It's time to think differently about cities and nature. Understanding how to better connect our cities with the benefits nature provides will be increasingly important as people migrate to cities and flourish in them. All this urban growth, along with challenges of adapting to climate change, will require a new approach to infrastructure if we're going to be successful. Yet guidance on how to plan and implement projects to protect or restore natural infrastructure is often hard to come by.
With Conservation for Cities, Robert McDonald offers a comprehensive framework for maintaining and strengthening the supporting bonds between cities and nature through innovative infrastructure projects. After presenting a broad approach to incorporating natural infrastructure priorities into urban planning, he focuses each following chapter on a specific ecosystem service. He describes a wide variety of benefits, and helps practitioners answer fundamental questions: What are the best ecosystem services to enhance in a particular city or neighborhood? How might planners best combine green and grey infrastructure to solve problems facing a city? What are the regulatory and policy tools that can help fund and implement projects? Finally, McDonald explains how to develop a cost-effective mix of grey and green infrastructure and offers targeted advice on quantifying the benefits.
Written by one of The Nature Conservancy's lead scientists on cities and natural infrastructure, Conservation for Cities is a book that ecologists, planners, and landscape architects will turn to again and again as they plan and implement a wide variety of projects.
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Nature in an Urban World Chapter 2. Figuring Out What Matters Chapter 3. Drinking Water Protection Chapter 4. Stormwater Chapter 5. Floodwater Chapter 6. Coastal Protection Chapter 7. Shade Chapter 8. Air Purification Chapter 9 Aesthetic Value Chapter 10: Recreation and Health Chapter 11: Parks and Mental Health Chapter 12: The Value of Biodiversity in Cities Chapter 13: Putting It All Together
References Index
"In this modest and succinct primer, he explains with an engaging informality ways to deal with many of the standard environmental shortcomings affecting U.S. cities, whether caused by the forces of nature or by human misuse. He also inserts anecdotes from his personal experience, but mostly this book describes a rational and realistic planning, problem-solving, inventory, implementation, and monitoring process that could apply to a range of interventions from modest to bold."
