With more than half of the world’s population now living in urbanized areas and the threats of climate change and resource depletion evident, sustainable urban design is a critical field. The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook gathers the best sustainability practices and latest research from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, development, ecology, and environmental engineering and presents them in a graphically rich and accessible format that is relevant to urban design projects in cities of all sizes.
The book presents a comprehensive framework that organizes the +50 elements of sustainable urban design under five main topics: Energy Use & Greenhouse Gas, Water, Ecology & Habitat, Energy Use & Production, and Equity & Health, and relative to four project scales: Region & City, District & Neighborhood, Block & Street, and Project & Parcel. This organization allows people to see the range of elements they could address in any given project, as well as related elements at other scales and co-benefits. Each element is described in a dedicated section that describes its importance, background, compares typical practices and recommended approaches, explains connections to other elements, and concludes with urban design guidelines that can be used to directly inform projects and decisions.
Easy to use and reference, The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook provides both an in-depth introduction to topics across sustainable urban design and serves as an on-going reference for anyone involved in the creation of sustainable urban environments. This resource will be useful to design and planning professionals, community members, students, and elected officials in guiding decisions about our sustainable future.