Island Press began with a simple idea: knowledge is power—the power to imagine a better future and find ways for getting us there. Founded in 1984, Island Press’ mission is to provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems.
Can a City Be Sustainable? (State of the World)
- Copyright year: 2016
Aldo Leopold's Odyssey, Tenth Anniversary Edition
Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac
- Copyright year: 2016
Our Renewable Future
Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy
The next few decades will see a profound energy transformation throughout the world, as we shift from fossil fuels to rely primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power. What might a 100% renewable future look like, and what challenges might we face in the transition? In Our Renewable Future, energy expert Richard Heinberg and scientist David Fridley explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the shift to renewable energy. Beginning with a comprehensive overview of our current system, the authors survey issues of energy supply and demand in key components of society, including electricity generation, transportation, buildings, and manufacturing. The book concludes with a discussion of energy and equity and a summary of key lessons and steps forward at the individual, community, and national level. Our Renewable Future is a clear-eyed and urgent guide to the renewable energy transformation that will be a crucial resource for policymakers and energy activists.
- Copyright year: 2016
Climate Change in Wildlands
Pioneering Approaches to Science and Management
Climate Change in Wildlands proposes a new kind of collaboration between scientists and managers—a science-derived framework and common-sense approaches for keeping parks and protected areas healthy on a rapidly changing planet.
- Copyright year: 2016
Restoring Neighborhood Streams
Planning, Design, and Construction
What has been missing, however, is detailed guidance for restoration practitioners wanting to undertake similar urban stream restoration projects that worked with, rather than against, nature. This book presents the author’s thirty years of practical experience managing long-term stream and river restoration projects in heavily degraded urban environments. Although the case studies are local, the principles, methods, and tools are universal, and can be applied in almost any city in the world.
- Copyright year: 2016
What Makes a Great City
What makes a great city? City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna.
For Garvin, greatness is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities.
What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.
- Copyright year: 2016
Biting the Hands that Feed Us
How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable
Today in the United States, laws exist at all levels of government that exacerbate problems such as food waste, hunger, inhumane livestock conditions, and disappearing fish stocks. Baylen Linnekin argues that government rules often handcuff America’s most sustainable farmers, producers, sellers, and consumers, while rewarding those whose practices are anything but sustainable. Biting the Hands that Feed Us introduces readers to the perverse consequences of many food rules, from crippling organic farms to subsidizing monocrops. Linnekin also explores what makes for a good law—often, he explains, these emphasize good outcomes over rigid processes. But he urges readers to reconsider efforts to regulate our way to a greener food system, calling instead for empowerment of those working to feed us—and themselves—sustainably.
- Copyright year: 2016
The Past and Future City
How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities
This book is for anyone who cares about cities, places, and saving America’s diverse stories in a way that will bring us together and help us better understand our past, present, and future.
- Copyright year: 2016
Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries
A Critical Appraisal of Catches and Ecosystem Impacts
- Copyright year: 2016
Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries
A Critical Appraisal of Catches and Ecosystem Impacts
- Copyright year: 2016
Global Street Design Guide
This innovative guide will inspire leaders, inform practitioners, and empower communities to realize the potential in their public space networks. It will help cities unlock the potential of streets as safe, accessible, and economically sustainable places.
- Copyright year: 2016
Foundations of Restoration Ecology
Foundations of Restoration Ecology, Second Edition, has been dramatically updated to reflect new research in restoration ecology, including new sections on specific ecosystem processes, including hydrology, nutrient dynamics, and carbon. Case studies describe real-life restoration scenarios in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. Lists at the end of each chapter summarize new theory and practical applications.
Written by acclaimed researchers in the field, this book provides practitioners as well as graduate and undergraduate students with a solid grounding in the newest advances in ecological science and theory.
- Copyright year: 2016
Holistic Management, Third Edition
A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment
In this third edition of Holistic Management, Savory and coauthor Jody Butterfield update and streamline guidelines to reverse desertification, halt climate change, retain biodiversity, and eliminate causes of global human impoverishment. Reorganized chapters streamline concepts and new color photographs showcase examples of land restored by properly managed livestock.
Holistic Management is written for new generations of ranchers, farmers, pastoralists, eco- and social entrepreneurs, and government agencies, NGOs, and development professionals working to address global environmental and social degradation.
- Copyright year: 2016
Design Professional's Guide to Zero Net Energy Buildings
- Copyright year: 2016
People Cities
The Life and Legacy of Jan Gehl
People Cities tells the inside story of how Gehl learned to study urban spaces and implement his people-centered approach in car-dominated cities. It discusses the work, theory, life, and influence of Gehl from the perspective of those who have worked with him in cities across the globe. It will inspire anyone who wants to create vibrant, human-scale cities and understand the ideas and work of the architect who has most influenced urban design.
- Copyright year: 2016
Prospects for Resilience
Insights from New York City's Jamaica Bay
Ranging from a framework for understanding resilience practice in urban watersheds to essential tools for research and practice, Prospects for Resilience is filled with information and advice for scientists, urban planners, students, and others who are working to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.
- Copyright year: 2016
Landscape Architecture Theory
An Ecological Approach
Drawing on his extensive career in teaching and practice, Michael Murphy begins with an examination of influences on landscape architecture. He then delves into systems and procedural theory, while making connections to ecosystem and human factors, the design process, and more. He concludes by showing how a strong theoretical understanding can be applied to practical, every-day decision making and design work to create more holistic, sustainable, and creative landscapes.
- Copyright year: 2016
Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design
The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also creates an emotional connection to the earth and promotes well-being among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook introduces key ideas about biophilic urbanism, highlights urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities, and concludes with lessons and resources for advancing urban biophilia.
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.
- Copyright year: 2016
Nature's Allies
Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World
- Copyright year: 2017
Seeing the Better City
How to Explore, Observe, and Improve Urban Space
Through clear prose and vibrant photographs, Charles Wolfe shows how to catalog the influences of urban form, public transportation, and other basic city elements. He then shares insights into how to use recorded observations to contribute to better planning and design decisions. Wolfe calls this the “urban diary” approach, and highlights how the perspective of the observer is key to understanding the dynamics of urban space. He concludes by offering guidance on how to use carefully recorded and organized observations as a tool to create change in urban planning conversations and practice.
- Copyright year: 2016