Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities offers an explanation of the concept of Rural Environmental Planning (REP) along with case studies that show how to apply REP to specific issues such as preserving agricultural lands, planning river and lake basins, and preserving historical sites.

Questions of how the design of cities can respond to the challenge of climate change dominate the thoughts of urban planners and designers across the U.S. and Canada. With admirable clarity, Patrick Condon responds to these questions. He addresses transportation, housing equity, job distribution, economic development, and ecological systems issues and synthesizes his knowledge and research into a simple-to-understand set of urban design recommendations. No other book so clearly connects the form of our cities to their ecological, economic, and social consequences. No other book takes on this breadth of complex and contentious issues and distills them down to such convincing and practical solutions.

Ordinary people, community leaders, and even organizations and corporations still do not fully comprehend the interconnected, “big picture” dynamics of sustainability theory and action. In exploring means to become more sustainable, individuals and groups need a reference in which to frame discussions so they will be relevant, educational, and successful when implemented. This book puts ideas on sustainable communities into a conceptual framework that will promote striking, transformational effects on decision-making. In this book practitioners and community leaders will find effective, comprehensive tools and resources at their finger-tips to facilitate sustainable community development (SCD). The book content examines a diverse range of SCD methods; assessing community needs and resources; creating community visions; promoting stakeholder interest and participation; analyzing community problems; designing and facilitating strategic planning; carrying out interventions to improve

In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.

Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.

This book is in part a response to the attempts of governments to address increasing concerns over such environmental issues as the impact of climate change; carbon emissions; pressures from overpopulation of cities; coal seam gas extraction and depleting natural resources. The authors have developed a Sustainable Communities Framework (SCF) which incorporates social-cultural, environmental and economic sustainability principles in the process of urban planning. The authors propose a five-step SCF built on an application of sustainability tables. The book examines a wide range of urban planning practices utilizing sustainability criteria, outlining both qualitative and quantitative tools. Separate chapters discuss application of the SCF to both the natural environment and the built environment. This framework is applied to a case study of the outer Sydney growth area of Wyong Shire, Central Coast, NSW, Australia. Addressing the question of how best to measure the environment, the authors present a table for selecting indicators of sustainability, and outline sustainability scorecards which use color-coded ratings of green, red and amber to measure indicators of sustainability. The authors show how aggregating these ratings allows the framework to be scaled up for application to larger areas. Finally, the authors show how scorecards can be incorporated in sustainability reports, with actions and monitoring components. The authors also examine urban planning education including land use planning, natural resource planning and sustainable urban planning, focusing on the extent to which schools incorporate principles of sustainability. The authors offer their critique on the movement of planning practices towards a more coordinated and holistic framework, in incorporating sustainability principles. Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Planning concludes by drawing a future scenario on the application of the SCF to incorporate principles of sustainability into urban planning. The authors propose future options for SCF applications, including adopting a systems program; environmental performance monitoring and showing how the framework will accommodate the social-cultural and economic components of sustainability, in addition to the environmental ones as examined in the case study.

How can human communities sustain a long-term existence on a small planet? This challenge grows ever more urgent as the threat of global warming increases. Planning for Sustainability presents a wide-ranging, intellectually well-grounded and accessible introduction to the concept of planning for more sustainable and livable communities. The text explores topics such as how more compact and walkable cities and towns might be created, how local ecosystems can be restored, how social inequalities might be reduced, how greenhouse gas emissions might be lowered, and how more sustainable forms of economic development can be brought about. The second edition has been extensively revised and updated throughout, including an improved structure with chapters now organized under three sections: the nature of sustainable planning, issues central to sustainable planning, and scales of sustainable planning. New material includes greater discussion of climate change, urban food systems, the relationships between public health and the urban environment, and international development. Building on past schools of planning theory, Planning for Sustainability lays out a sustainability planning framework that pays special attention to the rapidly evolving institutions and power structures of a globalizing world. By considering in turn each scale of planning—international, national, regional, municipal, neighborhood, and site and building—the book illustrates how sustainability initiatives at different levels can interrelate. Only by weaving together planning initiatives and institutions at different scales, and by integrating efforts across disciplines, can we move towards long-term human and ecological well-being.