Greena buildings'buildings that use fewer resources to build and to sustain'are commonly thought to be too expensive to attract builders and buyers. But are they? The answer to this question has enormous consequences, since residential and commercial buildings together account for nearly 50% of American energy consumption'including at least ......
This book introduces community planning as practiced in the United States, focusing on the comprehensive plan. Sometimes known by other names'especially master plan or general plan'the type of plan described here is the predominant form of general governmental planning in the U.S. Although many government agencies make plans for their own ......
Public Produce makes a uniquely contemporary case not for central government intervention, but for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what Darrin Nordahl calls municipal agriculture,a elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public ......
A flooding river is very hard to stop. Many residents of the United States have discovered this the hard way. Right now, over five million Americans hold flood insurance policies from the National Flood Insurance Program, which estimates that flooding causes at least six billion dollars in damages every year. Like rivers after a ......
The green building revolutiona is a worldwide movement for energy-efficient, environmentally aware architecture and design. Europe has been in the forefront of green building technology, and Green Building Trends: Europe provides an indispensable overview of these cutting edge ideas and applications.
Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of coastal storms around the globe, and the anticipated rise of sea levels will have enormous impact on fragile and vulnerable coastal regions. In the U.S., more than 50% of the population inhabits coastal areas. In Planning for Coastal Resilience, Tim Beatley argues ......
The concept of the citya 'as well as the statea and the nation statea 'is passé, agree contributors to this insightful book. The new scale for considering economic strength and growth opportunities is the megaregion,a a network of metropolitan centers and their surrounding areas that are spatially and functionally linked through ......
Many communities across the nation still lack affordable housing. And many officials continue to claim that affordable housinga is an oxymoron. Building inexpensively is impossible, they say, because there are too many regulations. Required environmental impact statements and habitat protection laws, they contend, drive up the costs of ......
As superintendent of planting in Central Park and landscape architect to New York City for nearly thirty years, Samuel Parsons Jr. (1844-1923) was a last direct link to Vaux and Olmsted. His widely read 1915 book summed up the theories and work that had inspired America's first generation of landscape architects. Francis R. Kowsky's introduction ......
