How do we provide for and nurture millions of people without destroying the planet in the process? Author Doug Kent, an environmental specialist, believes a vital element in the solution is recognizing that urban landscapes are an essential partner in everyone’s wellbeing. He argues that urban landscapes can and must work harder. Urban landscapes can provide part of our energy needs, help cool our buildings and public spaces, help us make the most of our precious water. They can also help combat air pollution and reduce the likelihood of allergies and asthma. They can provide landscape materials and even contribute to our timber supply. Doug also advocates turning landscapes into a food source, and/or a perfumery, pharmacy, soap shop, or craft store. Doug has over 12 years of research in this book. He has spent years doing literature reviews, and many more years concocting, consuming, crafting, distilling, propagating, retting, sawing, sowing, and weaving its many recommendations. He has also travelled the length and width of California many times to interview the people and businesses already doing this incredible work. Regenerating Essential Goods and Services is not a manifesto. It is a user’s manual. You are the creative and energetic force that will ultimately drive sustainability and regeneration. Let’s go.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the intellectual developments in urban conservation. The authors offer unique insights from UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and the book is richly illustrated with colour photographs. Examples are drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide from Timbuktu to Liverpool to demonstrate key issues and best practice in urban conservation today. The book offers an invaluable resource for architects, planners, surveyors and engineers worldwide working in heritage conservation, as well as for local authority conservation officers and managers of heritage sites.

The phenomenon of urban regeneration has become increasingly prominent on government agendas in recent years. Using case studies of cultural regeneration planning and management from Europe, North and South America, this book explores the role of culture and tourism in urban transformation. Themes covered include; cultural planning for regeneration, cultural regeneration policies and politics, integrated and sustainable regeneration strategies, community-orientated regeneration, ethnoscapes and cultural diversity in regeneration, the cultural regeneration of waterfronts and dock cities, creativity in regeneration, arts-led regeneration, and the role of sports and events in regeneration.

During recent years, the topic of participation has increasingly been gaining importance in Iran – in the scientific field, in practice and rhetoric. However, in current scientific literature – and especially in English literature – there is little knowledge on the conditions, legal background, perceptions, experiences and processes of citizens’ participation in Iran. This book aims to shed light on the paradoxical question of participation in Iran: it is old and new, dysfunctioning and functioning, disappointing and promising. This slippery status of participation convinces scholars to suggest contradictory interpretations and understandings about the existence, functionality, and potentiality of this concept. The book therefore shows the different perspectives, interpretations, historical developments and case studies of participation in Iran, thus giving the reader a kaleidoscope view on the question of participation in Iran.

Planning Sustainable Cities: An infrastructure-based approach provides an analytical framework for urban sustainability, focusing on the services and performance of infrastructure systems. The book approaches infrastructure as a series of systems that function in synergy and are directly linked with urban planning. This method streamlines and guides the planning process, while still highlighting detail, each infrastructure system is decoded in four "system levels". The levels organize the processes, highlight connections between entities and decode the high-level planning and decision making process affecting infrastructure. For each system level strategic objectives of planning are determined. The objectives correspond to the five focus areas of the Zofnass program: Quality of life, Natural World, Climate and Risk, Resource Allocation, Leadership. Developed through the Zofnass Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, this approach integrates the key infrastructure systems of Energy, Landscape, Transportation, Waste, Water, Information and Food and explores their synergies through land use planning, engineering, economics and policy. The size and complexity of infrastructure systems means that multiple stakeholders facing their own challenges and agendas are involved in planning; this book creates a common, collaborative platform between public authorities, planners, and engineers. It is an essential resource for those seeking Envision Sustainability Professionals accreditation.

Student communities are without doubt a strategic resource for urban development and students are the citizens and the high-skilled working class of tomorrow. They are seen as an 'invisible population' with little say in local policy and decision-making. Co-operation between educational institutions and city planners is often missing and cities tend to neglect the universities' foreign relations. This volume argues that the importance of human capital in the competitiveness of cities demands pro-active, integral city policies targeting this community. Bringing together nine case studies of European cities (Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Munich, Lyon, Lille, Venice, Birmingham and Helsinki), it puts forward a comprehensive strategic plan of action, aiming at the integration of student communities in urban development. The book analyses the essential characteristics of the relationship between students and their host communities, as well as the role of higher education institutions and other actors in building the 'student friendly' city.

Green infrastructure encompasses many features in the built environment. It is widely recognised as a valuable resource in our towns and cities and it is therefore crucial to understand, create, protect and manage this resource. This Handbook sets the context for green infrastructure as a means to make urban environments more resilient, sustainable, liveable and equitable. Including state-of-the-art reviews that summarise the existing knowledge as well as research findings, this Handbook provides current evidence for the beneficial impact of green infrastructure on health, environmental quality and the economy. It discusses the planning and design of green infrastructure as a strategic network down to the individual features in a neighbourhood and looks at the process of green infrastructure implementation, emphasising the importance of collaboration across multiple professions and sectors. This comprehensive volume operates at multiple spatial scales, from strategic networks at the regional level to individual features in neighbourhoods, with international case studies used throughout to illustrate key examples of good practice. This collection of expert contributions will be invaluable to students and academics in the fields of planning, urban studies and geography. Practitioners and policy-makers will also find the policy discussion and examples enlightening.

This book discusses the way to design and plan for regenerative cities and landscapes. Where sustainability aims to safeguard the resources for future generations, and the resilience concept focuses on dealing with shocks to keep the system functioning, regeneration aims to give back more than it takes from the system. This principle is often used in analytical and assessment literature, but not yet elaborated in a spatial planning and design context, which this book does. It offers insights from a range of perspectives, spatial scales, such as the country level, neighbourhood public space, streets and the building levels, scientific fields and continents, amongst which Africa, Oceania, and Europe.

What if environmentally damaged landscapes could not only be remediated from an ecological standpoint, but also designed to replenish an entire community as well as the nature surrounding it? The Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design incorporates ecology, engineering, sociology, and design elements into a new paradigm for environmental r

Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration presents a comprehensive account of UK policies, processes and practices in brownfield regeneration and takes an integrated and theoretically-grounded approach to highlight best practice. Brownfield regeneration has become a major policy driver in developed countries. It is estimated that there are 64,000 hectares of brownfield land in England, much of which presents severe environmental challenges and lies alongside some of the most deprived communities in the country. Bringing such land back into active use has taken on a new urgency among policymakers, developers and other stakeholders in the development process. Frequently, however, policy thinking and practice has been underpinned by ‘silo’ mentalities, in which integrated and multidisciplinary approaches to problem-solving have been limited. The book has two principal aims. The first is to examine the ways in which science and social science research disciplines can be brought together to help solve important brownfield regeneration issues, with a focus on the UK. The second is to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of different types of regeneration policy and practice, and to show how ‘liveable spaces’ can be produced from ‘problem places’. The Thames Gateway in the south of England and Greater Manchester in the North of England are shown as examples of how brownfield regeneration projects are developing in an era where sustainability is high on the policy agenda. From the Foreword by Paul Syms, National Brownfield Advisor, English Partnerships: ‘Ensuring the effective and efficient reuse of brownfield land is an essential part of the British Government’s land use policies in support of sustainable communities. [This book] recognises that reusing brownfield land is not just about over-coming technical issues to remove contamination or other physical problems with the ground. It highlights the importance of engaging with the many different stakeholders whose opinions and concerns need to be taken into account if sustainable outcomes are to be achieved. The authors also recognise that brownfield land reuse is not just about building new homes or places of employment – the creation of new green spaces can be just as important.’