"Communities across the country are working to convert unused railway and canal corridors into multi-use trails that offer an innovative means of addressing sprawl, revitalizing urban areas, and reusing degraded lands." "Trails for the Twenty-First Century is a step-by-step guide to all aspects of the planning, design, and management of multi-use trails. Originally published in 1993, this completely revised and updated edition offers a wealth of new information includings."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Across the land, thousands of miles of abandoned railroad corridors, former canals, and other unused transportation routes are being converted to trails that can accommodate a wide range of recreational and functional uses, including walking, cycling, horseback riding, cross country skiing, and more. This comprehensive exploration gives step-by-step guidance in all aspects of the planning, design, and management of multi-use trails and offers insights for working effectively with local residents and trail neighbors to determine what will work best for a community. Photos, illustrations, index.

Communities across the country are working to convert unused railway and canal corridors into trails for pedestrians, cyclists, horseback riders, and others, serving the needs of both recreationists and commuters alike. These multi-use trails can play a key role in improving livability, as they offer an innovative means of addressing sprawl, revitalizing urban areas, and reusing degraded lands. Trails for the Twenty-First Century is a step-by-step guide to all aspects of the planning, design, and management of multi-use trails. Originally published in 1993, this completely revised and updated edition offers a wealth of new information including. discussions of recent regulations and federal programs, including ADA and TEA-21 recently revised design standards from AASHTO current research on topics ranging from trail surfacing to conflict resolution information about designing and building trails in brownfields and other environmentally troubled landscapes Also included is a new introduction that describes the importance of rail-trails to the sustainable communities movement, and an expanded discussion of maintenance costs. Enhanced with a wealth of illustrations, Trails for the Twenty-First Century provides detailed guidance on topics such as: taking a physical inventory and assessment of a site; involving the public and meeting the needs of adjacent landowners; understanding and complying with existing legislation; designing, managing, and promoting a trail; and where to go for more information. It is the only comprehensive guidebook available for planners, landscape architects, local officials, and community activists interested in creating a multi-use trail.

Why have elephants—and our preconceptions about them—been central to so much of human thought? From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal that has been central to so much of human thought. He explains how notions that have been associated with elephants for centuries—that they are exceptionally wise, deeply emotional, and have a special understanding of death; that they never forget, are beloved of the gods, and suffer unusually in captivity; and even that they are afraid of mice—all tell part of the story of these amazing beings. Exploring the history of a skull in a museum, a photograph of an elephant walking through the American South in the early twentieth century, the debate about the quality of life of a famous elephant in a zoo, and the accounts of elephant hunters, Rothfels demonstrates that elephants are not what we think they are—and they never have been. Elephant Trails is a compelling portrait of what the author terms "our elephant."

This edited volume takes stories from the "modern West" of the late twentieth century and carefully pulls them toward the present--explicitly tracing continuity with and unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s.