Urban regions : ecology and planning beyond the city / Richard T.T. Forman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Forman, Richard T. T.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City planning.

Regional planning.

Urban policy.

Landscape protection.

Landscape ecology.

City planning--Case studies.

Regional planning--Case studies.

Urban policy--Case studies.

Landscape protection--Case studies.

Landscape ecology--Case studies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xxii, 408 pages, 43 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Natural systems and their human uses are of central importance in urban regions, where diverse greenspaces and built spaces of essentially equal value spatially intertwine. With land planning, socioeconomics, and natural systems as foundations, this book combines urban planning and ecological science in examining urban regions. Writing for graduate students, academic researchers, planners, conservationists, and policy makers, and with the use of informative urban-region color maps, Richard Forman compares 38 urban regions from 32 nations, including London, Chicago, Ottawa, Brasilia, Cairo, Beijing, Bangkok, Canberra, and a major case study of the Greater Barcelona Region. Alternative patterns of urbanization spread (including sprawl) are evaluated from the perspective of nature and people, and land-use principles extracted from landscape ecology, transportation, and hydrology are stated. Good, bad, and interesting spatial patterns for creating sustainable land mosaics are pinpointed, and urban regions are considered in broader contexts, from climate change to biodiversity loss, disasters, and sense of place.

Contents:

1 Regions and land mosaics 1

A framework 1

Terms and concepts to reveal urban regions 6

Regions 11

Land-mosaic perspective and landscape ecology 16

Spatial scales and their attributes 18

2 Planning land 27

Planning and land management 27

Conservation planning 33

Planned cities 40

Urban-region planning 45

3 Economic dimensions and socio-cultural patterns 51

Growth, regulatory, and ecological economics 51

Economics in time, space, and footprints 59

Social patterns 66

Culture 73

4 Natural systems and greenspaces 80

Ecosystem, community, and population ecology 82

Freshwater and marine coast ecology 93

Earth and soil 99

Microclimate and air pollutants 102

Greenspaces 105

5 Thirty-eight urban regions 113

Selecting cities, determining boundaries, mapping regions 113

Key spatial attributes 119

Thirty-eight urban regions mapped 125

Place-name synopses of the regions 125

Broad patterns of the urban-region set 134

6 Nature, food, and water 138

Spatial analysis for patterns 138

Nature in urban regions 142

Food in urban regions 150

Water in urban regions 155

7 Built systems, built areas, and whole regions 164

Natural systems within and next to built areas 165

Built systems 168

Built areas 177

Whole regions 189

8 Urbanization models and the regions 198

Land-change patterns and models 199

Four urbanization models 206

Models applied to case studies 211

Urbanization options evaluated with 18 attributes and 38 regions 215

9 Basic principles for molding land mosaics 223

Patch sizes, edges, and habitats 224

Natural processes, corridors, and networks 229

Transportation modes 232

Communities and development 234

Land mosaics and landscape change 239

10 The Barcelona Region's land mosaic 243

Perspective and approach 244

Nature, food, and water 248

Built areas and systems 260

Three plan options for the region 268

Reflections two years later 274

11 Gathering the pieces 282

Settings and forms of urban regions 282

Ability to extrapolate the Barcelona solutions 290

Local communities, ecology, and planning 295

Good, bad, and interesting patterns in urban regions 304

12 Big pictures 315

Garden-to-gaia, urban sustainability, disasters 315

Climate change, species extinction, water scarcity 325

Big-ideas-regulation-treaties-policy-governance, megacities, sense of place 334

Awakening to the urban tsunami 343.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 352-379) and index.

ISBN:

9780521854467

0521854466

9780521670760

0521670764

OCLC:

166382273