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Sustainability has become the key challenge for urban planners, housing and infrastructure policy makers. Citizens are increasingly encouraged to live more compactly; in denser urban developments, to use less water and other natural resources and to choose public transport. While councils, government agencies and private business invest in a broad range of promotions offering discounts on sustainable products and services, uptake has been slow and the impacts marginal at a time when environmental stresses suggest that we must act fast. This book examines this pressing problem in a holistic way, discussing broad-scale sustainability policies and programmes for achieving sustainable urban futures. It brings together academics and practitioners to analyze the complexity and interdependence of principles, models, processes and practices of sustainability in a range of integrated sectors as well as the establishment and maintenance of sustainable physical infrastructure in cities.
From 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the world’s population now live in cities. Yet despite a wealth of literature on green architecture and planning, there is to date no single book which draws together theory from the full range of disciplines - from architecture, planning and ecology - which we must come to grips with if we are to design future cities which are genuinely sustainable. Paul Downton’s Ecopolis takes a major step along this path. It highlights the urgent need to understand the role of cities as both agents of change and means of survival, at a time when climate change has finally grabbed world attention, and it provides a framework for designing cities ...
‘Warm House Cool House simplifies the science behind low-energy housing design... and suggests inspiring and achievable ways to apply energy-efficient methods to new and existing homes.’ - Jamie Durie We all want to minimise our environmental impact, but we don’t always know how. In this new edition of the bestselling Warm House Cool House, respected Australian architect Nick Hollo provides valuable advice, illustrated by more than 100 inspiring contemporary examples of low-energy housing design, to help keep our homes cool in summer and warm in winter with little or no cooling and heating by appliances. The book shows how we can live comfortably without airconditioning in Far North Qu...
Written by the chair of the LEED-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) initiative, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature is both an urgent call to action and a comprehensive introduction to "sustainable urbanism"--the emerging and growing design reform movement that combines the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings. Providing a historic perspective on the standards and regulations that got us to where we are today in terms of urban lifestyle and attempts at reform, Douglas Farr makes a powerful case for sustainable urbanism, showing where we went wrong, and where we need to go. He then explains how ...
The scope of this extraordinary selection of essays, distilled from nearly a thousand works that the author has written, is literally the entire universe and universe of knowledge. It charts the author's quest for the meaning of life faced with a dominant knowledge system she regards as incoherent, meaningless, and often acting against people and planet. She shows how contemporary scientific findings across all disciplines already provide an authentic knowledge system that's coherent with life and the universe. The aim is to transform science thoroughly from inspiration to research to applications that work for people and planet.This book is simply unique in its scope and content. There is no equivalent. The author surveys and explains contemporary science in depth ranging over philosophy, anthropology, quantum physics and chemistry, neurobiology, psychology, genetics and epigenetics, cosmology, art, humanities, and mathematics. It presents a truly holistic view of nature, with profound implications for life in the social, political, and personal realm.
It is well known that human activities are endangering the stability and sustainability of many fragile ecosystems. This title looks at the science that addresses the frontiers of interactions between human behavior and environmental responses.
28 contributors each offer a chapter giving their experiences and techniques for resolving conflict in communities across the globe.
The Thread of Energy breaks down the most influential driver of human actions and decision making: energy. In this book, geographer Martin J. Pasqualetti exposes the technical and fundamental influences of energy, preparing scholars for the coming energy transitions that lie ahead.
The all-new essays in this book respond to the question, How do spaces in science fiction, both built and unbuilt, help shape the relationships among humans, other animals and their shared environments? Spaces, as well as a sense of place or belonging, play major roles in many science fiction works. This book focuses especially on depictions of the future that include, but move beyond, dystopias and offer us ways to imagine reinventing ourselves and our perspectives; especially our links to and views of new environments. There are ecocritical texts that deal with space/place and science fiction criticism that deals with dystopias but there is no other collection that focuses on the intersection of the two.