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Resilience Matters
Fans of Island Press (myself included) know of that, beyond their publication of a great diversity of books, the non-profit has a mission, to “provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems”. In this regard, beyond publication around these themes, they have…
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Ecologists on Urban Ecology
A great roundtable going on right now from The Nature of Cites asking ecologists “What is one thing every ecologist should know about urban ecology?” Consisting of a range of voices from all over the globe, the conversation discusses the larger contributions of ecology, as well as some of the challenges, as mentioned by David Maddox in…
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Living Shorelines
Amidst the political crazy we like to call our United States government, and specifically what seems like a daily dismantling of environmental policies, there’s at least some folks at work on alternatives. Per a recent ASLA Advocacy brief: “On December 1, 2017, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ) introduced H.R. 4525, the Living Shorelines Act of 2017.…
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The Peregrine
While not specifically urban, some reading worth your time is JA Baker‘s slim volume, The Peregrine. Written in 1967, it was one The cover of the 2004 edition I own features an introduction by Robert Macfarlane (who I learned about the book from via his readings). Seemingly simple in format, a short blurb from Amazon gives…
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Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness
I was really excited to learn about the publication of this book Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness (2017, Applied Research & Design). Having earned my undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture at North Dakota State University, our design milieu often focused on the sprawling plains, with design exercises that took us into the realms…
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Rome: Urban Formation and Transformation
I was really happy to receive a copy of Jon Michael Schwarting’s new book “Rome: Urban Formation and Transformation”. As a self-professed lover of Italy and Rome, it is interesting to see the analysis of the form of Rome. A short blurb from Amazon via the link in ArchDaily: “In this book, Formation is ideal and utopian thinking,…
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Smart Trees
Way back in undergraduate studies, I developed a project for a pedestrian street mall in Vancouver, British Columbia. The conceptual framework of car-free zones in cities was a contentious one at the time with some notable failures but the idea of removing cars from urban zones was a key driver of my design. This has…
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Walden, the game
I’m a bit tardy in posting about the 200th Anniversary of Thoreau’s birthday, which generated some great reading about the man, his adventures, the pond, and his legacy. I’m one of the camp that was highly influenced by early and often readings of Thoreau, and accept both the critical view of his life, while also…
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Urban Ecology Reading List 2: Landscape Ecology
URBAN ECOLOGY READING LIST – 2 Beyond some of the specific books focusing on the science of Urban Ecology, there are subsets of literature that support this study. This is the first of three posts to expand the reading list that investigate these other, related disciplinary alignments, including landscape ecology, the hybrid books on planning…
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Why Cities Need More Green Roofs
Nice video from NPR on Why Cities Need More Green Roofs. From the summary. “We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.”