This volume looks at the increasing demand for geoscientific input to planning urban land use, rectifying problems of decay and poor prior procedures, rehabilitating land after the closure of extractive and other industries, designing new constructions, and environmental assessment.

With the continuing increase in population, more people are sharing the finite resources of the urban watershed, resulting in new and increasingly complex interactions between humans and the environment. Environmental contamination is a chronic problem-and an expensive one. In urban areas, water and soil contamination poses a threat to public healt

Discusses traffic control, street management, and protected neighborhoods, and looks at selected streets in U.S. and British cities

Environmental Geology: geology and the human environment provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject of environmental geology - the interaction of humans with the geological environment. As a subject, environmental geology has grown in popularity with the rise of interest in environmental issues. Despite this, environmental geology is not a new subject but a meld of three related earth science disciplines: economic geology, engineering geology and applied geomorphology, each of which has been given a new focus through the need for greater environmental management. This book is the first of its kind to recognise that the true challenge of environmental geology does not lie in rural areas or in the green issues, but in the urban environment and its resource hinterland. By the year 2000, over 3.5 billion people, over 50% of the world's population, will live in urban areas covering just 1% of the earth's surface. It is here that human interaction with the geological environment is at its most intense: it is here that the practical challenges in environmental geology lie. Urban growth fuels the demand for mineral and water resources, tests our skills as engineering geologists, produces vast volumes of waste which must be managed, and increases human vulnerability to natural hazards. All of these topics are covered within this book. Environmental geology is a practical subject, and environmental geologists have a crucial role in managing our interaction with the geological environment. This textbook demonstrates how environmental geologists can make a practical contribution to managing this interaction allowing both sustained development and environmental conservation.

Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone, he takes you on explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink-and-black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood three hundred years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone that has the consistency of a granola bar. Williams also weaves in the cultural history of stone, explaining why a white fossil-rich limestone from Indiana became the only building stone used in all fifty states; how in 1825, the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument led to America’s first commercial railroad; and why when the same kind of marble used by Michelangelo clad a Chicago skyscraper it warped so much after nineteen years that all 44,000 panels of it had to be replaced. This love letter to building stone brings to life the geology you can see in the structures of every city.