. It is a mistake to leave that "childish" fascination with mud and dirt behind. The soils of the Earth, whether underneath our feet or pressurized beneath tons of ocean water, hold life in abundance. A handful of garden dirt may harbor more species than the entire aboveground Amazon.
 
The robotic rovers Spirit and Opportunity made headlines as they scraped their way across the Martian landscape, searching for signs of life. But while our eyes have been turned toward the skies, teeming beneath us and largely unexplored lies what Science magazine recently called the true "final frontier." A growing array of scientists is exploring life in soils and sediments, uncovering a living world literally alien to our own senses--and yet one whose integrity turns out to be crucial to life above ground.
 
Yvonne Baskin takes the reader from the polar desert of Antarctica to the coastal rain forests of Canada, from the rangelands of Yellowstone National Park to the vanishing wetlands of the Mississippi River basin, from Dutch pastures to English sounds, and beyond. She introduces exotic creatures--from bacteria and fungi to microscopic nematode worms, springtails, and mud shrimp--and shows us what scientists are learning about their contribution to sustaining a green and healthy world above ground. She also explores the alarming ways in which air pollution, trawl fishing, timber cutting, introductions of invasive species, wetland destruction, and the like threaten this underground diversity and how their loss, in turn, affects our own well being.
 
Two-thirds of the world's biological diversity exists in soils and underwater sediments, and yet most of us remain unaware of these tiny multitudes that run the planet beneath the scenes. In Under Ground, Baskin reveals the startling ways in which that life, whether in our own back yards, in fields and forests, or in the furthest reaches of the Earth, is more numerous, significant, and fascinating than we once imagined.
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Understanding Disaster Insurance
New Tools for a More Resilient Future
Carolyn Kousky
Island Press, 2022
The frequency and intensity of natural disasters—such as wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and storms—is on the rise, threatening our way of life and our livelihoods. Managing this growing risk will be central to economic and social progress in the coming decades. Insurance, an often confusing and unpopular tool, will be critical to successfully emerging from the effects of these crises. Its traditional role is to protect us from unforeseen and unanticipated risk, but as currently structured, insurance cannot adequately respond to these types of threats. How can we improve insurance to provide consistent and sufficient help following all disasters? How do we use insurance not just to help us recover, but also to help us prevent disasters in the first place? And how can insurance help us achieve broader social and environmental goals?

Understanding Disaster Insurance provides an accessible introduction to the complexities—and exciting possibilities—of risk transfer markets in the U.S. and around the world. Carolyn Kousky, a leading researcher on disaster risk and insurance, explains how traditional insurance markets came to be structured and why they fall short in meeting the needs of a world coping with climate change. She then offers realistic, yet hopeful, examples of new approaches. With examples ranging from individual entrepreneurs to multi-country collaborations, she shows how innovative thinking and creative applications of insurance-based mechanisms can improve recovery outcomes for people and their communities. She also explores the role of insurance in supporting policy goals beyond disaster recovery, such as nature-positive approaches for larger environmental impact. The book holds up the possibility that new risk transfer markets, brought to scale, could help create more equitable and sustainable economies.  

Insurance and risk transfer markets can be a powerful tool for adapting to climate change, yet they are frequently misunderstood. Many find insurance confusing or even problematic and ineffective. Understanding Disaster Insurance is a useful guidebook for policymakers, innovators, students, and other decision makers working to secure a resilient future—and anyone affected by wind, fire, rain, or flood. 
 
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Understanding Environmental Administration and Law
Susan J. Buck
Island Press, 1996

More than any other field of public administration, environmental administration is defined by its legal content. Federal legislation has a direct and immediate impact on state and federal bureaucrats, and citizen groups must constantly adjust to changing standards for environmental protection and regulation.

In Understanding Environmental Administration and Law, Susan J. Buck examines the use of environmental law by exploring the policy process through which such law is made, the political environment in which it is applied, and the statutory and case laws that are critical to working within the regulatory system. The book provides an analytic framework for the legal context of environmental administration and familiarizes readers with the development and implementation of the federal regulatory structure.

First published in 1991, this revised and expanded edition includes new material on:

  • the continuing evolution of environmentalism in the United States
  • federalism and bureaucratic decision making within the context of the American legal system
  • citizen suits, counter suits, and the increasingly restrictive perspective of the federal judiciary toward standing
  • the property rights movement
  • the impact of political changes on policy development
Unlike most books that deal with environmental law, the focus of this volume is on understanding the law as a managerial tool and fitting it into the overall policy context. Anyone involved with the environment, from students to citizen activists to mid-level managers at the federal, state, and local level, will find it enormously valuable.
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Understanding Environmental Administration and Law
Susan J. Buck; Foreword by R.W. Behan
Island Press, 1991

More than any other field of public administration, environmental administration is defined by its legal content. Federal legislation has a direct and immediate impact on state and federal bureaucrats, and citizen groups must constantly adjust to changing standards for environmental protection and regulation.

In Understanding Environmental Administration and Law, Susan J. Buck examines the use of environmental law by exploring the policy process through which such law is made, the political environment in which it is applied, and the statutory and case laws that are critical to working within the regulatory system. The book provides an analytic framework for the legal context of environmental administration and familiarizes readers with the development and implementation of the federal regulatory structure.

A revised and expanded edition of this book was published by Island Press in 1996.

[more]

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Understanding Environmental Administration and Law, 3rd Edition
Susan J. Buck
Island Press, 2006

Understanding Environmental Administration and Law provides an engaging, introductory overview of environmental policy. Author Susan J. Buck explores the process through which policy is made, the political environment in which it is applied, and the statutory and case laws that are critical to working within the regulatory system. This revised and expanded third edition adds case studies that help bring the subject to life and includes new material on:

  • the Bush Administration and its approach to administering environmental laws
  • the continuing evolution of environmentalism and the changing role of environmental regulation in the United States
  • the development and implementation of environmental agreements at the international level
  • the impacts and implications of globalization

Understanding Environmental Administration and Law provides a framework for understanding the law as a managerial tool.

[more]

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Unmanaged Landscapes
Voices For Untamed Nature
Edited by Bill Willers
Island Press, 1999

The idea that humans can effectively "manage" nature -- that we can successfully manipulate and control our environment to meet our needs and satisfy our desires -- is almost universally accepted in today's society. While we may be aware that nearly all significant environmental problems are caused by human actions, we remain convinced that the key to solving these problems is "better management."

In Unmanaged Landscapes, editor Bill Willers brings together an insightful and thought-provoking selection of writings that challenge that assumption. Written between the mid-nineteenth century and the late 1990s, the pieces range from two paragraphs written in response to an exam question to tightly reasoned philosophical arguments. They offer the thoughts, stories, and analysis of scientists, journalists, philosophers, historians, educators, and others who have considered the effects and implications of "resource management," and have found themselves in favor of keeping some landscapes free from human interference.

The collection is divided into three sections: one that focuses on biology and ecology, one that examines the idea of wildness from the standpoint of human society and its economic concerns, and a third that considers philosophical and spiritual aspects of wildness. Featured are works from leading environmental thinkers including Rachel Carlson, George Wuerthner, Joanna Macy, Paul Shepard, David Orr, John Burroughs, David Ehrenfeld, Arne Naess, Bill McKibben, Donald Worster, Carolyn Merchant, Rick Bass, and many others.

As Willers explains in his introduction, "If wildness and wild creatures are to survive on Earth, so then must unmanaged landscapes, for they are the fountainheads of the wildness that Henry Thoreau taught is the preservation of the world. They are the blank spots on the map longed for by Aldo Leopold." Unmanaged Landscapes presents a compelling argument for protecting and restoring that wildness.

[more]

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Unnatural Companions
Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction
Peter Christie
Island Press, 2019
"Highly compelling...page-turning read" — TNC's Cool Green Science

We love our pets. Dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, and other species have become an essential part of more families than ever before—in North America today, pets outnumber people. Pet owners are drawn to their animal companions through an innate desire to connect with other species. But there is a dark side to our domestic connection with animal life: the pet industry is contributing to a global conservation crisis for wildlife—often without the knowledge of pet owners.
 
In Unnatural Companions, journalist Peter Christie issues a call to action for pet owners. If we hope to reverse the alarming trend of wildlife decline, pet owners must acknowledge the pets-versus-conservation dilemma and concede that our well-fed and sheltered cats too often prey on small backyard wildlife and seemingly harmless reptiles released into the wild might be the next destructive invasive species. We want our pets to eat nutritionally healthy food, but how does the designer food we feed them impact the environment?
 
Christie's book is a cautionary tale to responsible pet owners about why we must change the ways we love and care for our pets. It concludes with the positive message that the small changes we make at home can foster better practices within the pet industry that will ultimately benefit our pets’ wild brethren.
[more]

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The Unnatural History of the Sea
Callum Roberts
Island Press, 2007
Humanity can make short work of the oceans’ creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller’s sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It’s a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.

As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans’ bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas.

The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them.
[more]

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Unnatural Selection
How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene
Emily Monosson
Island Press, 2015
Gonorrhea. Bed bugs. Weeds. Salamanders. People. All are evolving, some surprisingly rapidly, in response to our chemical age. In Unnatural Selection, Emily Monosson shows how our drugs, pesticides, and pollution are exerting intense selection pressure on all manner of species. And we humans might not like the result.

Monosson reveals that the very code of life is more fluid than once imagined. When our powerful chemicals put the pressure on to evolve or die, beneficial traits can sweep rapidly through a population. Species with explosive population growth—the bugs, bacteria, and weeds—tend to thrive, while bigger, slower-to-reproduce creatures, like ourselves, are more likely to succumb.

Monosson explores contemporary evolution in all its guises. She examines the species that we are actively trying to beat back, from agricultural pests to life-threatening bacteria, and those that are collateral damage—creatures struggling to adapt to a polluted world. Monosson also presents cutting-edge science on gene expression, showing how environmental stressors are leaving their mark on plants, animals, and possibly humans for generations to come. 

Unnatural Selection is eye-opening and more than a little disquieting. But it also suggests how we might lessen our impact: manage pests without creating super bugs; protect individuals from disease without inviting epidemics; and benefit from technology without threatening the health of our children.
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Unquenchable
America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It
Robert Glennon
Island Press, 2010
In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out.
 
Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry.
 
The looming catastrophe remains hidden as government diverts supplies from one area to another to keep water flowing from the tap. But sooner rather than later, the shell game has to end. And when it does, shortages will threaten not only the environment, but every aspect of American life: we face shuttered power plants and jobless workers, decimated fi sheries and contaminated drinking water.
 
We can’t engineer our way out of the problem, either with traditional fixes or zany schemes to tow icebergs from Alaska. In fact, new demands for water, particularly the enormous supply needed for ethanol and energy production, will only worsen the crisis. America must make hard choices—and Glennon’s answers are fittingly provocative. He proposes market-based solutions that value water as both a commodity and a fundamental human right.
 
One truth runs throughout Unquenchable: only when we recognize water’s worth will we begin to conserve it.
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The Upside of Down
Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization
Thomas Homer-Dixon
Island Press, 2006
Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon - or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and planet earth.

The Upside of Down takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies' management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this spellbinding book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls "synchronous failure." But, crisis doesn't have to mean total global calamity. Through catagenesis, or creative, bold reform in the wake of breakdown, it is possible to reinvent our future.

Drawing on the worlds of archeology, poetry, politics, science, and economics, The Upside of Down is certain to provoke controversy and stir imaginations across the globe. The author's wide-ranging expertise makes his insights and proposals particularly acute, as people of all nations try to grapple with how we can survive tomorrow's inevitable shocks to our global system. There is no guarantee of success, but there are ways to begin thinking about a better world, and The Upside of Down is the ideal place to start thinking.




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Urban Acupuncture
Jaime Lerner
Island Press, 2016
During his three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s and ‘80s, architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner transformed his city into a global model of the sustainable and livable community. From the pioneering Bus Rapid Transit system to parks designed to catch runoff and reduce flooding and the creation of pedestrian-only zones, Lerner has been the driving force behind a host of innovative urban projects. In more than forty years of work in cities around the globe, Lerner has found that changes to a community don’t need to be large-scale and expensive to have a transformative impact—in fact, one block, park, or a single person can have an outsized effect on life in the surrounding city.

In Urban Acupuncture, Lerner celebrates these “pinpricks” of urbanism—projects, people, and initiatives from around the world that ripple through their communities to uplift city life. With meditative and descriptive prose, Lerner brings readers around the world to streets and neighborhoods where urban acupuncture has been practiced best, from the bustling La Boqueria market in Barcelona to the revitalization of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. Through this journey, Lerner invites us to re-examine the true building blocks of vibrant communities—the tree-lined avenues, night vendors, and songs and traditions that connect us to our cities and to one another.

Urban Acupuncture is the first of Jaime Lerner’s visionary work to be published in English. It is a love letter to the elements that make a street hum with life or a neighborhood feel like home, penned by one of the world’s most successful advocates for sustainable and livable urbanism.
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Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition
National Association of City Transportation Officials
Island Press, 2014
The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition, is based on the experience of the best cycling cities in the world. Completely re-designed with an accessible, four-color layout, this second edition continues to build upon the fast-changing state of the practice at the local level. The designs in this book were developed by cities for cities, since unique urban streets require innovative solutions.

To create the Guide, the authors conducted an extensive worldwide literature search from design guidelines and real-life experience. They worked closely with a panel of urban bikeway planning professionals from NACTO member cities and from numerous other cities worldwide, as well as traffic engineers, planners, and academics with deep experience in urban bikeway applications. The Guide offers substantive guidance for cities seeking to improve bicycle transportation in places where competing demands for the use of the right-of-way present unique challenges.

First and foremost, the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition will help practitioners make good decisions about urban bikeway design. The treatments outlined in this updated Guide are based on real-life experience in the world's most bicycle friendly cities and have been selected because of their utility in helping cities meet their goals related to bicycle transportation. Praised by Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as an “extraordinary piece of work,” the Guide is an indispensable tool every planner must have for their daily transportation design work.
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Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Third Edition
National Association of City Transportation Officials, NACTO
Island Press, 2024
Over a decade ago, the first edition of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide sparked a design revolution in cities. City streets are now understood as key elements in confronting the intertwined safety, equity, and climate crises in North America.

The completely revised and updated third edition of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide sets a new standard for street design in North America. Developed for cities, by cities, the new guide is more than a permission slip for better street design--it's a prescription for safe, connected, equitable bike networks. It captures lessons learned and emerging practices to set a new bar for the design of city streets.

The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Third Edition, will help city leaders and street designers meet the needs of our time. New topics address critical gaps in existing guidance for planning and project development. Contextual guidance for bikeway design encompasses the needs of a wider swath of potential riders, across genders, ages, races, ethnicities, incomes, and abilities. The guide offers substantive guidance for safe intersection design, with a focus on conflict reduction. It is a blueprint for implementing safe, connected, and equitable bike networks. Every transportation professional, from design to maintenance and from field staff to executives, needs a copy for their daily work.

Praise for the second edition
 
“NACTO's Urban Bikeway Design Guide gives American planners and designers the tools they need to make cycling accessible to more people.”
—Janette Sadik-Khan, former New York City Transportation Commissioner
 
“This is an extraordinary piece of work that's long overdue.”
—Ray LaHood, former United States Secretary of Transportation
 
“The guide will serve as an essential blueprint for safe, active, multi-modal streets.”
—Gabe Klein, former Chicago Transportation Commissioner
 
“A Must-read… Landscape architects, planners, and city officials should find this guide invaluable. Anyone who advocates for increasing bicycle infrastructure in our cities will find many useful tools for implementing best practice infrastructure.”
―ASLA's The Dirt
 
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Urban Development
The Logic Of Making Plans
Lewis Hopkins
Island Press, 2001

With increased awareness of the role of plans in shaping urban and suburban landscapes has come increased criticism of planners and the planning profession. Developers, politicians, and citizens alike blame "poor planning" for a host of community ills. But what are plans really supposed to do? How do they work? What problems can they successfully address, and what is beyond their scope? In Urban Development, leading planning scholar Lewis Hopkins tackles these thorny issues as he explains the logic of plans for urban development and justifies prescriptions about when and how to make them. He explores the concepts behind plans, some that are widely accepted but seldom examined, and others that modify conventional wisdom about the use and usefulness of plans. The book:

  • places the role of plans and planners within the complex system of urban development
  • offers examples from the history of plans and planning
  • discusses when plans should be made (and when they should not be made)
  • gives a realistic idea of what can be expected from plans
  • examines ways of gauging the success or failure of plans

The author supports his explanations with graphics, case examples, and hypothetical illustrations that enliven, clarify, and make concrete the discussions of how decisions about plans are and should be made.

Urban Development will give all those involved with planning human settlements a more thorough understanding of why and how plans are made, enabling them to make better choices about using and making plans. It is an important contribution that will be essential for students and faculty in planning theory, land use planning, and planning project courses.

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Urban Ecological Design
A Process for Regenerative Places
Danilo Palazzo and Frederick Steiner
Island Press, 2011
This trailblazing book outlines an interdisciplinary "process model" for urban design that has been developed and tested over time. Its goal is not to explain how to design a specific city precinct or public space, but to describe useful steps to approach the transformation of urban spaces. Urban Ecological Design illustrates the different stages in which the process is organized, using theories, techniques, images, and case studies. In essence, it presents a "how-to" method to transform the urban landscape that is thoroughly informed by theory and practice. 
 
The authors note that urban design is viewed as an interface between different disciplines. They describe the field as "peacefully overrun, invaded, and occupied" by city planners, architects, engineers, and landscape architects (with developers and politicians frequently joining in). They suggest that environmental concerns demand the consideration of ecology and sustainability issues in urban design. It is, after all, the urban designer who helps to orchestrate human relationships with other living organisms in the built environment.
 
The overall objective of the book is to reinforce the role of the urban designer as an honest broker and promoter of design processes and as an active agent of social creativity in the production of the public realm.
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Urban Green
Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities
Peter Harnik
Island Press, 2010

For years American urban parks fell into decay due to disinvestment, but as cities began to rebound—and evidence of the economic, cultural, and health benefits of parks grew— investment in urban parks swelled. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently cited meeting the growing demand for parks and open space as one of the biggest challenges for urban leaders today. It is now widely agreed that the U.S. needs an ambitious and creative plan to increase urban parklands.

Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for “built out” cities to add much-needed parks. Peter Harnik first explores the question of why urban parkland is needed and then looks at ways to determine how much is possible and where park investment should go. When presenting the ideas and examples for parkland, he also recommends political practices that help create parks.

The book offers many practical solutions, from reusing the land under defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from building trails on abandoned tracks to planting community gardens, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. No strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of realities. But collectively they suggest a path toward making modern cities more beautiful, more sociable, more fun, more ecologically sound, and more successful.

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Urban Open Space
Designing For User Needs
Mark Francis; Landscape Architecture Foundation
Island Press, 2003

Research has shown that successful public spaces are ones that are responsive to the needs of their users, are democratic in their accessibility, and are meaningful for the larger community and society. While considerable research has been done on needs and conflicts in open space, no one document integrates all this knowledge and makes it available to professionals, students, and researchers.

Based on archival research; published case studies; site visits; and interviews with researchers, open space designers, managers, and users, Urban Open Space looks across several seminal studies to glean significant findings and design implications related to user needs and conflicts. It reviews and identifies those critical user needs that must be considered in the planning, design, and management of outdoor spaces, and synthesizes that knowledge into an accessible and useful document.


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Urban Raptors
Ecology and Conservation of Birds of Prey in Cities
Edited by Clint W. Boal and Cheryl R. Dykstra
Island Press, 2018
Raptors are an unusual success story of wildness thriving in the heart of our cities—they have developed substantial populations around the world in recent decades. But there are deeper issues around how these birds make their urban homes. New research provides insight into the role of raptors as vital members of the urban ecosystem and future opportunities for protection, management, and environmental education.
  
A cutting-edge synthesis of over two decades of scientific research, Urban Raptors is the first book to offer a complete overview of urban ecosystems in the context of bird-of-prey ecology and conservation. This comprehensive volume examines urban environments, explains why some species adapt to urban areas but others do not, and introduces modern research tools to help in the study of urban raptors. It also delves into climate change adaptation, human-wildlife conflict, and the unique risks birds of prey face in urban areas before concluding with real-world wildlife management case studies and suggestions for future research and conservation efforts.
  
Boal and Dykstra have compiled the go-to single source of information on urban birds of prey. Among researchers, urban green space planners, wildlife management agencies, birders, and informed citizens alike, Urban Raptors will foster a greater understanding of birds of prey and an increased willingness to accommodate them as important members, not intruders, of our cities.
 
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Urban Sprawl and Public Health
Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities
Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson
Island Press, 2004

In Urban Sprawl and Public Health, Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, three of the nation's leading public health and urban planning experts explore an intriguing question: How does the physical environment in which we live affect our health? For decades, growth and development in our communities has been of the low-density, automobile-dependent type known as sprawl. The authors examine the direct and indirect impacts of sprawl on human health and well-being, and discuss the prospects for improving public health through alternative approaches to design, land use, and transportation.

Urban Sprawl and Public Health offers a comprehensive look at the interface of urban planning, architecture, transportation, community design, and public health. It summarizes the evidence linking adverse health outcomes with sprawling development, and outlines the complex challenges of developing policy that promotes and protects public health. Anyone concerned with issues of public health, urban planning, transportation, architecture, or the environment will want to read Urban Sprawl and Public Health.

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Urban Street Design Guide
National Association of City Transportation Officials
Island Press, 2013
The NACTO Urban Street Design Guide shows how streets of every size can be reimagined and reoriented to prioritize safe driving and transit, biking, walking, and public activity.  Unlike older, more conservative engineering manuals, this design guide emphasizes the core principle that urban streets are public places and have a larger role to play in communities than solely being conduits for traffic. 

The well-illustrated guide offers blueprints of street design from multiple perspectives, from the bird’s eye view to granular details. Case studies from around the country clearly show how to implement best practices, as well as provide guidance for customizing design applications to a city’s unique needs.  Urban Street Design Guide outlines five goals and tenets of world-class street design:

•    Streets are public spaces. Streets play a much larger role in the public life of cities and communities than just thoroughfares for traffic.
•    Great streets are great for business. Well-designed streets generate higher revenues for businesses and higher values for homeowners.
•    Design for safety. Traffic engineers can and should design streets where people walking, parking, shopping, bicycling, working, and driving can cross paths safely.
•    Streets can be changed. Transportation engineers can work flexibly within the building envelope of a street. Many city streets were created in a different era and need to be reconfigured to meet new needs.
•    Act now! Implement projects quickly using temporary materials to help inform public decision making.

Elaborating on these fundamental principles, the guide offers substantive direction for cities seeking to improve street design to create more inclusive, multi-modal urban environments.  It is an exceptional resource for redesigning streets to serve the needs of 21st century cities, whose residents and visitors demand a variety of transportation options, safer streets, and vibrant community life.

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Urban Street Stormwater Guide
National Association of City Transportation Officials
Island Press, 2017
Streets make up more than 80 percent of all public space in cities, yet street space is often underutilized or disproportionately allocated to the movement of private motor vehicles. Excess impervious surface contributes to stormwater runoff, posing a threat to the environment and human health, and often overwhelming sewer systems. This excess asphalt also poses a threat to public safety, encouraging faster speeds and dangerous conditions for people walking and biking. 

The Urban Street Stormwater Guide begins from the principle that street design can support—or degrade—the urban area’s overall environmental health. By incorporating Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) into the right-of-way, cities can manage stormwater and reap the public health, environmental, and aesthetic benefits of street trees, planters, and greenery in the public realm. With thoughtful design, GSI can bolster strategies to provide a safe and pleasant walking and biking experience, efficient and reliable transit service, and safer streets for all users.

Building on the successful NACTO urban street guides, the Urban Street Stormwater Guide provides the best practices for the design of GSI along transportation corridors. The authors consider context-sensitive design elements related to street design, character and use, zoning, posted speed, traffic volumes, and impacts to non-motorized and vehicular access. The Guide documents and synthesizes current practices being developed by individual agencies and recommends design guidance for implementation, as well as explores innovative new strategies being tested in cities nationwide. The guidance will focus on providing safe, functioning and maintainable infrastructure that meets the unique needs and requirements of the transportation corridors and its various uses and users.

The state-of-the-art solutions in this guide will assist urban planners and designers, transportation engineers, city officials, ecologists, public works officials, and others interested in the role of the built urban landscape in protecting the climate, water quality, and natural environment.
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front cover of Urban Transformation
Urban Transformation
Understanding City Form and Design
Peter Bosselmann
Island Press, 2008
How do cities transform over time? And why do some cities change for the better while others deteriorate? In articulating new ways of viewing urban areas and how they develop over time, Peter Bosselmann offers a stimulating guidebook for students and professionals engaged in urban design, planning, and architecture. By looking through Bosselmann’s eyes (aided by his analysis of numerous color photos and illustrations) readers will learn to “see” cities anew.
 
Bosselmann organizes the book around seven “activities”: comparing, observing, transforming, measuring, defining, modeling, and interpreting.  He introduces readers to his way of seeing by comparing satellite-produced “maps” of the world’s twenty largest cities. With Bosselmann’s guidance, we begin to understand the key elements of urban design. Using Copenhagen, Denmark, as an example, he teaches us to observe without prejudice or bias.
 
He demonstrates how cities transform by introducing the idea of “urban morphology” through an examination of more than a century of transformations in downtown Oakland, California. We learn how to measure quality-of-life parameters that are often considered immeasurable, including “vitality,” “livability,” and “belonging.” Utilizing the street grids of San Francisco as examples, Bosselmann explains how to define urban spaces. Modeling, he reveals, is not so much about creating models as it is about bringing others into public, democratic discussions. Finally, we find out how to interpret essential aspects of “life and place” by evaluating aerial images of the San Francisco Bay Area taken in 1962 and those taken forty-three years later.
 
Bosselmann has a unique understanding of cities and how they “work.” His hope is that, with the fresh vision he offers, readers will be empowered to offer inventive new solutions to familiar urban problems.
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front cover of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change
Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change
Peter Calthorpe
Island Press, 2010
“Cities are green” is becoming a common refrain.  But Calthorpe argues that a more comprehensive understanding of urbanism at the regional scale provides a better platform to address climate change.  In this groundbreaking new work, he shows how such regionally scaled urbanism can be combined with green technology to achieve not only needed reductions in carbon emissions but other critical economies and lifestyle benefits.  Rather than just providing another checklist of new energy sources or one dimensional land use alternatives, he combines them into comprehensive national growth scenarios for 2050 and documents their potential impacts.  In so doing he powerfully demonstrates that it will take an integrated approach of land use transformation, policy changes, and innovative technology to transition to a low carbon economy. 
 
To accomplish this Calthorpe synthesizes thirty years of experience, starting with his ground breaking work in sustainable community design in the 1980s following through to his current leadership in transit-oriented design, regional planning, and land use policy. Peter Calthorpe shows us what is possible using real world examples of innovative design strategies and forward-thinking policies that are already changing the way we live.
 
This provocative and engaging work emerges from Calthorpe’s belief that, just as the last fifty years produced massive changes in our culture, economy and environment, the next fifty will generate changes of an even more profound nature. The book, enhanced by its superb four-color graphics, is a call to action and a road map for moving forward.
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front cover of Urbanism Without Effort
Urbanism Without Effort
Charles R. Wolfe
Island Press, 2013
**Revised editions (paperback and e-book) to be released at beginning of 2019; available for preorder now on separate product page.
This product is part of the Island Press E-ssentials Series and is not the most current edition.**

This beautifully illustrated short e-book explores the idea that to create vibrant, sustainable urban areas for the long term, we must first understand what happens naturally when people congregate in cities—innate, unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding urban and physical environment. Wolfe elaborates on the perspective that the underlying rationales for urban policy, planning and regulation are best understood from a historical perspective and in a better understanding of the everyday uses of urban space. To make his case, Wolfe draws on his years of writing about urbanism as well as his professional experiences as a land use and environmental lawyer and offers compelling case study vignettes from everyday urban life.

Successful community, Wolfe argues, is among the first principles of what makes humans feel happy, and therefore city dwellers invariably celebrate environments where and when they can coexist safely, in a mutually supportive way. Wolfe believes such celebration is most interesting when it occurs spontaneously—seemingly without effort. He contends it is critical to first isolate these spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use, before applying any prescriptive government policies or initiatives. Wolfe provides something rare in contemporary urbanist writing—rich illustrations and examples from real life—both historical and current. His writing about the past and the future of urban form offers readers inspiration, historical context, and a better understanding of how a sustainable, inviting urban environment is created.
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front cover of Urbanism Without Effort
Urbanism Without Effort
Reconnecting with First Principles of the City
Charles R. Wolfe
Island Press, 2018
How do you create inviting and authentic urban environments where people feel at home? Countless community engagement workshops, studies by consulting firms, and downtown revitalization campaigns have attempted to answer this age-old question. In Urbanism Without Effort, Chuck Wolfe argues that “unplanned” places can often teach us more about great placemaking than planned ones.
 
From impromptu movie nights in a Seattle alley to the adapted reuse of Diocletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia, Wolfe searches for the “first principles” of what makes humans feel happy and safe amid the hustle and bustle of urban life. He highlights the common elements of cities around the world that spontaneously bring people together: being inherently walkable, factors that contribute to safety at night, the importance of intersections and corners, and more. In this age of skyrocketing metropolitan growth, he argues, looking to the past might be our best approach to creating the urban future we dream about.
 
A whirlwind global tour, Urbanism Without Effort offers readers inspiration, historical context, and a better understanding of how an inviting urban environment is created.
 
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