1st Edition
by Gary Grant (Author)
The need to find new approaches to the development of cities is becoming increasingly urgent in this age of continuing population growth, demographic transition, climate change, fossil fuel peak and biodiversity losses. Restoring ecosystem services and promoting biodiversity is essential to sustainable development – even in the built environment.
Ecosystem Services come to Town: greening cities by working with nature
demonstrates how to make urban environments greener. It starts by
explaining how, by mimicking nature and deliberately creating habitats
to provide ecosystem services, cities can become more efficient and more
pleasant to live in. The history of cities and city planning is
covered with the impacts of industrial urban development described, as
well as the contemporary concerns of biodiversity loss, peak oil and
climate change.
The later sections offer solutions to the
challenges of sustainable urban development by describing and explaining
a whole range of approaches and interventions, beginning at the
regional scale with strategic green infrastructure, looking at districts
and precincts, with trees, parks and rain gardens and ending with
single buildings, including with green roofs and living walls.
Technical
enough to be valuable to practitioners but still readable and
inspirational, this guide demonstrates to town planners, urban
designers, architects, engineers, landscape architects how to make
cities more liveable.
