Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing is the most comprehensive resource on how green building principles can be incorporated into affordable housing design, construction, and operation. In this fully revised edition, Walker Wells and Kimberly Vermeer capture the rapid evolution of green building practices and make a compelling case for integrating green building in affordable housing. The Blueprint offers guidance on innovative practices, green building certifications for affordable housing, and the latest financing strategies. The completely new case studies share detailed insights on how the many elements of a green building are incorporated into different housing types and locations.
 
Every affordable housing project can achieve the fundamentals of good green building design. The Blueprint gives project teams what they need to push for excellence.
 

Beyond Polarization is a story of hope about positive collective action. Written from an insider’s perspective, it tells the story of California’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative—groundbreaking legislation passed after a ten-year public process that left an enduring legacy. The MLPA process provides a blueprint for successful public policy to conserve not just marine life, but any natural resource in contention across jurisdictions. The book is organized by geographical region, each with its unique stakeholders and concerns. Steven Yaffee, an expert on collaborative decision making, explains how its lessons can be applied to similar initiative processes across the country and internationally.
 
Beyond Polarization offers an optimistic message about the public policy process in a time of civic division: that policymakers, scientists, and local citizens can successfully collaborate to protect natural resources we all have a stake in.
 

Hank Dittmar, urban planner, friend of artists and creatives, sometime rancher, “high priest of town planning” to the Prince of Wales, believed in letting small things happen. Looking at the global cities of the world, he saw a crisis of success, with gentrification and global capital driving up home prices in some cities, while others decayed for lack of investment.
 
In DIY City, Dittmar explains why individual initiative, small-scale business, and small development matter, with lively stories from his own experience and examples from recent history.
 
Dittmar’s timely response to the challenges many cities face today is to make Do-It-Yourself the norm rather than the exception by removing the barriers to small-scale building and local business. The message of DIY City can offer hope to anyone who cares about cities.

When Bechara Choucair was a young doctor, he learned an important lesson: treating a patient for hypothermia does little good if she has to spend the next night out in the freezing cold. As health commissioner of Chicago, he was determined to address the societal causes of disease and focus the city's resources on its most vulnerable populations. That targeted approach has led to dramatic successes, such as lowering rates of smoking, teen pregnancy, breast cancer mortalities, and other serious ills.

In Precision Community Health, Choucair shows how those successes can be replicated and expanded around the country. The key is to use advanced technologies to identify which populations are most at risk for specific health threats and avert crises before they begin. Using this strategy can make a wholesale change in the way public health is practiced and in the well-being of all our communities.

Valuing Nature presents a new set of nature-based investment areas to help conservationists and investors work together to tackle problems such as climate change. The book examines the scope of nature-based impact investing, offers tools for investors and organizations to consider as they develop their own projects, and shares tips on how nonprofits can successfully navigate this new space. Case studies from around the world demonstrate how we can utilize private capital to achieve more sustainable uses of our natural resources.

William Ginn provides a roadmap for conservation professionals, nonprofit managers, and impact investors to improve the management of natural systems.

We love our pets. But there is a dark side to our domestic connection with animal life. The pet industry is contributing to a global conservation crisis for wildlife—often without the knowledge of pet owners. In Unnatural Companions, journalist Peter Christie argues that to reverse the alarming trend of wildlife decline, pet owners must acknowledge the pets-versus-conservation dilemma. Our well-fed and sheltered cats too often prey on small backyard wildlife, seemingly harmless reptiles released into the wild might be the next destructive invasive species, and the popular trend of designer pet food may have deleterious effects on the environment.

Christie's book is a cautionary tale to responsible pet owners, but he concludes with the positive message that the small changes we make at home can foster better practices within the pet industry that will ultimately benefit our pets’ wild brethren.

In Designing the Megaregion, planning and urban design expert Jonathan Barnett takes a fresh look at designing megaregions. Barnett argues that planning megaregions requires ecological literacy and a renewed commitment to social equity in order to address the increasing pressure that growth puts on natural, built, and human resources. If current trends continue, new construction in megaregions will put additional stress on natural resources, make highway gridlock and airline delays much worse, and cause each region to become more separate and unequal. Barnett offers an incremental approach to designing at the megaregional scale that will help prepare for future economic and population growth.

There is an urgent need to begin designing megaregions, and Barnett offers a hopeful way forward using systems that are already in place.

"Nothing is more important to life than water, and no one knows water better than Sandra Postel. Replenish is a wise, sobering, but ultimately hopeful book." —Elizabeth Kolbert

"Remarkable." —New York Times Book Review

"Clear-eyed treatise...Postel makes her case eloquently." —Booklist, starred review

"An informative, purposeful argument." —Kirkus

We spend billions of dollars on irrigation, dams, sanitation plants, and other feats of engineering to control water for our own prosperity. What if the answer was not control, but replenishment? Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature’s rhythms. Forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff, and “sponge cities” are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding. Postel argues that efforts like these will be essential as we adjust to a hotter, wilder climate. Will we continue to fight the water cycle, endangering ourselves and the planet, or recognize our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers? 

The Primer of Ecological Restoration is a succinct introduction to ecological restoration. The book introduces readers to the basics of restoration project planning, monitoring, and adaptive management, as well as ecological principles to guide ecosystem recovery. It explains abiotic factors such as landforms, soil, and hydrology that are the building blocks to recovering microorganism, plant, and animal communities. Other chapters cover invasive species and legal and financial considerations. Each chapter concludes with recommended reading and reference lists. Extensive pedagogic resources are available online for instructors.
 
This timely primer summarizes recent trends in the field suitable for introductory ecological restoration classes or for practitioners seeking constructive guidance for real-world projects.