The future of humanity is urban. We are facing major problems such as climate change, social inequality, large-scale migration, and resource depletion. Cities (and those who 'make' the city) play an important role in addressing these problems. In Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions the 'Future Urban Regions Lectorate' offers designers, their commissioners and (local) governments new models and ideas to deal with healthy urban development. Illustrated by more than fifty case studies and global examples, this book offers a toolkit for those interested in implementing research by design and healthy urban regions.

This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing cities in the future. Landscape architecture is particularly in demand here because it offers solutions that are characterized by complexity and interdisciplinarity and contribute to the quality of everyday life. These range from green roofs and facades to urban gardening and the landscaping of large-scale protection works. This volume presents measures and plans of eleven major cities in North and South America, from Vancouver to Rio de Janeiro, to protect their inhabitants and their habitats against future storms, floods, landslides or long periods of heat and drought. Outstanding projects in the featured cities are analyzed in their geographic and climatic context. The author also addresses the social and cultural dimensions of resilience.

Environmental engineers support the well-being of people and the planet in areas where the two intersect. Over the decades the field has improved countless lives through innovative systems for delivering water, treating waste, and preventing and remediating pollution in air, water, and soil. These achievements are a testament to the multidisciplinary, pragmatic, systems-oriented approach that characterizes environmental engineering. Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges outlines the crucial role for environmental engineers in this period of dramatic growth and change. The report identifies five pressing challenges of the 21st century that environmental engineers are uniquely poised to help advance: sustainably supply food, water, and energy; curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; design a future without pollution and waste; create efficient, healthy, resilient cities; and foster informed decisions and actions.

This book reviews a series of new urban ideas or themes designed to help make cities more liveable, sustainable, safe and inclusive. Featuring examples drawn from cities all over the world, the various chapters provide critical assessments of each of the various approaches and their potential to improve urban life. New Urbanism: creating new areas based on a more humane scale with neighbourhood cohesion Just Cities: creating more fairness in decision-making so all residents can participate and benefit. Green Cities: helping places become greener with environmental rehabilitation and protection Sustainable Cities: avoiding the waste of resources and harmful pollution in settlements Transition Towns: developing local initiatives for more sustainable actions Winter Cities: making cities in cold climates more comfortable and enjoyable Resilient Cities: strengthening cities to better enable them to withstand natural hazards Creative Cities: supporting cultural industries and attracting talented individuals Knowledge Cities: creating, renewing and spreading knowledge and innovation Safe Cities: ensuring that citizens are better protected against criminal actions Healthy Cities: making improvements in the health of people in cities Festive Cities: rediscovering the utility of festive events in settlements Slow Cities: enhancing locally unique activities, such as local cuisines and community interactions This volume offers a host of approaches designed to give a new direction and focus to planning policies, helping readers to fully understand the advantages and disadvantages of each potential idea. It seeks to solve the many current problems associated with urban developments, making it a valuable resource for university and college students in urban geography, urban planning, urban sociology and urban studies as well as to planners and the general public.

This book brings together a series of theory and practice essays on risk management and adaptation in urban contexts within a resilient and multidimensional perspective. The book proposes a transversal approach with regard to the role of spatial planning in promoting and fostering risk management as well as institutions’ challenges for governing risk, particularly in relation to new forms of multi-level governance that may include stakeholders and citizen engagement. The different contributions focus on approaches, policies, and practices able to contrast risks in urban systems generating social inclusion, equity and participation through bottom-up governance forms and co-evolution principles. Case studies focus on lessons learned, as well as the potential and means for their replication and upscaling, also through capacity building and knowledge transfer. Among many other topics, the book explores difficulties encountered in, and creative solutions found, community and local experiences and capacities, organizational processes and integrative institutional, technical approaches to risk issue in cities.

Cities are one of the most significant contributors to global climate change. The rapid speed at which urban centers use large amounts of resources adds to the global crisis and can lead to extreme local heat. The Urban Fix addresses how urban design, planning and policies can counter the threats of climate change, urban heat islands and overpopulation, helping cities take full advantage of their inherent advantages and new technologies to catalyze social, cultural and physical solutions to combat the epic, unprecedented challenges humanity faces. The book fills a conspicuous void in the international dialogue on climate change and heat islands by examining both the environmental benefits in developed countries and the population benefit in developing countries. Urban heat islands can be addressed in incremental, manageable steps, such as planting trees and painting roofs white, which provide a more concrete and proactive sense of progress for policymakers and practitioners. This book is invaluable to anyone searching for a better understanding of the impact of resilient cities in the monumental and urgent fight against climate change, and provides the tools to do so.