How does a bird experience a city? A backyard? A park? As the world has become more urban, noisier from increased traffic, and brighter from streetlights and office buildings, it has also become more dangerous for countless species of birds. Warblers become disoriented by nighttime lights and collide with buildings. Ground-feeding sparrows fall prey to feral cats. Hawks and other birds-of-prey are sickened by rat poison. These name just a few of the myriad hazards. How do our cities need to change in order to reduce the threats, often created unintentionally, that have resulted in nearly three billion birds lost in North America alone since the 1970s? In The Bird-Friendly City, Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for “catios,” enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes. Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species. Readers will come away motivated to implement and advocate for bird-friendly changes, with inspiring examples to draw from. Whether birds are migrating and need a temporary shelter or are taking up permanent residence in a backyard, when the environment is safer for birds, humans are happier as well.

The Global Street Design Guide is a timely resource that sets a global baseline for designing streets and public spaces and redefines the role of streets in a rapidly urbanizing world. The guide will broaden how to measure the success of urban streets to include: access, safety, mobility for all users, environmental quality, economic benefit, public health, and overall quality of life. The first-ever worldwide standards for designing city streets and prioritizing safety, pedestrians, transit, and sustainable mobility are presented in the guide. Participating experts from global cities have helped to develop the principles that organize the guide. The Global Street Design Guide builds off the successful tools and tactics defined in NACTO's Urban Street Design Guide and Urban Bikeway Design Guide while addressing a variety of street typologies and design elements found in various contexts around the world.

A practical, comprehensive, and thoroughly illustrated guide to attracting birds to any property.

"This publication offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure--that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism. Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources."--Publisher.

The NACTO Urban Street Design Guide shows how streets of every size can be reimagined and reoriented to prioritize safe driving and transit, biking, walking, and public activity. Unlike older, more conservative engineering manuals, this design guide emphasizes the core principle that urban streets are public places and have a larger role to play in communities than solely being conduits for traffic. The well-illustrated guide offers blueprints of street design from multiple perspectives, from the bird’s eye view to granular details. Case studies from around the country clearly show how to implement best practices, as well as provide guidance for customizing design applications to a city’s unique needs. Urban Street Design Guide outlines five goals and tenets of world-class street design: • Streets are public spaces. Streets play a much larger role in the public life of cities and communities than just thoroughfares for traffic. • Great streets are great for business. Well-designed streets generate higher revenues for businesses and higher values for homeowners. • Design for safety. Traffic engineers can and should design streets where people walking, parking, shopping, bicycling, working, and driving can cross paths safely. • Streets can be changed. Transportation engineers can work flexibly within the building envelope of a street. Many city streets were created in a different era and need to be reconfigured to meet new needs. • Act now! Implement projects quickly using temporary materials to help inform public decision making. Elaborating on these fundamental principles, the guide offers substantive direction for cities seeking to improve street design to create more inclusive, multi-modal urban environments. It is an exceptional resource for redesigning streets to serve the needs of 21st century cities, whose residents and visitors demand a variety of transportation options, safer streets, and vibrant community life.

Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the "greening" of cities. But too often, he notes, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough, says Beatley. We must remember that human beings have an innate need to connect with the natural world (the biophilia hypothesis). And any vision of a sustainable urban future must place its focus squarely on nature, on the presence, conservation, and celebration of the actual green features and natural life forms. A biophilic city is more than simply a biodiverse city, says Beatley. It is a place that learns from nature and emulates natural systems, incorporates natural forms and images into its buildings and cityscapes, and designs and plans in conjunction with nature. A biophilic city cherishes the natural features that already exist but also works to restore and repair what has been lost or degraded. In Biophilic Cities Beatley not only outlines the essential elements of a biophilic city, but provides examples and stories about cities that have successfully integrated biophilic elements--from the building to the regional level--around the world. From urban ecological networks and connected systems of urban greenspace, to green rooftops and green walls and sidewalk gardens, Beatley reviews the emerging practice of biophilic urban design and planning, and tells many compelling stories of individuals and groups working hard to transform cities from grey and lifeless to green and biodiverse.