Spring 2016 Built Environment Catalog

Spring 2016

Spring 2016 Built Environment

The Future of the Suburban City Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix Grady Gammage

Summary There exists a category of American cities in which the line between suburban and urban is almost impossible to locate. These suburban cities arose in the last half of twentieth-century America, based largely on the success of the single-family home, shopping centers, and the automobile. The low-density, auto-centric development of suburban cities, which are largely in the arid West, presents challenges for urban sustainability as it is traditionally measured. Yet, some of these cities—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake, Dallas, Tucson, San Bernardino, and San Diego—continue to be among the fastest growing places in the United States.

9781610916233 Pub Date: 4/3/2016 $25.00 Paperback 192 Pages Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning ARC010000

In The Future of the Suburban City, Phoenix native Grady Gammage, Jr. looks at the promise of the suburban city as well as the challenges. He argues that places that grew up based on the automobile and the single-family home need to dramatically change and evolve. But suburban cities have some advantages in an era of climate change, and many suburban cities are already making strides in increasing their resilience. Gammage focuses on the story of Phoenix, which shows the power of collective action — government action — to confront the challenges of geography and respond through public policy. He takes a fresh look at what it means to be sustainable and examines issues facing most suburban cities around water supply, heat, transportation, housing, density, urban form, jobs, economics, and politics.

The Future of the Suburban City is a realistic yet hopeful story of what is possible for any suburban city.

Contributor Bio Grady Gammage, Jr. is a Senior Scholar at Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability and Senior Fellow at ASU’s Morrison Institute. He also teaches at the ASU College of Law and at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Gammage is also a practicing lawyer, a real estate developer, and a former elected official.

Spring 2016 Built Environment

Global Street Design Guide National Association of City Transportation Offici...

Summary Each year, 1.2 million people die from traffic fatalities, highlighting the need to design streets that offer safe and enticing travel choices for all people. Cities around the world are facing the same challenges as cities in the US, and many of these problems are rooted in outdated codes and standards.

9781610917018 Pub Date: 6/16/2016 $50.00 Hardcover 460 Pages Transportation TRA000000

The Global Street Design Guide is a timely resource that sets a global baseline for designing streets and public spaces and redefines the role of streets in a rapidly urbanizing world. The guide will broaden how to measure the success of urban streets to include: access, safety, mobility for all users, environmental quality, economic benefit, public health, and overall quality of life. The first-ever worldwide standards for designing city streets and prioritizing safety, pedestrians, transit, and sustainable mobility are presented in the guide.

Participating experts from global cities have helped to develop the principles that organize the guide. The Global Street Design Guide builds off the successful tools and tactics defined in NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide and Urban Bikeway Design Guide while addressing a variety of street typologies and design elements found in various contexts around the world.

This innovative guide will inspire leaders, inform practitioners, and empower communities in realizing the potential in their public space networks. It will help cities unlock the potential of streets as safe, accessible, and economically sustainable places.

Contributor Bio The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is a membership network that provides support and resources for city transportation officials in cities of all sizes.

Spring 2016 Built Environment

Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design Timothy Beatley

Summary What if, even in the heart of a densely developed city, people could have meaningful encounters with nature? While parks, street trees, and green roofs are increasingly appreciated for their technical services like stormwater reduction, from a biophilic viewpoint, they also facilitate experiences that contribute to better physical and mental health: natural elements in play areas can lessen children's symptoms of ADHD, and adults who exercise in natural spaces can experience greater reductions in anxiety and blood pressure.

9781610916202 Pub Date: 7/7/2016 $40.00 Paperback 352 Pages Architecture / Sustainability & Green Design ARC018000

The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism.

Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources.

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 and encourage what preeminent biologist E.O. Wilson described as "the innate emotional connection of humans to all living things."

Contributor Bio Timothy Beatley is Chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning and Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for over twenty-five years. He is the author of many books, including Planning for Coastal Resilience, Biophilic Cities, and Green Urbanism (Island Press).

Spring 2016 Built Environment

Human Ecology(2nd Edition) How Nature and Culture Shape Our World Frederick R. Steiner, Richard T.T. Forman

Summary Humans have always been influenced by natural landscapes, and always will be—even as we create ever-larger cities and our developments fundamentally change the nature of the earth around us. In Human Ecology, noted city planner and landscape architect Frederick Steiner encourages us to consider how human cultures have been shaped by natural forces, and how we might use this understanding to contribute to a future where both nature and people thrive.

9781610917384 Pub Date: 2/16/2016 $30.00 Paperback 256 Pages Architecture / Landscape ARC008000

Human ecology is the study of the interrelationships between humans and their environment, drawing on diverse fields from biology and geography to sociology, engineering, and architecture. Steiner admirably synthesizes these perspectives through the lens of landscape architecture, a discipline that requires its practitioners to consciously connect humans and their environments. After laying out eight principles for understanding human ecology, the book’s chapters build from the smallest scale of connection—our homes—and expand to community scales, regions, nations, and, ultimately, examine global relationships between people and nature.

In this age of climate change, a new approach to planning and design is required to envision a livable future. Human Ecology provides architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and planners—and students in those fields— with timeless principles for new, creative thinking about how their work can shape a vibrant, resilient future for ourselves and our planet.

Contributor Bio Frederick Steiner is dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas, Austin. His books include The Living Landscape, 2nd Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and, with Ian McHarg, To Heal The Earth (Island Press, 1998).

Spring 2016 Built Environment

State of the World Can a City Be Sustainable?

Summary

9781610917551 Pub Date: 4/21/2016 $24.99 Paperback 300 Pages Science / Environmental Science SCI026000

Cities are the world’s future. Today, more than half of the global population—3.7 billion people—are urban dwellers, and that number is expected to double by 2050. There is no question that cities are growing; the only debate is over how they will grow. Will we invest in the physical and social infrastructure necessary for livable, equitable, and sustainable cities?

In the latest edition of State of the World, the flagship publication of the Worldwatch Institute, experts from around the globe examine the core principles of sustainable urbanism and profile cities that are putting them into practice.

State of the World first puts our current moment in context, tracing cities in the arc of human history. It also examines the basic structural elements of every city: materials and fuels; people and economics; and biodiversity.

In part two, professionals working on some of the world’s most inventive urban sustainability projects share their first-hand experience. Success stories come from places as diverse as Ahmedabad, India; Freiburg, Germany; and Shanghai, China. In many cases, local people are acting to improve their cities, even when national efforts are stalled.

Parts three and four examine cross-cutting issues that affect the success of all cities. Topics range from the nitty-gritty of handling waste and developing public transportation to civic participation and navigating dysfunctional government.

Throughout, readers discover the most pressing challenges facing communities and the most promising solutions currently being developed. The result is a snapshot of cities today and a vision for global urban sustainability tomorrow.

Contributor Bio Through research and outreach that inspire action, the Worldwatch Institute works to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world that meets human needs. The Institute’s top mission objectives are universal access to renewable energy and nutritious food, expansion of environmentally sound jobs and development, transformation of cultures from consumerism to sustainability, and an early end to population growth through healthy and intentional childbearing.

Spring 2016 Built Environment

Transit Street Design Guide Summary Transit and cities grow together. As cities work to become more compact, sustainable, and healthy, their work is paying dividends: in 2014, Americans took 10.8 billion trips on public transit, the highest since the dawn of the highway era. But most of these trips are on streets that were designed to move private cars, with transit as an afterthought. The NACTO Transit Street Design Guide places transit where it belongs, at the heart of street design. The guide shows how streets of every size can be redesigned to create great transit streets, supporting great neighborhoods and downtowns.

9781610917476 Pub Date: 4/14/2016 $50.00 Hardcover 260 Pages Transportation / Public Transportation TRA009000

The Transit Street Design Guide is a well-illustrated, detailed introduction to designing streets for high-quality transit, from local buses to BRT, from streetcars to light rail. Drawing on the expertise of a peer network and case studies from across North America, the guide provides a much-needed link between transit planning, transportation engineering, and street design. The Transit Street Design Guide presents a new set of core principles, street typologies, and design strategies that shift the paradigm for streets, from merely accommodating service to actively prioritizing great transit. The book expands on the transit information in the acclaimed Urban Street Design Guide, with sections on comprehensive transit street design, lane design and materials, stations and stops, intersection strategies, and city transit networks.

It also details performance measures and outlines how to make the case for great transit street design in cities.

The guide is built on simple math: allocating scarce space to transit instead of private automobiles greatly expands the number of people a street can move.

Street design and decisions made by cities, from how to time signals to where bus stops are placed, can dramatically change how transit works and how people use it.

The Transit Street Design Guide is a vital resource for every transportation planner, transit operations planner, and city traffic engineer working on making streets that move more people more efficiently and affordably.

Contributor Bio The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is a membership network that provides support and resources for city transportation officials in cities of all sizes.

Spring 2016 Built Environment

Wild By Design Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes Margie Ruddick

Summary Can nature—in all its unruly wildness—be an integral part of creative landscape design? In her beautifully illustrated book, Wild by Design, award-winning designer Margie Ruddick urges designers to look beyond the rules often imposed by both landscaping convention and sustainability checklists. Instead, she offers a set of principles for a more creative and intuitive approach that challenges the entrenched belief that natural processes cannot complement high-level landscape design.

9781610915984 Pub Date: 3/17/2016 $45.00 Paperback 248 Pages Architecture / Landscape ARC008000

Wild by Design defines and explains the five fundamental strategies Ruddick employs, often in combination, to give life, beauty, and meaning to landscapes: Reinvention, Restoration, Conservation, Regeneration, and Expression. Drawing on her own projects—from New York City’s Queens Plaza, formerly a concrete jungle of traffic, to a desertscape backyard in Baja, California, to the Living Water Park in Chengdu, China—she offers guidance on creating beautiful, healthy landscapes that successfully reconnect people with larger natural systems.

A revealing look into the approach of one of sustainable landscape design’s most innovative practitioners, Wild by Design stretches the boundaries of landscape design, offering readers a set of broader, more flexible strategies and practical examples that allow for the unexpected exuberance of nature to be a welcome part of our gardens, parks, backyards, and cities.

Contributor Bio For over twenty years, Margie Ruddick has been recognized for her pioneering work in landscape design. Winner of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in landscape architecture, Ruddick has crafted an innovative approach to design that brings together aspects of the landscape that seem to contrast—wild and urban, formally ordered and free, with attention to the messy margins where life happens. She has designed numerous high-profile projects including New York City's Queens Plaza, the Urban Garden Room at One Bryant Park, Shillim Institute and Retreat in India’s Western Ghats, and the Living Water Park in Chengdu, China. Elle Décor named Ruddick one of five landscape designers “who are reshaping our world,” and Dwell identified her as a “Landscape Design Icon.” Ruddick has taught at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Yale, Princeton, Parsons School of Design, and more. She is principal of Margie Ruddick Landscape.