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Sustainable design is booming, but the men and women dedicated to reducing their carbon impact have lost sight of what they are trying to save: the natural world. Author Neil Chambers has been at the forefront of cutting-edge, sustainable architecture for years, and Urban Green is his revolutionary vision for bringing the power of the conservation and design movements together. He advocates looking to nature for the missing components of the green revolution: oysters that can clean water at up to 5 liters an hour; beavers that reshape their environments while simultaneously enriching ecosystems; and mountains that offer a new way of imagining how a city could be built. By designing our homes and cities in harmony with the natural world, we can take the next step in the sustainable revolution.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• List of Figures(p. ix)
• Introduction: Why the Current Green Movement Is Getting It Wrong(p. 1)
• 1 When Buildings Went Bad(p. 7)
• 2 The History of Green Building(p. 21)
• 3 How Infrastructure Makes Water Work for Us(p. 37)
• 4 The Electrical Grid(p. 53)
• 5 The Sustainability of Nature(p. 71)
• 6 The Cities of Tomorrow(p. 91)
• 7 Working with Nature to Find Clean Water(p. 101)
• 8 Energy Better Sized(p. 125)
• 9 Bridging the Divide between Buildings and Wilderness(p. 147)
• 10 The Invisible City(p. 175)
• 11 The Greatest Vision(p. 201)
• 12 Our Role as a Keystone Species(p. 209)
• Acknowledgments(p. 219)
• Notes(p. 225)
• Index(p. 237)

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CHOICE Review

Chambers (NYU) presents the important case that architects and designers--and society--must look beyond the merits of green building alone and consider sustainable design in the larger context of urban ecology. Given that sustainable design has become increasingly the standard approach to building, Chambers cogently notes that any building, green or otherwise, is still a unit of ecological consumption, and that biological conservationists, designers, and planners can benefit from collaborations that preserve and respect the natural environment. The book's initial chapters describe the ecological impact of a building in terms of land use, power needs, water consumption, and life span. In the final chapters, Chambers provides a vision of a green building future consisting of "vast wildernesses and megacities, or globalized, intertwined societies and localized sustainability." His focus on what can be done at the community or individual scale is particularly noteworthy. Substantial notes and a few black-and-white illustrations enhance the content. The author, an adjunct professor at NYU, is the founder of a design firm. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. E. H. Teague University of Oregon

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Neil B. Chambers is an award-winning green designer and founder of Chambers Design, Inc. and Green Ground Zero. He serves as an adjunct professor at NYU, teaching green design and environmental policy, and is a national fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program. Chambers has a growing media presence, both in traditional media and the blogosphere, where his blog on Treehugger.com, which is owned by Discovery, has an active following of 90,000 readers. He has also been featured in The Village Voice, Architectural Record, The Sun News and Timeout, and has been interviewed by BBC News, NY1, and Guernica magazine, which called him a "green guru."