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Shows how to combine the forces of ecological science and participatory democracy to design urban landscapes that enable us to act as communities, are resilient rather than imperiled, and touch our hearts.

Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in the process of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities, destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design for Ecological Democracy , Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines new principles for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and our natural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples-drawn from forty years of design and planning practice-showing how we can design cities that are ecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure.

Hester argues that it is only by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in design will take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining our interconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on three fundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, and impelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclaves and to function as informed democracies. A simple bench at a centrally located post office, for example, provides an opportunity for connection and shared experience. Cities must be ecologically resilient rather than ecologically imperiled, adaptable to the surrounding ecology rather than dependent on technological fixes. Resilient form turns increased urban density, for example, into an advantage. And cities should impel us by joy rather than compel us by fear; good cities enrich us rather than limit us. Design for Ecological Democracy is essential reading for designers, planners, environmentalists, community activists, and anyone else who wants to improve a local community.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgments(p. xi)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• The State of American Habitation(p. 1)
• Ecological Democracy(p. 3)
• Life, Death, and Rebirth of Ecological Democracy(p. 4)
• The Marriage of Necessity and Happiness(p. 5)
• Design of City and Landscape Together(p. 7)
• Enabling, Resilient, and Impelling Form(p. 8)
• Enabling Form: ôWe Got to Know Our Neighborsö(p. 8)
• Resilient Form: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sustainable Happiness(p. 9)
• Impelling Form: ôMake a City to Touch the People's Heartsö(p. 9)
• The Global Design Process(p. 10)
• The Focus Is Design(p. 10)
• This Book Is for Students of Ecological Democracy(p. 12)
• Enabling Form: ôWe Got to Know Our Neighborsö(p. 15)
• Centeredness(p. 21)
• Ten Rules for Good Centers(p. 23)
• Sociopetal Places, Forming Open Circles(p. 32)
• Places for Community Rituals(p. 37)
• Nourishing Centeredness Every Day(p. 40)
• Connectedness(p. 49)
• Independent Adjacencies(p. 51)
• What Goes Together and What Doesn't
• Transportation and Community That Unify(p. 52)
• Chains, Webs, Flows, Networks, Cycles, and Recycles(p. 54)
• Resource Footprints(p. 57)
• Wildlife Habitats(p. 58)
• Ecological Thinking(p. 59)
• Mutualism and Glocalization(p. 60)
• Outside the Confines of the Box(p. 62)
• Things That Don't Go Together but Might(p. 63)
• Finding Fish Heads and Tails(p. 64)
• The Lost Mountain, the Power Map, and the Dirt Contractor(p. 66)
• Fairness(p. 77)
• Accessibility(p. 78)
• Inclusion(p. 80)
• Equal Distribution of Resources and Amenities(p. 82)
• Paying Attention to Design(p. 83)
• Mapping Injustices(p. 85)
• Fair Landscapes Empower(p. 87)
• Sensible Status Seeking(p. 97)
• Forming Communities to Be What They Are(p. 100)
• Lessons from Poverty(p. 104)
• Taking Root(p. 105)
• Small Is Often Beautiful(p. 106)
• Rare and Commonplace Beauty(p. 107)
• Conspicuous Nonconsumption(p. 110)
• Inclusive Heterogeneity(p. 111)
• Dirty Enough to Be Happy(p. 112)
• Healthy Status Seeking(p. 114)
• Sacredness(p. 117)
• Sacredness Expresses Our Essential Nature(p. 117)
• Uncovering Sacredness(p. 118)
• Transformative Community Awareness(p. 125)
• Preservation(p. 126)
• Design Gestalt(p. 127)
• Recurring Center(p. 127)
• Natural Boundary(p. 130)
• Connections to Community, Ancestors, and Spirits(p. 130)
• Particularness(p. 132)
• Design Inspiration(p. 133)
• A Higher Purpose for Vexing Problems(p. 135)
• Resilient Form: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sustainable Happiness(p. 137)
• Particularness(p. 145)
• Bioregional Distinction(p. 147)
• Topographic Typologies and Willful Water
• Peculiar Forms of Conserving, Recycling, and Repairing(p. 152)
• Meditations, Imaginings, and Similar Someplace Else(p. 160)
• Time Lapse and Previous Catastrophes(p. 164)
• Particularness Provides Goodness of Fit(p. 169)
• Selective Diversity(p. 171)
• Biological Diversity(p. 172)
• Cultural Diversity(p. 184)
• Global Heterogenization and Glocal Design(p. 186)
• The Landscape Form of a Diversified Economy(p. 187)
• Social Ecotones of Mixed-Use Neighborhoods(p. 188)
• How Much Diversity Is Enough?(p. 190)
• Intergenerational and Social-Class Diversity(p. 196)
• Seeding Diversity(p. 196)
• Density and Smallness(p. 201)
• Concentrated Density Creates Resilience(p. 201)
• The Conspiracy against Density(p. 205)
• Net, Perceived, and Affective Density(p. 207)
• Making Density Desirable(p. 208)
• Provide for Piracy(p. 218)
• Hide Density(p. 219)
• Green the Neighborhood(p. 220)
• Acquire Big Nature(p. 221)
• Identify the Neighborhood and the Block(p. 222)
• Create the Center(p. 222)
• I Beg Your Pardon(p. 223)
• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
• Limited Extent(p. 227)
• Two Excellences Make a Singular Resilience(p. 227)
• From Settlement to Edge City and Fat Suburb(p. 229)
• Three Questions of Size(p. 230)
• Appropriate Size(p. 230)
• The Outer Limits of Regional Carrying Capacity
• Appropriate Size(p. 231)
• Internal Limits on Optimal City Size
• Reconfiguring Megacities(p. 233)
• Inside and Outside(p. 237)
• Cities Approaching 250,000 People(p. 238)
• Appropriate Size(p. 240)
• Small Towns in Regional Form
• Creating a Big Wild Greenbelt for Los Angeles(p. 244)
• The Essential Scales for Governing Ecological Democracy(p. 251)
• A Mollusk, a Crustacean, a Flat Worm, and Tocqueville(p. 253)
• Adaptability(p. 255)
• Flexibile City Form from Natural Places(p. 256)
• Landscapes of Adaptability(p. 256)
• Emptiness(p. 259)
• Landscape and Building(p. 260)
• Priority Framework and Piecemeal Intricacy(p. 263)
• Continuous Experiment, Adaptive Management, and Windows of Opportunity(p. 272)
• Choice(p. 275)
• Impelling Form: ôMake a City to Touch the People's Heartsö(p. 277)
• Everyday Future(p. 281)
• Designing for What People Do All Day(p. 283)
• Integrating Present Experience with Change(p. 284)
• Marking Time(p. 287)
• Inspiring Visionary Futures with the Everyday(p. 289)
• Everyday Lessons for Designers(p. 296)
• Naturalness(p. 301)
• Naturopathy(p. 302)
• Naturism(p. 305)
• Naturalization(p. 308)
• The Form to Arouse Naturalness(p. 310)
• The Natural Park(p. 315)
• Naturalness Impels(p. 323)
• Inhabiting Science(p. 325)
• Urban Ecological Illiteracy(p. 327)
• Native Wisdom, Science, and the Language of Ecological Democracy(p. 331)
• How Science Is Inhabited(p. 332)
• What We Need to Know(p. 334)
• Learning from the Urban Landscape(p. 338)
• Discovery Landscapes(p. 340)
• Cultivating Landscapes(p. 344)
• Instructive Landscapes(p. 345)
• Scientific Landscapes(p. 348)
• Argumentative Landscapes(p. 350)
• LA96C(p. 353)
• Reciprocal Stewardship(p. 363)
• Stewarding and Stewarded(p. 364)
• Native Stewardship Meets Freedom to Withdraw from Civic Life(p. 365)
• Ecological Necessity and Voluntary Stewardship(p. 367)
• The Garden Patch(p. 375)
• Active Responsibility(p. 383)
• Pacing(p. 387)
• Light Speed and Snail's Pace(p. 387)
• Dwelling Pace(p. 390)
• Learning to Walk(p. 392)
• Slouching toward Obesity at Car Speed(p. 393)
• Remedial and Preventive Prescriptions(p. 396)
• Pathfinders Curb the Car(p. 396)
• Living Syphonic Sequences(p. 399)
• Metamorphic Walks(p. 404)
• Grounded(p. 408)
• Walk All Over(p. 412)
• Epilogue(p. 419)
• Notes(p. 423)
• References and Suggested Reading(p. 459)
• Image Credits(p. 487)
• Index(p. 491)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Randolph T. Hester is Professor and former Department Chair in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and Principal in the firm Community Development by Design. He is the author of Neighborhood Space , Planning Neighborhood Space with People , and Community Design Primer .