The Living Landscape, Second Edition
An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning
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- $62.99
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- $62.99
Publisher Description
The Living Landscape is a manifesto, resource, and textbook for architects, landscape architects, environmental planners, students, and others involved in creating human communities. Since its first edition, published in 1990, it has taught its readers how to develop new built environments while conserving natural resources. No other book presents such a comprehensive approach to planning that is rooted in ecology and design. And no other book offers a similar step-by-step method for planning with an emphasis on sustainable development. This second edition of The Living Landscape offers Frederick Steiner’s design-oriented ecological methods to a new generation of students and professionals.
The Living Landscape offers
• a systematic, highly practical approach to landscape planning that maximizes ecological objectives, community service, and citizen participation
• more than 20 challenging case studies that demonstrate how problems were met and overcome, from rural America to large cities
• scores of checklists and step-by-step guides
• hands-on help with practical zoning, land use, and regulatory issues
• coverage of major advances in GIS technology and global sustainability standards
• more than 150 illustrations.
As Steiner emphasizes throughout this book, all of us have a responsibility to the Earth and to our fellow residents on this planet to plan with vision. We are merely visiting this planet, he notes; we should leave good impressions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism. Environmentalist White highlights quirky, visionary individuals and their innovative methods to improve the quality of the ranges and mountains of the West, such as biologist Bill Zeedyk, who restores riparian areas and water tables using sticks and rocks to simply and cheaply mimic a creek's natural meandering, and activist Dan Dagget, who has been able to unite environmentalists and ranchers by focusing on common goals (open space, wildlife, restored streams). White promotes implementation of the "New Ranch," operating "on the principle that the natural processes that sustain wildlife habitat, biological diversity and functioning watersheds are the same processes that make land productive for livestock... where erosion has diminished, where streams and springs, once dry, now flow, where wildlife is more abundant, and where landowners are more profitable as a result." White's vision of stewardship, openness to new ideas, giving as well as taking, and flexibility will inspire anyone who loves humanity or the great outdoors.
