Green Metropolis

Look out for David Owen's next book, Where the Water Goes. A challenging, controversial, and highly readable look at our lives, our world, and our future. Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of compact urban centers, Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan—the most densely populated place in North America—rank first in public-transit use and last in percapita greenhouse-gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation. These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn’t reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world’s nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with.

"Sustainability" is more than the latest "green" buzzword. It represents a new way of viewing the interactions of human society and the natural world. Sustainability in America's Cities highlights how America's largest cities are acting to develop sustainable solutions to conflicts between development and environment. As sustainability rises to the top of public policy agendas in American cities, it is also emerging as a new discipline in colleges and universities. Specifically designed for these educational programs, this is the first book to provide empirically based, multi-disciplinary case studies of sustainability policy, planning, and practice in action. It is also valuable for everyone who designs and implements sustainability initiatives, including policy makers, public sector and non-profit practitioners, and consultants. Sustainability in America's Cities brings together academic and practicing professionals to offer firsthand insight into innovative strategies that cities have adopted in renewable energy and energy efficiency, climate change, green building, clean-tech and green jobs, transportation and infrastructure, urban forestry and sustainable food production. Case studies examine sustainability initiatives in a wide range of American cities, including San Francisco, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Milwaukee, New York City, Portland, Oregon and Washington D.C. The concluding chapter ties together the empirical evidence and recounts lessons learned for sustainability planning and policy.

"The woman who launched the restoration of Central Park in 1980 surveys in depth seven green landscapes in New York City, their history--both natural and human--and how they have been transformed over time. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers describes seven landscapes: greenbelt and nature refuge that runs along the spine of Staten Island on land once intended for a highway; Jamaica Bay, near JFK Airport, whose mosaic of fragile, endangered marshes has been preserved as a bird sanctuary; Inwood Hill, in upper Manhattan, whose forest once sheltered Native Americans and Revolutionary soldiers before it became a site for wealthy estates and subsequently a public park; the Central Park Ramble, a carefully designed artificial wilderness in the middle of the city; Roosevelt Island, formerly Welfare Island, in the East River, where urban planners built a traffic-free 'new town in town' in the 1970s and whose southern tip now boasts the Louis Kahn-designed memorial to FDR; Fresh Kills, the James Corner Field Operations-designed 2,200-acre park on Staten Island that is being created out of what was once the world's largest landfill; The High Line, in Manhattan's Chelsea and West Village neighborhoods, an aerial promenade built on an abandoned elevated rail spur"--

“Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street Journal An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes. The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on. The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert—and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.

Does going green change the face of design or only its content? The first book to outline principles for the aesthetics of sustainable design, The Shape of Green argues that beauty is inherent to sustainability, for how things look and feel is as important as how they’re made. In addition to examining what makes something attractive or emotionally pleasing, Hosey connects these questions with practical design challenges. Can the shape of a car make it more aerodynamic and more attractive at the same time? Could buildings be constructed of porous materials that simultaneously clean the air and soothe the skin? Can cities become verdant, productive landscapes instead of wastelands of concrete? Drawing from a wealth of scientific research, Hosey demonstrates that form and image can enhance conservation, comfort, and community at every scale of design, from products to buildings to cities. Fully embracing the principles of ecology could revolutionize every aspect of design, in substance and in style. Aesthetic attraction isn’t a superficial concern — it’s an environmental imperative. Beauty could save the planet.

"This curriculum was developed by a third grade teacher -- and planner -- in the Bay Area. Metropolis was designed as a standards-based, interdisciplinary unit of study for grades 3-6 (though it could be adapted for any grade level). It is intended for use by elementary classroom teachers and other adults who seek to expose children to a variety of urban forms from around the world. The city elements presented in the lessons are edges, districts, public spaces, landmarks and transportation -- taken from Kevin Lynch's Image of the City. These elements provide an organizing mechanism for children to design their own ideal cities. The lessons increase students' awareness of planning issues such as sustainability and sprawl, while giving them an opportunity to express their heritage, interests and ideas using a creative design process. In addition, Metropolis is a multidisciplinary curriculum that embeds language arts, mathematics, health, art, science, and social studies throughout the unit. It can be a stand-alone unit or used for teaching a neighborhood improvement curriculum"--Publisher's website.

The rise to power of one of Canada's most progressive municipal movements in recent memory. When it was dreamed up in the early 2000s by a transportation bureaucrat with a quixotic dream of bringing tramways back to the streets of Montreal, few expected Projet Montréal to go anywhere. But a decade and a half later, the party was a grassroots powerhouse with an ambitious agenda that had taken power at city hall--after dumping its founder, barely surviving a divisive leadership campaign and earning the ire of motorists across Quebec. Projet Montréal aspired to transform Montreal into a green, human-scale city with few, if any equal in North America. Equal parts reportage, oral history and memoir, Saving the City chronicles what the party did right, where it failed, and where it's headed. Written from the perspective of someone who worked for Projet Montréal's administration for almost a decade, Daniel Sanger's book draws on dozens of interviews with other actors in the party and on the municipal scene, past and present. A highly readable history of Montreal municipal politics over the past 30 years, Saving the City will also discuss issues of interest to city-dwellers across Canada. Are political parties at the municipal level a good thing? Is Montreal's borough system a model for other big cities? What are the best ways to control urban car use? What is the optimum width for a sidewalk? The best kind of street tree? And why free parking is a terrible idea.

"...engaging, intelligent, and surprisingly suspenseful." —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love The unforgettable New York Times best-selling journey of self-discovery and finding one's true calling in life Kathleen Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old middle manager trapped on the corporate ladder - until her boss eliminated her job. Instead of sulking, she took the opportunity to check out of the rat race for good - cashing in her savings, moving to Paris, and landing a spot at the venerable Le Cordon Blue cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the funny and inspiring account of her struggle in a stew of hot-tempered, chefs, competitive classmates, her own "wretchedly inadequate" French - and how she mastered the basics of French cuisine. Filled with rich, sensual details of her time in the kitchen - the ingredients, cooking techniques, wine, and more than two dozen recipes - and the vibrant sights and sounds of the markets, shops, and avenues of Paris, it is also a journey of self-discovery, transformation, and, ultimately, love.