As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projection of landscape as infrastructure—the contemporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban planning— has become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories today—including shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities, are addressed and strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion of technological systems at the end of twentieth century, this book argues for the strategic design of "infrastructural ecologies," describing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape and direct the future of urban economies and cultures into the 21st century. Pierre Bélanger is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. As part of the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Advansed Studies Program, Bélanger teaches and coordinates graduate courses on the convergence of ecology, infrastructure and urbanism in the interrelated fields of design, planning and engineering. Dr. Bélanger is author of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series from Princeton Architectural Press, GOING LIVE: from States to Systems (pa35.net), co-editor with Jennifer Sigler of the 39th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter, and co-author of the forthcoming volume ECOLOGIES OF POWER: Mapping Military Geographies & Logistical Landscapes of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a landscape architect and urbanist, he is the recipient of the 2008 Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and the Curator for the Canada Pavilion ad Canadian Exhibition, "EXTRACTION," at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (extraction.ca).

In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim—who is at the forefront of this new movement—has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world—including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bolanger, Julia Czerniak, and more—capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.

Airports are central to the life of cities but have remained relatively peripheral in design discourse. In Airport Landscape, case study projects for the ecological enhancement of operating airports and the conversion of abandoned airports demonstrate, through a range of practices, the significance of airports as sites of design

Rising densities of human settlements, migration and transport to reduce distances to market, and specialization and trade facilitated by fewer international divisions are central to economic development. The transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are most noticeable in North America, Western Europe, and Japan, but countries in Asia and Eastern Europe are changing in ways similar in scope and speed. 'World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography' concludes that these spatial transformations are essential, and should be encouraged. The conclusion is not without controversy. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. Globalization is believed to benefit many, but not the billion people living in lagging areas of developing nations. High poverty and mortality persist among the world's 'bottom billion', while others grow wealthier and live longer lives. Concern for these three billion often comes with the prescription that growth must be made spatially balanced. The WDR has a different message: economic growth is seldom balanced, and efforts to spread it out prematurely will jeopardize progress. The Report: documents how production becomes more concentrated spatially as economies grow. proposes economic integration as the principle for promoting successful spatial transformations. revisits the debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration and shows how today's developers can reshape economic geography.

A pioneering book bulging with promising land patterns for students, planners, conservationists and policy makers.