Urban Sustainability: Policy and Praxis

This book explores the environmental, economic, and socio-political dynamics of sustainability from a geographic perspective. The chapters unite the often disparate worlds of environment, economics, and politics by seeking to understand and visualize a range of sustainability practices on the ground and in place. In concert, the book provides an overview of a range of geotechnical applications associated with environmental change (water resources, land use & land cover change); as well as investigates more nuanced and novel examples of local economic development in cities. The diverse collection maps local practices from urban farming to evolving and thriving industries such as metal scrapping and craft beer. Additionally, the book provides an integrated geo-technical framework for understanding and assessing ecosystem services, explores the deployment of unmanned systems to understand urban environmental change, interrogates the spatial politics of urban green movements, examines theimplications of revised planning practices, and investigates environmental justice. The book will be of interest to researchers, students, and anyone seeking to better understand sustainability at multiple scales in urban environments.

Contenu

Introduction.- Part 1. Environmental Change and Urban Morphology.- Urban Stream Management.- Ecosystem services assessment from the mountain to the sea: A multidisciplinary method for defining ecosystem service indicators across landscape units.- Best Practices for Measuring Urban Forest Dynamics Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data.- Changing Urban Forest Dynamics in a Semi-Arid City.- Mapping and Sustainability of Urban and Suburban Parks.- Mapping stream removal and convergence in urban watersheds.- Managing Sustainability in National Parks.- Part 2 Economic Change, Industry, and Sustainable Local Alternatives.- The Role of Social Networks in Building a Local Food System.- Urban Mining.- Where are the garden(er)s? Examining gardener motivations and community garden participation-sheds in Austin, Texas.- Is sustainability brewing for microbreweries and brewpubs in the U.S.?.- The Food Hub as a Strategy for Small Farmers.- GIS, Transportation, and Sustainable Economic Development in Atlanta.- Part 3 Socio-Political Change and Adaptation.- Is Urban Sustainability possible in post-Katrina New Orleans.- Mapping Environmental Justice: A framework for understanding sustainability at the neighborhood scale in Indianapolis.- Unmanned Systems and Managing from Above.- Urban Greening as a Social Movement.- Decision making and sustainability in built environments.- Conclusion.