Peri-urban landscapes are some of the world’s most vulnerable areas. Although they are often thought of simply as land awaiting development, these landscapes retain important natural resources and make valuable contributions to agriculture, water use, biodiversity conservation, landscape preservation and human well-being. Billions of people use them and enjoy their natural values. Their continuing loss threatens to alter our relationships with nature and have a negative impact on the environment. The Future of the Fringe first explores the history of peri-urban areas, international peri-urban policy and practice, and related concepts. It analyses internationally relevant issues such as green belts and urban growth boundaries, regional policy, land supply and price, and the concepts of liveability, attractiveness, well-being and rural amenity. It then examines a range of Australian peri-urban issues, as an extended case study. The book argues for a precautionary approach so that we retain the greatest number of options to adapt during rapid and unprecedented change.

Amy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future. The Signals Are Talking reveals a systemic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon-distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know today what developments-especially those seemingly random ideas at the fringe as they converge and begin to move toward the mainstream-that have long-term consequence for tomorrow. With the methodology developed in The Signals Are Talking, we learn how to think like a futurist and answer vitally important questions: How will a technology-like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things-affect us personally? How will it impact our businesses and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think-and how should we prepare for it now? Most importantly, Webb persuasively shows that the future isn't something that happens to us passively. Instead, she allows us to see ahead so that we may forecast what's to come-challenging us to create our own preferred futures.

This volume offers a new perspective to debates on local food and urban sustainability presenting the long silenced voices of the small-scale farmers from the productive green fringe of Sydney’s sprawling urban jungle. Providing fresh food for the city and local employment, these culturally and linguistically diverse farmers contribute not only to Sydney’s globalizing demographic and cultural fabric, but also play a critical role in the city’s environmental sustainability. In the battle for urban space housing development threatens to turn these farmlands into sprawling suburbia. In thinking from and with the urban ‘fringe’, this book moves beyond the housing versus farming debate to present a vision for urban growth that is dynamic and alive to the needs of the 21st century city. In a unique bringing together of the twin forces shaping contemporary urbanism - environmental change and global population flows - the voices from the fringe demand to be heard in the debate on future urban food sustainability.

"A thinking lesbian's werewolf story." - Good Lesbian Books "Enthralling, empowering, and well written." - Curve Magazine Lunatic Fringe indulges the feminine wild by giving the classic werewolf myth a lesbian twist. Lexie Clarion's first night at college, she falls in with a pack of radical feminist werewolf hunters. The next morning, she falls for a mysterious woman who may be among the hunted. As Lexie's new lover and the Pack battle for Lexie's allegiance, the waxing moon illuminates old hatreds, new enemies, and a secret from Lexie's childhood that will change her life forever. Lunatic Fringe is the first book in the Tales of the Pack series.

For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade. Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.

J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice. In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.

The first public parks were created on urban 'greenfields'. Once these designated sites had been used, cities looked towards post-industrial sites, and built parks in places that had suffered from environmental degradation, neglect, abandonment and conflict. With finite stocks of urban post-industrial land now also approaching exhaustion, more ways of making parks are required to create inclusive, accessible and resilient urban places. Future Park invites Australian built environment professionals and policymakers to consider the future of parks in our cities. Including spectacular images of public spaces throughout the world, the book describes the economic, social and environmental benefits of urban parks, and then outlines the threats and challenges facing cities and communities in an age when more than half the world's population are urban dwellers. Future Park introduces the need to embrace new public park thinking to ensure that benefits continue to be realised. Future Park illustrates imaginative and resourceful responses to real challenges by highlighting recent proposals and projects. These projects coalesce around four broad themes – linkages, obsolescences, co-locations and installations – responding to contemporary urban paradoxes, and ensuring parks continue to play a vital role in the lives of our cities.