Urban riverbanks are attractive locations and highly prized recreational environments. However, they must meet the requirements of flood control, open space design and ecology at the same time, often a challenging task for the designer. This book is the product of extensive research that identified some 60 best-practice examples and subjected them to a comparative analysis. The result is a systematic catalog of effective strategies and innovative design tools that provides readers with an inspiring overview of the broad spectrum of design possibilities for river spaces. Each project is illustrated with photographs taken especially for the book and each design strategy and tool is explained by diagrams. This revised edition introduces ten new case studies chiefly from North America.

Urban riverbanks are attractive locations and highly prized recreational environments. The designs of urban river landscapes must fulfill a broad range of requirements: flood control, open space design, and ecology are as a rule the three dominant themes, and they must often be reconciled within a very restricted space. The river must be understood as a process: governed by changing water levels, shifting seasons, erosion, and sedimentation, the river environment is not a static entity but constantly changing—the design must be flexible and take this into account. This book is the product of a multi-year study that subjected more than fifty Western European projects to a comparative analysis. The result is a systematic catalog of effective strategies and innovative design elements. First, designers and planners are given an overview of the broad and varied spectrum of design possibilities. The book’s process-oriented approach is especially helpful where the focus is on long-term, sustainable measures. The publication consists of two linked volumes that enable the reader to consult the systematic catalog and the case study section side by side. The easy-to-navigate structure and an extensive glossary provide further guidance, while the work’s highly distinctive design makes it visually appealing as well and invites the reader to leaf through and explore it.

This book discusses the protection, planning, and design of sustainable urban water environments. Against the backdrop of environmental changes, it addresses issues of water resource protection and sustainable development in China and Germany at different stages of urbanization, as well as relevant strategies and lessons learned. It focuses on three topics: balance between water environment protection and utilization in the urbanization process; sustainable use of water resources in the urbanization process; and water-related planning and design strategies in urbanization and local cultural development processes. In the context of water resources, China and Germany can learn from each other’s experiences and can support one another in the fields of urbanization and locality. As such, the book brings together Chinese and Germans scientists from various disciplines, such as planning, geography, landscape, architecture, tourism, ecology, hydraulic engineering and history to provide a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective on the topic and examine the challenges and opportunities as well as the planning and design strategies to achieve sustainable, water-related urban spaces. By combining theoretical and practical approaches, it appeals to academics and practitioners around the globe.

Combining written and visual essays, Water vs. Urban Scape discusses making room for water in the urban landscape. The volume looks at examples in a variety of cities including Antwerp, Shanghai, Istanbul, Oslo, Kigali, Perth and Brussels.

China's foremost landscape designer Kongjian Yu and his office Turenscape are beyond doubt the foremost landscape architecture firm in China today. The vast scale of China and its apparently boundless growth have enabled Yu to test many ideas that are still largely theories in the Western world. His work, increasingly valued and appreciated in Europe and North America, has attained an extremely high and elegant level in both conception and execution. Kongjian Yu is known for his ecological stance, often against the resistance of local authorities. His guiding design principles are the appreciation of the ordinary and a deep embracing of nature, even in its potentially destructive aspects, such as floods. Among his most acclaimed projects are Houtan Park for Shanghai Expo, the Red Ribbon Park in Qinhuangdao, and Shipyard Park in Zhongshan. This book explores Yu's work in some ten essays by noted authors and extensively documents some 18 selected projects.

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Landscape and Energy is a ground-breaking book about the effect of this transition on our environment. This book Landscape and Energy. Designing Transition is the first to visually compare the spatial footprints of all relevant energy sources; it explains the driving forces behind the exponential growth of our use of energy and sketches the breath-taking task that lies ahead for spatial designers, planners and politicians. 0The options and choices for an emerging 'post-fossil landscape' are elaborated in a wide variety of case study designs. After all, energy is relevant at every scale and all levels of abstraction, from global political strategies to the solar panel on the roof. The challenges receive due attention in a series of essays on the energy market, the role of politics, the psychology of transition, and technical developments and constraints. Ultimately, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy proves to be much more than a technical task for professionals. On closer consideration, the energy transition above all is a cultural task that affects everyone.

This volume examines the applicability of landscape urbanism theory in contemporary landscape architecture practice by bringing together ecology and architecture in the built environment. Using participatory planning of green infrastructure and application of nature-based solutions to address urban challenges, landscape urbanism seeks to reintroduce critical connections between natural and urban systems. In light of ongoing developments in landscape architecture, the goal is a paradigm shift towards a landscape that restores and rehabilitates urban ecosystems. Nine contributions examine a wide range of successful cases of designing livable and resilient cities in different geographical contexts, from the United States of America to Australia and Japan, and through several European cities in Italy, Portugal, Estonia, and Greece. While some chapters attempt to conceptualize the interconnections between cities and nature, others clearly have an empirical focus. Efforts such as the use of ornamental helophyte plants in bioretention ponds to reduce and treat stormwater runoff, the recovery of a poorly constructed urban waterway or participatory approaches for optimizing the location of green stormwater infrastructure and examining the environmental justice issue of equative availability and accessibility to public open spaces make these innovations explicit. Thus, this volume contributes to the sustainable cities goal of the United Nations.

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A sweeping history of American cities and towns, and the utopian aspirations that shaped them, by one of America’s leading urban planners and scholars. The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland. As he traces this uniquely American story from the Pilgrims to the “smart city,” Krieger delivers a striking new history of our built environment. The Puritans were the first utopians, seeking a New Jerusalem in the New England villages that still stand as models of small-town life. In the Age of Revolution, Thomas Jefferson dreamed of citizen farmers tending plots laid out across the continent in a grid of enlightened rationality. As industrialization brought urbanization, reformers answered emerging slums with a zealous crusade of grand civic architecture and designed the vast urban parks vital to so many cities today. The twentieth century brought cycles of suburban dreaming and urban renewal—one generation’s utopia forming the next one’s nightmare—and experiments as diverse as Walt Disney’s EPCOT, hippie communes, and Las Vegas. Krieger’s compelling and richly illustrated narrative reminds us, as we formulate new ideals today, that we chase our visions surrounded by the glories and failures of dreams gone by.