Urban Regions: Ecology and Planning Beyond the City

by Richard T. T. Forman

• ISBN13: 9780521670760
• ISBN10: 0521670764
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 analyzes 38 urban regions from 32 nations, including London, Chicago, Ottawa, Brasilia, Cairo, Seoul, 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, stating land-use principles extracted from landscape ecology, transportation and hydrology. 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.

Author Biography

Richard T. T. Forman is Harvard University's Professor of Advanced Environmental Studies in Landscape Ecology. Previously at the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University, he is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and recipient of the Lindback Award for Teaching Excellence as well as of honorary degrees and medals in the USA and internationally

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Foreword	p. xiii
Preface	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
Regions and land mosaics	p. 1
A framework	p. 1
Terms and concepts to reveal urban regions	p. 6
Regions	p. 11
Land-mosaic perspective and landscape ecology	p. 16
Spatial scales and their attributes	p. 18
Planning land	p. 27
Planning and land management	p. 27
Conservation planning	p. 33
Planned cities	p. 40
Urban-region planning	p. 45
Economic dimensions and socio-cultural patterns	p. 51
Growth, regulatory, and ecological economics	p. 51
Economics in time, space, and footprints	p. 59
Social patterns	p. 66
Culture	p. 73
Natural systems and greenspaces	p. 80
Ecosystem, community, and population ecology	p. 82
Freshwater and marine coast ecology	p. 93
Earth and soil	p. 99
Microclimate and air pollutants	p. 102
Greenspaces	p. 105
Thirty-eight urban regions	p. 113
Selecting cities, determining boundaries, mapping regions	p. 113
Key spatial attributes	p. 119
Thirty-eight urban regions mapped	p. 125
Place-name synopses of the regions	p. 125
Broad patterns of the urban-region set	p. 134
Nature, food, and water	p. 138
Spatial analysis for patterns	p. 138
Nature in urban regions	p. 142
Food in urban regions	p. 150
Water in urban regions	p. 155
Built systems, built areas, and whole regions	p. 164
Natural systems within and next to built areas	p. 165
Built systems	p. 168
Built areas	p. 177
Whole regions	p. 189
Urbanization models and the regions	p. 198
Land-change patterns and models	p. 199
Four urbanization models	p. 206
Models applied to case studies	p. 211
Urbanization options evaluated with 18 attributes and 38 regions	p. 215
Basic principles for molding land mosaics	p. 223
Patch sizes, edges, and habitats	p. 224
Natural processes, corridors, and networks	p. 229
Transportation modes	p. 232
Communities and development	p. 234
Land mosaics and landscape change	p. 239
The Barcelona Region's land mosaic	p. 243
Perspective and approach	p. 244
Nature, food, and water	p. 248
Built areas and systems	p. 260
Three plan options for the region	p. 268
Reflections two years later	p. 274
Gathering the pieces	p. 282
Settings and forms of urban regions	p. 282
Ability to extrapolate the Barcelona solutions	p. 290
Local communities, ecology, and planning	p. 295
Good, bad, and interesting patterns in urban regions	p. 304
Big pictures	p. 315
Garden-to-gaia, urban sustainability, disasters	p. 315
Climate change, species extinction, water scarcity	p. 325
Big-ideas-regulation-treaties-policy-governance, megacities, sense of place	p. 334
Awakening to the urban tsunami	p. 343
Appendices	p. 346
References	p. 352
Index	p. 380
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