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.
The Agile City
Building Well-Being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change
In a very short time, America realized that global warming poses real challenges to the nation's future. The Agile City engages the fundamental question: What to do about it?
Towards 0-Impact Buildings and Built Environments
A compilation of key notes and best papers of the 2010 Sustainable Building Euregional Conference.
Sustainability in America's Cities
Creating the Green Metropolis
This book highlights how America's largest cities are acting to develop sustainable solutions to conflicts between development and environment.
Architecture of Community
A seminal work by a renowned architect and planner that provides a contemporary roadmap for designing or completing today's fragmented communities.
The Rising Sea
The authoritative book on sea level rise and its coastal consequences.
Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change
This provocative and engaging work emerges from Calthorpe’s belief that, just as the last fifty years produced massive changes in our culture, economy and environment, the next fifty will generate changes of an even more profound nature.
Biophilic Cities
Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning
A biophilic city, says Beatley, is a place that learns from nature and incorporates natural forms and images into its buildings and cityscapes. Biophilic Cities outlines the essential elements of a biophilic city, and provides examples and stories about cities that have successfully integrated biophilic elements – from the building to the regional level – around the world.
Ecological Economics, Second Edition
Principles and Applications
The Sprawl Repair Manual
The Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building.
Cities for People
Renowned architect and urban planner Jan Gehl explains the methods and tools he has used to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into safe and sustainable cities for people – something he has helped do in Copenhagen, Melbourne, and New York City.
Principles of Brownfield Regeneration
Cleanup, Design, and Reuse of Derelict Land
The first book to provide an accessible introduction to the design, policy, and technical issues related to redevelopment of "brownfields" – idle property whose development or improvement is impaired by contamination.
Design with Microclimate
The Secret to Comfortable Outdoor Space
Arguing that a comfortable microclimate is the foundation of well-used outdoor places, Robert Brown provides useful guidelines for dealing with climate data, site assessment, microclimate modification, communication, design, and evaluation.
5 Easy Pieces
The Impact of Fisheries on Marine Ecosystems
5 Easy Pieces features five contributions demonstrating the massive impacts of modern industrial fisheries on marine ecosystems.
Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities
Design Strategies for the Post Carbon World
If widely used, these rules would lead to a much more livable world for future generations – a world that is not unlike the better parts of our own.
Life in a Bottle
The Reality Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water
Authored by one of the world's foremost experts on water, this lively critique exposes the corporate misdeeds in the bottled water industry within the context of growing water shortages, and possible crisis.
Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River
Nature and Power in the People’s Republic of China
This book brings big geopolitical issues to life through the narrative of a particular region and its people.
Modeling the Environment, Second Edition
Building an Emerald City
A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies and Programs
Floodplain Management
A New Approach for a New Era
Floodplain Management outlines a new paradigm for flood management, one that emphasizes cost-effective, long-term success by integrating physical, chemical, and biological systems with societal capabilities.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces
Streetscape Design in Commercial and Historic Districts
Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems
Principles and Practices
The Option of Urbanism
Investing in a New American Dream
Shows how the American Dream is shifting to include cities as well as suburbs and how the financial and real estate communities need to respond to build communities that are more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable.
A Practitioner's Guide to Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation
A Practitioner's Guide to Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation brings together knowledge and experience from conservation practitioners and experts around the world to help readers understand the global challenge of conserving biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems.
Earth in Mind
On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect
The crises we face, noted educator David Orr explains, is one of mind, perception, and values. It is, first and foremost, an educational challenge.
Ex Situ Plant Conservation
Supporting Species Survival In The Wild
Environmental Land Use Planning and Management
Environmental Land Use Planning and Management is a unique new textbook that presents a diverse, comprehensive, and coordinated approach to issues of land use planning and management and their impacts on the environment.