Voluntary land conservation, resulting from increasingly alluring tax benefits, has significantly changed the face of land use in the United States and promises to have an even more significant influence in the future. There are more than 1,500 land trusts in the U.S. today, involving millions of acres of land that have been permanently protected by conservation easements. Most of these land tr…
America's landscape is undergoing a profound transformation as demand grows for a different kind of American Dream--smaller homes on smaller lots, multifamily options, and walkable neighborhoods. This trend presents a tremendous opportunity to reinvent our urban and suburban areas. But in a time of fiscal austerity, how do we finance redevelopment needs? In Foundations of Real Estate Devel…
How we design our cities over the next four decades will be critical for our planet. If we continue to spill excessive greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, we will run out of time to keep our global temperature from increasing. Since approximately 80% of greenhouse gases come from cities, it follows that in the design of cities lies the fate of the world. &nbs…
"Hank lived by the credo 'first listen, then design.'" —Scott Bernstein, Founder and Chief Strategy + Innovation Officer, Center for Neighborhood Technology Hank Dittmar was a globally recognized urban planner, advocate, and policy advisor. He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including architectural criticism, community planning, and transportation policy over his long…
"Green" buildings—buildings that use fewer resources to build and to sustain—are commonly thought to be too expensive to attract builders and buyers. But are they? The answer to this question has enormous consequences, since residential and commercial buildings together account for nearly 50% of American energy consumption—including at least 75% of electricity usage—according to recent …
The "green building revolution" is a worldwide movement for energy-efficient, environmentally aware architecture and design. Europe has been in the forefront of green building technology, and Green Building Trends: Europe provides an indispensable overview of these cutting edge ideas and applications. In order to write this book, well-known U.S. green building expert Jerry Yudelson inter…
The suburban dream of a single-family house with a white picket fence no longer describes how most North Americans want to live. The dynamics that powered sprawl have all but disappeared. Instead, new forces are transforming real estate markets, reinforced by new ideas of what constitutes healthy and environmentally responsible living. Investment has flooded back to cities because dense, walkab…
Structures of Coastal Resilience presents new strategies for creative and collaborative approaches to coastal planning for climate change. In the face of sea level rise and an increased risk of flooding from storm surge, we must become less dependent on traditional approaches to flood control that have relied on levees, sea walls, and other forms of hard infrastructure. But what are alternative…
Since the publication of the first edition in 2000, Sustainable Landscape Construction has helped to spur a movement towards resilient outdoor environments, in the U.S. and throughout the world. The third edition has been updated to include important recent developments in this landscape revolution. It remains essential reading for everyone with an interest in "green" design of outdoor spaces a…
Some utopian plans have shaped our cities —from England's New Towns and Garden Cities to the Haussmann plan for Paris and the L'Enfant plan for Washington, DC. But these grand plans are the exception, and seldom turn out as envisioned by the utopian planner. Inviting city neighborhoods are more often works of improvisation on a small scale. This type of bottom-up development gives cities both…