Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Having embarked on a sustainability plan without the aid or foresight of any type of guidebook or comprehensive strategy, I am extremely supportive of the effort that author Stephen Coyle has undertaken in compiling Sustainable and Resilient Communities. This book should be the "Read Me!" document for anyone looking to engage in sustainability planning efforts from a government or community perspective. It's not the first book that I've read on how to engage in sustainability efforts (honestly such titles are beginning to become "a dime a dozen"), but it is the first book that focuses on how to create an action plan to make a community more sustainable (rather than simply focusing on successful efforts in other areas). Coyle manages to provide realistic strategies that can easily be worked into the political context of almost any community without crossing into the fringe of developing technologies or antiquated reductionist themes.
Sustainable and Resilient Communities is broken down into 13 chapters which address the various facets of sustainability. The chapters are:
1.The Built Environments and Its Supporting Systems
2.The Process of Transformation
3.The Physical Built Environment
4.The Regulatory Environment
5.Transportation
6.Energy
7.Water
8.Natural Environment
9.Food Production/Agriculture
10.Solid Waste
11.Economics
12.Engagement and Education
13.Public Health
The first two chapters provide a solid assessment of the sustainability planning process and offer a prescriptive framework for how it can be implemented within a community. Chapter 2 also provides a robust breakdown of the process showing how to assemble potential stakeholders, how to effectively use those stakeholders, how to gain support from a broad segment of the community, and how to successfully implement a sustainability plan. The remaining chapters break down each of the specialty topics and provide case studies that demonstrate how the topics were successfully tackled.
Sustainable and Resilient Communities is a 404 page manual on how to create a sustainability plan. This is the manual that you should pass around your organization or civic group to learn how to manage the process and how to build support. I found it to be well-written and filled with a wealth of information. Coyle has done a superb job of assembling a group of experts well-versed in the subject matter presented.It doesn't take a singular or rigid approach to building a sustainability plan but instead shows how communities can create objectives that meet the needs of their citizens.
I found the book to be well illustrated with rational and relevant examples. The graphics and detailed examples from municipalities around the country are extremely useful in brainstorming approaches. The graphics are also appropriately placed to make the topics at hand more cogent. The book opens with a Foreword from Andrés Duany and continues with poignant articles by renowned experts in their respective fields.
If you're interested in sustainability plans or sustainability action plans or just creating sustainability indicators for your organization this book is an excellent place to start. It's targeted to those involved with government organization, but it's a good tool in the hands of a community activists or civic group. It would also be an excellent manual for organizations looking to approach sustainability internally.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Sustainable and Resilient Communities: A Comprehensive Action Plan for Towns, Cities, and Regions (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design)
The ultimate step-by-step action plan guidebook for making communities resilient, resourceful, and healthy
Many of today's communities face an unprecedented struggle to adapt and maintain their environmental, economic, and social well-being in an era beleaguered by fiscal constraints, uncertainty about energy prices and supplies, rapid demographic shifts, and accelerated climate impacts. This step-by-step guidebook for urban planners and urban designers explains how to create and implement an actionable plan for making neighborhoods, communities, and regions more environmentally healthy, resource-conserving, and economically resilient. Sustainable and Resilient Communities delineates measures for repairing, retrofitting, and transforming our built environments and supporting systems-transportation, energy, water, natural environment, food production, solid waste, and economics-through:
Methods for assessing a community's key sustainability quotient
Deploying tools for establishing timely performance goals and metrics
Developing strategies for evaluating, selecting, and implementing 'high-leverage' interventions
Activating policies, codes, programs, plans, and practices, as well as monitoring and upgrading their performance
The book includes a range of targeted case studies, from New Orleans and South Carolina to Arizona and California, illustrating geographically diverse approaches for urban contexts large and small.
A resource for developing an ecological urbanism, Sustainable and Resilient Communities employs time-proven, broadly applicable strategies and actions that can be customized for specific environmental, energy, and economic conditions.
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