What can architects, landscape architects and urban designers do to make urban open spaces, streets and squares, more responsive, lively and safe? Urban Sustainability through Environmental Design answers this question by providing the analytical tools and practical methodologies that can be employed for sustainable solutions to the design and management of urban environments. The book calls into question the capability of ‘quick-fix’ development solutions to provide the establishment of fixed communities and suggests a more time-conscious and evolutionary approach. This is the first significant book to draw together a pan-European view on sustainable urban design with a specific focus on social sustainability. It presents an innovative approach that focuses on the tools of urban analysis rather than the interventions themselves. With its practical approach and wide-ranging discussion, this book will appeal to all those involved in producing communities and spaces for sustainable living, from students to academics through to decision makers and professional leaders.

For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people. Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects. In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,” presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book. The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

In The Environment and the People in American Cities, Dorceta E. Taylor provides an in-depth examination of the development of urban environments, and urban environmentalism, in the United States. Taylor focuses on the evolution of the city, the emergence of elite reformers, the framing of environmental problems, and the perceptions of and responses to breakdowns in social order, from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. She demonstrates how social inequalities repeatedly informed the adjudication of questions related to health, safety, and land access and use. While many accounts of environmental history begin and end with wildlife and wilderness, Taylor shows that the city offers important clues to understanding the evolution of American environmental activism. Taylor traces the progression of several major thrusts in urban environmental activism, including the alleviation of poverty; sanitary reform and public health; safe, affordable, and adequate housing; parks, playgrounds, and open space; occupational health and safety; consumer protection (food and product safety); and land use and urban planning. At the same time, she presents a historical analysis of the ways race, class, and gender shaped experiences and perceptions of the environment as well as environmental activism and the construction of environmental discourses. Throughout her analysis, Taylor illuminates connections between the social and environmental conflicts of the past and those of the present. She describes the displacement of people of color for the production of natural open space for the white and wealthy, the close proximity between garbage and communities of color in early America, the cozy relationship between middle-class environmentalists and the business community, and the continuous resistance against environmental inequalities on the part of ordinary residents from marginal communities.

This book explores how religious groups work to create sustainable relationships between people, places and environments. This interdisciplinary volume deepens our understanding of this relationship, revealing that the geographical imagination—our sense of place—is a key aspect of the sustainability ideas and practices of religious groups. The book begins with a broad examination of how place shapes faith-based ideas about sustainability, with examples drawn from indigenous Hawaiians and the sacred texts of Judaism and Islam. Empirical case studies from North America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa follow, illustrating how a local, bounded, and sacred sense of place informs religious-based efforts to protect people and natural resources from threatening economic and political forces. Other contributors demonstrate that a cosmopolitan geographical imagination, viewing place as extending from the local to the global, shapes the struggles of Christian, Jewish and interfaith groups to promote just and sustainable food systems and battle the climate crisis.

Table of Contents Introduction Sustainability, people and places: An agenda for the future Urban Change and Sustainability Representation of the city and image of the center in two different urban structures: A modern and a traditional town bull; Social and architectural legibility of the city bull; City of Cent$. Formalization and urban change bull; Dubai: The search for identity bull; The significance of the memory of urban spaces bull; Village and community: Social models for sustainable urban development bull; Sustainable urban communities: History defying cultural conflict bull; The failure of man-environment studies in influencing design decisions Community, Attachment and Identity One attachment or more? bull; Cohousing as a basis for social connectedness and ecological sustainability bull; Tradition, change and continuity: A dialectical analysis of social and spatial patterns in home environments bull; Sustainable design: A question of community (visual) awareness bull; Accessibility or obstacles? Children's independent mobility and valuation of the outdoor environment bull; Ethnic food and ethnic enclaves bull; Unity or fragmentation: Is there a center in person-environment studies? Proximal and Specific Spaces Work and home: Spatial implications of income generation in the domestic setting bull; The influence of a specific urban planning on sonic environment bull; The predictors of the feeling of crowding and crampedness in large residential buildings bull; Post occupancy evaluation of university educational buildings bull; Social sustainability and changes in environments designed for young children: The caseof the French day-care centers bull; Occupational accident scenarios and work spaces in industrial environments Global Environment Issues and Ecological Behavior Overcoming expertocracy through sustainable development

Making Healthy Places surveys the many intersections between health and the built environment, from the scale of buildings to the scale of metro areas, and across a range of outcomes, from cardiovascular health and infectious disease to social connectedness and happiness. This new edition is significantly updated, with a special emphasis on equity and sustainability, and takes a global perspective. It provides current evidence not only on how poorly designed places may threaten well-being, but also on solutions that have been found to be effective. Making Healthy Places is a must-read for students, academics, and professionals in health, architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, parks and recreation, and related fields.

This book crosses disciplinary boundaries to investigate how the benefits of green spaces can be further incorporated in public health. In this regard, the book highlights how ecosystem services provided by green spaces affect multiple aspects of human health and well-being, offering a strategic way to conceptualize the topic. For centuries, scholars have observed the range of health benefits associated with exposure to nature. As people continue to move to urban areas, it is essential to include green spaces in cities to ensure sustained human health and well-being. Such insights can not only advance the science but also spark interdisciplinary research and help researchers creatively translate their findings into benefits for the public. The book explores this topic in the context of ‘big picture’ frameworks that enhance communication between the environmental, public health, and social sciences.