Over the next several decades, as human populations grow, the demand for energy will soar. But renewable energy sources have a large energy sprawl—the amount of land needed to produce energy—which can threaten biodiversity. In Energy Sprawl Solutions, scientists Joseph M. Kiesecker and David Naugle provide a roadmap for preserving biodiversity despite the threats of energy sprawl. Their strategy—development by design—identifies and sets aside land where biodiversity can thrive while consolidating development in areas with lower biodiversity value.
 
This contributed volume features case studies from countries around the world, each describing a different energy sector and the way they have successfully maximized biodiversity protection. This book provides a needed guide for elected officials, industry representatives, NGOs and community groups who have a stake in sustainable energy-development planning.

Bicycling advocates envision a future in which bikes are a widespread daily form of transportation, but this reality is still far away. Will we ever witness a true “bike boom” in cities? What can we learn from past successes and failures to make cycling safer, easier, and more accessible?
 
In Bike Boom, journalist Carlton Reid uses history to shine a spotlight on the present and demonstrates how bicycling has the potential to grow even further, if the right measures are put in place by the politicians and planners of today and tomorrow. He explores the benefits and challenges of cycling, the roles of infrastructure and advocacy, and what we can learn from cities that have successfully supported and encouraged bike booms. In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, Reid sets out to discover what we can learn from the history of bike “booms.” 

In Resilient Cities, Second Edition, Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer explore what it means to be resilient in an age of changing climate and growing inequity. Since the first edition was published in 2009, interest in resilience has surged, in part due to increasingly frequent and deadly natural disasters, and in part due to the contribution of our cities to climate change. The new initiatives and approaches from citizens and all levels of government show the promise as well as the challenges of creating cities that are truly resilient.
 
Resilient Cities, Second Edition reveals how cities around the world are working  to become more resilient. The authors offer stories, insights, and inspiration for urban planners, policymakers, and professionals interested in creating more sustainable, equitable, and, eventually, regenerative cities. Most importantly, the book is about overcoming fear and generating hope in our cities. The challenge of resilient cities is to claim a different future that helps us regenerate the whole planet.

In Within Walking Distance, journalist and urban critic Philip Langdon looks at why and how Americans are shifting toward a more human-scale way of building and living. He shows how people are creating, improving, and caring for walkable communities. To draw the most important lessons, Langdon spent time in six communities that differ in size, history, wealth, diversity, and education, yet share crucial traits: compactness, a mix of uses and activities, and human scale. To improve conditions and opportunities for everyone, Langdon argues that places where the best of life is within walking distance ought to be at the core of our thinking. This book is for anyone who wants to understand what can be done to build, rebuild, or improve a community while retaining the things that make it distinctive.

We owe much of our economic prosperity to the vast forested landscapes that cover the earth. But forests are under more pressure than ever. It is time to forgo the entrenched thinking that forests can be managed outside of human influence, and shift instead to management strategies that consider humans to be part of the forest ecosystem.

People, Forests, and Change: Lessons from the Pacific Northwest, considers the nature of forests in flux and how to balance the needs of forests and rural communities. In the US northwest, forest ecosystem management has been underway for two decades, and key lessons are emerging.  This book brings together ideas for policy makers, managers, students, and conservationists seeking to manage forests conscientiously and assure their long-term viability.

"This is nature writing at its best." —E.O. Wilson

"Eloquent treatise...Landis's book is as much call to action as paean to mesmerizing molluscs." —Nature

"Rich, accurate, and moving." —New Scientist

"A lyrical love letter to the imperiled freshwater mussel." —Science

Abbie Gascho Landis first fell for freshwater mussels while pregnant and submerged in an Alabama creek, watching a female filter the water through her body while her gills bulged with offspring. In that moment of connection, Landis became a mussel groupie, obsessed with learning more about the creatures’ hidden lives. She isn’t the only fanatic; the shy mollusks, so vital to the health of rivers around the world, have a way of inspiring unusual devotion. In Immersion: The Science and Mystery of Freshwater Mussels, Landis brings readers to a hotbed of mussel diversity, the American Southeast, to seek mussels where they eat, procreate, and, too often, perish. Landis shares her journey from perilous river surveys to dry streambeds and into laboratories where endangered mussels are raised one life at a time.

Mussels have much to teach us about the health of the watershed if we step into the creek and take a closer look at their lives. In turns joyful and sobering, Immersion is an invitation to see rivers from a mussel’s perspective, a celebration of the wild lives visible to those who learn to search.

In order to understand and improve cities today, personal observation remains as important as ever.  While big data, digital mapping, and simulated cityscapes are valuable tools for understanding urban space, using them without on-the-ground, human impressions risks creating places that do not reflect authentic local context. Seeing the Better City brings our attention back to the real world right in front of us, focusing it once more on the sights, sounds, and experiences of place in order to craft policies, plans, and regulations to shape better urban environments.

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of big environmental challenges—but we need inspiration now more than ever. In Nature’s Allies, Larry Nielsen presents the inspiring stories of eight conservation pioneers who show that through passion and perseverance we can each make a difference, even in the face of political opposition. Nielsen’s vivid biographies of John Muir, Ding Darling, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Chico Mendes, Billy Frank Jr., Wangari Maathai, and Gro Harlem Brundtland are meant to rally a new generation of conservationists to follow in their footsteps and inspire students, conservationists, and nature lovers to speak up for nature and prove that individuals can affect positive change in the world.

What if, even in the heart of a densely developed city, people could have meaningful encounters with nature?
 
The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also creates an emotional connection to the earth and promotes well-being among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook introduces key ideas about biophilic urbanism, highlights urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities, and concludes with lessons and resources for advancing urban biophilia.
 
As the most comprehensive reference on the emerging field of biophilic urbanism, the Handbook is essential reading for students and practitioners looking to place nature at the core of their planning and design ideas.

For decades, landscape architecture was driven solely by artistic sensibilities. But in these times of global change, the opportunity to reshape the world comes with a responsibility to consider how it can be resilient, fostering health and vitality for humans and nature. Landscape Architecture Theory re-examines the fundamentals of the field, offering a new approach to landscape design.

Drawing on his extensive career in teaching and practice, Michael Murphy begins with an examination of influences on landscape architecture. He then delves into systems and procedural theory, while making connections to ecosystem and human factors, the design process, and more. He concludes by showing how a strong theoretical understanding can be applied to practical, every-day decision making and design work to create more holistic, sustainable, and creative landscapes.

Given the realities of climate change and sea-level rise, coastal cities around the world are struggling with questions of resilience.  Resilience, at its core, is about desirable states of the urban social-ecological system and working to sustain those states in an uncertain and tumultuous future.  How do physical conditions, ecological processes, social objectives, human politics, and history shape the prospects for resilience?  Most books set out “the answer.”  This book sets out a process of grappling with holistic resilience from multiple perspectives, drawing on the insights and experiences of more than fifty scholars and practitioners working together to make Jamaica Bay in New York City an example for the world.

Ranging from a framework for understanding resilience practice in urban watersheds to essential tools for research and practice, Prospects for Resilience is filled with information and advice for scientists, urban planners, students, and others who are working to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.

Over the last 50 years architect Jan Gehl has changed the way that we think about architecture and city planning—moving from the Modernist separation of uses to a human-scale approach inviting people to use their cities.
People Cities tells the inside story of how Gehl learned to study urban spaces and implement his people-centered approach in car-dominated cities. It discusses the work, theory, life, and influence of Gehl from the perspective of those who have worked with him in cities across the globe. It will inspire anyone who wants to create vibrant, human-scale cities and understand the ideas and work of the architect who has most influenced urban design.