front cover of Natural Hazard Mitigation
Natural Hazard Mitigation
Recasting Disaster Policy And Planning
David Godschalk, Timothy Beatley, Philip Berke, David Brower, and Edward J. Kaiser
Island Press, 1999

The first half of the 1990s saw the largest and most costly floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes in the history of the United States. While natural hazards cannot be prevented, their human impacts can be greatly reduced through advance action that mitigates risks and reduces vulnerability.

Natural Hazard Mitigation describes and analyzes the way that hazard mitigation has been carried out in the U.S. under our national disaster law, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. It is the first systematic study of the complete intergovernmental system for natural hazard mitigation, including its major elements and the linkages among them.

The book:

  • analyzes the effectiveness of the Stafford Act and investigates what is contained in state hazard mitigation plans required by the Act
  • studies how federal hazard mitigation funds have been spent
  • explores what goes into decision making following a major disaster
  • looks at how government mitigation officials rate the effectiveness of the mitigation system
  • suggests changes that could help solve the widely recognized problems with current methods of coping with disasters

Damages from natural disasters are reaching catastrophic proportions, making natural hazard mitigation an important national policy issue. The findings and recommendations presented in this volume should help to strengthen natural hazard mitigation policy and practice, thereby serving to reduce drains on the federal treasury that pay for preventable recovery and relief costs, and to spare residents in areas hit by natural disasters undue suffering and expense. It is an informative and eye-opening study for planners, policymakers, students of planning and geography, and professionals working for government agencies that deal with natural hazards.

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The Nature of Urban Design
A New York Perspective on Resilience
Alexandros Washburn
Island Press, 2015
The best cities become an ingrained part of their residents' identities. Urban design is the key to this process, but all too often, citizens abandon it to professionals, unable to see a way to express what they love and value in their own neighborhoods. New in paperback, this visually rich book by Alexandros Washburn, former Chief Urban Designer of the New York Department of City Planning, redefines urban design. His book empowers urbanites and lays the foundations for a new approach to design that will help cities to prosper in an uncertain future. He asks his readers to consider how cities shape communities, for it is the strength of our communities, he argues, that will determine how we respond to crises like Hurricane Sandy, whose floodwaters he watched from his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Washburn draws heavily on his experience within the New York City planning system while highlighting forward-thinking developments in cities around the world. He grounds his book in the realities of political and financial challenges that hasten or hinder even the most beautiful designs. By discussing projects like the High Line and the Harlem Children's Zone as well as examples from Seoul to Singapore, he explores the nuances of the urban design process while emphasizing the importance of individuals with the drive to make a difference in their city.
Throughout the book, Washburn shows how a well-designed city can be the most efficient, equitable, safe, and enriching place on earth. The Nature of Urban Design provides a framework for participating in the process of change and will inspire and inform anyone who cares about cities.
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Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia
Kong Chong Ho
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
The largest cities in Pacific Asia are the engines of their countries’ economic growth, seats of national and regional political power, and repositories of the nation’s culture and heritage. The economic changes impacting large cities interact with political forces along with social cultural concerns, and in the process also impact the neighbourhoods of the city. Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia looks at local collective action and city government responses and its impact on the neighbourhood and the city. A multi-sited comparative approach is taken in studying local action in five important cities (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Taipei) in Pacific Asia. With site selection in these five cities guided by local experts, neighbourhood issues associated with the fieldsites are explored through interviews with a variety of stakeholders involved in neighourhood building and change. The book enables comparisons across a number of key issues confronting the city: heritage (Bangkok and Taipei), local community involved provisioning of amenities (Seoul and Singapore), placemaking versus place marketing (Bangkok and Hong Kong). Cities are becoming increasingly important as centers for politics, citizen engagement and governance. The collaborative efforts city governments establish with local communities become an important way to address the liveability of cities.
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New Building in Old Cities
Writings by Gustavo Giovannoni on Architectural and Urban Conservation
Gustavo Giovannoni
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2024
The highly influential writings by an important early advocate for the conservation of historic cities are made available for the first time in English.

The Italian architect, historian, and restorer Gustavo Giovannoni (1873–1947) was a key figure in the fields of architecture, urbanism, and conservation during the first half of the twentieth century. A traditionalist largely neglected by the proponents of modernist architecture following World War II, he remains little known internationally. His writings, however, until now unavailable in English, represent a significant step toward the full appreciation of the historic city and are directly relevant today to the protection of urban historic resources worldwide.

This abundantly illustrated critical anthology is a representative sample of Giovannoni’s seminal texts related to the appreciation, understanding, and planning of historic cities. The thirty readings, which appear with their original illustrations, are grouped into six parts organized around key concepts in Giovannoni’s conservation theory—urban building, respect for the setting or context, a thinning out of the urban fabric, conservation and restoration treatments, the grafting of the new upon the old, and reconstruction. Each part is preceded by an introduction, and each reading is prefaced by succinct remarks explaining the rationale for its selection and the principal matters covered. Six plate sections further illustrate the readings’ main concepts and themes.
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New Geographies, 12
Commons
Mojdeh Mahdavi and Liang Wang
Harvard University Press
This issue of New Geographies aims to foreground the significance of political thinking in the process of space production. It proposes the concept of commons as a mode of thinking that challenges assumptions in the design disciplines such as public and private spaces, local and regional geographies, and capital and state interventions.
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New Geographies of the American West
Land Use and the Changing Patterns of Place
William R. Travis
Island Press, 2006
Reconciling explosive growth with often majestic landscape defines New Geographies of the American West. Geographer William Travis examines contemporary land use changes and development patterns from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and assesses the ecological and social outcomes of Western development.
 
Unlike previous "boom" periods dependent on oil or gold, the modern population explosion in the West reflects a sustained passion for living in this specific landscape. But the encroaching exurbs, ranchettes, and ski resorts are slicing away at the very environment that Westerners cherish.
 
Efforts to manage growth in the West are usually stymied at the state and local levels. Is it possible to improve development patterns within the West's traditional anti-planning, pro-growth milieu, or is a new model needed? Can the region develop sustainably, protecting and managing its defining wildness, while benefiting from it, too? Travis takes up the challenge , suggesting that functional and attractive settlement can be embedded in preserved lands, working landscapes, and healthy ecologies.
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New Mobilities
Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies
Todd Litman
Island Press, 2021
New transportation technologies can expand our world. During the last century, motorized modes increased our mobility by an order of magnitude, providing large benefits, but also imposing huge costs on individuals and communities. Faster and more expensive modes were favored over those that are more affordable, efficient, and healthy. As new transportation innovations become available, from e-scooters to autonomous cars, how do we make decisions that benefit our communities?
 
In New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies, transportation expert Todd Litman examines 12 emerging transportation modes and services that are likely to significantly affect our lives: bike- and carsharing, micro-mobilities, ridehailing and micro-transit, public transit innovations, telework, autonomous and electric vehicles, air taxis, mobility prioritization, and logistics management. These innovations allow people to scoot, ride, and fly like never before, but can also impose significant costs on users and communities. Planners need detailed information on their potential benefits and impacts to make informed choices.
 
Litman critically evaluates these new technologies and services and provides practical guidance for optimizing them. He systematically examines how each New Mobility is likely to affect travel activity (how and how much people travel); consumer costs and affordability; roadway infrastructure design and costs; parking demand; land use development patterns; public safety and health; energy and pollution emissions; and economic opportunity and fairness.
 
Public policies around New Mobilities can either help create heaven, a well-planned transportation system that uses new technologies intelligently, or hell, a poorly planned transportation system that is overwhelmed by conflicting and costly, unhealthy, and inequitable modes. His expert analysis will help planners, local policymakers, and concerned citizens to make informed choices about the New Mobility revolution.
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The New Suburban History
Edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue
University of Chicago Press, 2006
America has become a nation of suburbs. Confronting the popular image of suburbia as simply a refuge for affluent whites, The New Suburban History rejects the stereotypes of a conformist and conflict-free suburbia. The seemingly calm streets of suburbia were, in fact, battlegrounds over race, class, and politics. With this collection, Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue argue that suburbia must be understood as a central factor in the modern American experience. 

Kruse and Sugrue here collect ten essays—augmented by their provocative introduction—that challenge our understanding of suburbia. Drawing from original research on suburbs across the country, the contributors recast important political and social issues in the context of suburbanization. Their essays reveal the role suburbs have played in the transformation of American liberalism and conservatism; the contentious politics of race, class, and ethnicity; and debates about the environment, land use, and taxation. The contributors move the history of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and blue-collar workers from the margins to the mainstream of suburban history.

From this broad perspective, these innovative historians explore the way suburbs affect—and are affected by—central cities, competing suburbs, and entire regions. The results, they show, are far-reaching: the emergence of a suburban America has reshaped national politics, fostered new social movements, and remade the American landscape. The New Suburban History offers nothing less than a new American history—one that claims the nation cannot be fully understood without a history of American suburbs at its very center.
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The New Transit Town
Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development
Edited by Hank Dittmar and Gloria Ohland; Reconnecting America
Island Press, 2003

Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to maximize access to mass transit and nonmotorized transportation with centrally located rail or bus stations surrounded by relatively high-density commercial and residential development. New Urbanists and smart growth proponents have embraced the concept and interest in TOD is growing, both in the United States and around the world.

New Transit Town brings together leading experts in planning, transportation, and sustainable design—including Scott Bernstein, Peter Calthorpe, Jim Daisa, Sharon Feigon, Ellen Greenberg, David Hoyt, Dennis Leach, and Shelley Poticha—to examine the first generation of TOD projects and derive lessons for the next generation. It offers topic chapters that provide detailed discussion of key issues along with case studies that present an in-depth look at specific projects. Topics examined include:

  • the history of projects and the appeal of this form of development
  • a taxonomy of TOD projects appropriate for different contexts and scales
  • the planning, policy and regulatory framework of "successful" projects
  • obstacles to financing and strategies for overcoming those obstacles
  • issues surrounding traffic and parking
  • the roles of all the actors involved and the resources available to them
  • performance measures that can be used to evaluate outcomes

Case Studies include Arlington, Virginia (Roslyn-Ballston corridor); Dallas (Mockingbird Station and Addison Circle); historic transit-oriented neighborhoods in Chicago; Atlanta (Lindbergh Center and BellSouth); San Jose (Ohlone-Chynoweth); and San Diego (Barrio Logan).

New Transit Town explores the key challenges to transit-oriented development, examines the lessons learned from the first generation of projects, and uses a systematic examination and analysis of a broad spectrum of projects to set standards for the next generation. It is a vital new source of information for anyone interested in urban and regional planning and development, including planners, developers, community groups, transit agency staff, and finance professionals.

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Next Generation Infrastructure
Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works
Hillary Brown
Island Press, 2014
The 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis-St. Paul quickly became symbolic of the debilitated interstate highway system—and of what many critics see as America’s disinvestment in its infrastructure. The extreme vulnerability of single-purpose, aging infrastructure was highlighted once again when Hurricane Sandy churned its way across the northeast United States. Inundating New York City’s vital arteries, floodwaters overwhelmed tunnels and sewers; closed bridges; shut down the electrical substations that control mass transit; curtailed gas supplies; and destroyed streets, buildings, and whole neighborhoods. For days and on into weeks, failures triggered by floodwaters deprived millions of electricity, heat, and water services.

How can our complex, interdependent utilities support an urbanizing world, subject to carbon constraints and the impacts of climate change? How might these critical networks be made more efficient, less environmentally damaging, and more resilient? Such questions are at the heart of the approaches and initiatives explored in Next Generation Infrastructure. With a better understanding of the possible connections between different services, not only can inadvertent disruptions be reduced, but crosscutting benefits and lower costs will be possible. Next Generation Infrastructure highlights hopeful examples from around the world, ranging from the Mount Poso cogeneration plant in California to urban rainwater harvesting in Seoul, South Korea, to the multi-purpose Marina Barrage project in Singapore. Five bold organizing objectives are proposed that, in the hands of decision-makers and designers, will help bring about a future of multipurpose, low-carbon, resilient infrastructure that is tightly coordinated with natural and social systems.

In their conception and design, the innovative projects highlighted in Next Generation Infrastructure encourage us to envision infrastructure within a larger economic, environmental, and social context, and to share resources across systems, reducing costs and extending benefits. Through this systems approach to lifeline services, we can begin to move toward a more resilient future.
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No Communication with the Sea
Searching for an Urban Future in the Great Basin
Tim Sullivan
University of Arizona Press, 2010
Few other places in the United States are as high, dry, sparsely inhabited—and urbanized—as the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada. The great majority of the population of this rapidly growing region lives in the two metropolitan areas at its edges, Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front, and Reno and the Truckee Meadows. These cities embody the allure and the challenge of the contemporary American West, deemed by some “The New American Heartland.”

No Communication with the Sea is a journey through this urbanizing Great Basin landscape. Here, the land fosters illusions of limitless space and resources, but its space and resources are severely limited; its people live clustered in cities but are often reluctant to embrace urbanity. These tensions led journalist and urban planner Tim Sullivan to explore the developing centers and edges of the Great Basin cities and the ways some are trying to build livable and sustainable urban environments.

In this highly readable book of creative nonfiction, Sullivan employs a variety of methods—including interviews, research, travelogues, and narrative—to survey the harsh landscape for clues to the ways cities can adapt to their geography, topography, ecology, hydrography, history, and culture. No Communication with the Sea embarks on a quest for a livable future for the heart of the interior West. In the process, it both unearths the past and ponders the present and future Great Basin cities.
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