Natura Urbana

Download Natura Urbana PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262367467
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Natura Urbana by : Matthew Gandy

Download or read book Natura Urbana written by Matthew Gandy and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of urban nature that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought. Postindustrial transitions and changing cultures of nature have produced an unprecedented degree of fascination with urban biodiversity. The “other nature” that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature, is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. Indeed, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural. In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity, through the lens of urban ecology and the parallel study of diverse cultures of nature at a global scale. Gandy examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse. The book is driven by Gandy’s fascination with spontaneous forms of urban nature ranging from postindustrial wastelands brimming with life to the return of such predators as wolves and leopards on the urban fringe. Gandy develops a critical synthesis between different strands of urban ecology and considers whether "urban political ecology," broadly defined, might be imaginatively extended to take fuller account of both the historiography of the ecological sciences,and recent insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.

Beyond the Networked City

Download Beyond the Networked City PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317633695
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Beyond the Networked City by : Olivier Coutard

Download or read book Beyond the Networked City written by Olivier Coutard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities around the world are undergoing profound changes. In this global era, we live in a world of rising knowledge economies, digital technologies, and awareness of environmental issues. The so-called "modern infrastructural ideal" of spatially and socially ubiquitous centrally-governed infrastructures providing exclusive, homogeneous services over extensive areas, has been the standard of reference for the provision of basic essential services, such as water and energy supply. This book argues that, after decades of undisputed domination, this ideal is being increasingly questioned and that the network ideology that supports it may be waning. In order to begin exploring the highly diverse, fluid and unstable landscapes emerging beyond the networked city, this book identifies dynamics through which a ‘break’ with previous configurations has been operated, and new brittle zones of socio-technical controversy through which urban infrastructure (and its wider meaning) are being negotiated and fought over. It uncovers, across a diverse set of urban contexts, new ways in which processes of urbanization and infrastructure production are being combined with crucial sociopolitical implications: through shifting political economies of infrastructure which rework resource distribution and value creation; through new infrastructural spaces and territorialities which rebundle socio-technical systems for particular interests and claims; and through changing offsets between individual and collective appropriation, experience and mobilization of infrastructure. With contributions from leading authorities in the field and drawing on theoretical advances and original empirical material, this book is a major contribution to an ongoing infrastructural turn in urban studies, and will be of interest to all those concerned by the diverse forms and contested outcomes of contemporary urban change across North and South.

Sustainable Development

Download Sustainable Development PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN 13 : 9535101005
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (351 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sustainable Development by : Chaouki Ghenai

Download or read book Sustainable Development written by Chaouki Ghenai and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2012-02-24 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The technological advancement of our civilization has created a consumer society expanding faster than the planet's resources allow, with our resource and energy needs rising exponentially in the past century. Securing the future of the human race will require an improved understanding of the environment as well as of technological solutions, mindsets and behaviors in line with modes of development that the ecosphere of our planet can support. Sustainable development offers an approach that would be practical to fuse with the managerial strategies and assessment tools for policy and decision makers at the regional planning level.

Cities

Download Cities PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
ISBN 13 : 8179931315
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (799 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Cities by : Pierre Jacquet

Download or read book Cities written by Pierre Jacquet and published by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-first century is already an urban one. Cities are pivotal to sustainability concerns globalization, climate change, food security, environmental protection, and innovation.Today's urban actors, both citizens and their leaders, have a major responsibility as trustees of the future: their present actions will influence the shape and structure of cities, so that the generation to come may live healthy and contended lives.This volume takes the reader straight to the heart of how cities work, and identifies contemporary trends, mechanism and tools that can influence current strategies and choices.The authors show that urbanization is not a problem per se for sustainable development, but rather that cities, in all their diversity and complexity, offer solutions as well as challenges.The reader will be inspired by vital analyses of the next decade's windows of opportunity for sustainable urban growth.

Infrastructures in Practice

Download Infrastructures in Practice PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351106155
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (511 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Infrastructures in Practice by : Elizabeth Shove

Download or read book Infrastructures in Practice written by Elizabeth Shove and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infrastructures in Practice shows how infrastructures and daily life shape each other. Power grids, roads and broadband make modern lifestyles possible – at the same time, their design and day-to-day operation depends on what people do at home and at work. This volume investigates the entanglement of supply and demand. It explains how standards and 'normal' ways of living have changed over time and how infrastructures have changed with them. Studies of grid expansion and disruption, heating systems, the internet, urban planning and office standards, smart meters and demand management reveal this dynamic interdependence. This is the first book to examine the interdependence between infrastructures and the practices of daily life. It offers an analysis of how new technologies, lifestyles and standards become normalised and fall out of use. It brings together diverse disciplines – history, sociology, science studies – to develop social theories and accounts of how infrastructures and practices constitute each other at different scales and over time. It shows how networks and demands are steered and shaped, and how social and political visions are woven into infrastructures, past, present and future. Original, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book puts the many practices of daily life back into the study of infrastructures. The result is a fresh understanding of how resource-intensive forms of consumption and energy demand have come about and what is needed to move towards a more sustainable lower carbon future.

Rethinking Nature

Download Rethinking Nature PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315444747
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Rethinking Nature by : Aurélie Choné

Download or read book Rethinking Nature written by Aurélie Choné and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary ideas of nature were largely shaped by schools of thought from Western cultural history and philosophy until the present-day concerns with environmental change and biodiversity conservation. There are many different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting the tensions between the polarities of humans as masters or protectors of nature and as part of or outside of nature. The book shows how nature is today the focus of numerous debates, calling for an approach which goes beyond the merely technical or scientific. It adopts a threefold – critical, historical and cross-disciplinary – approach in order to summarise the current state of knowledge. It includes contributions informed by the humanities (especially history, literature and philosophy) and social sciences, concerned with the production and circulation of knowledge about "nature" across disciplines and across national and cultural spaces. The volume also demonstrates the ongoing reconfiguration of subject disciplines, as seen in the recent emergence of new interdisciplinary approaches and the popularity of the prefix "eco-" (e.g. ecocriticism, ecospirituality, ecosophy and ecofeminism, as well as subdivisions of ecology, including urban ecology, industrial ecology and ecosystem services). Each chapter provides a concise overview of its topic which will serve as a helpful introduction to students and a source of easy reference. This text is also valuable reading for researchers interested in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, ecology, politics and all their respective environmentalist strands.

Infrastructural Times

Download Infrastructural Times PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Policy Press
ISBN 13 : 1529229731
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Infrastructural Times by : Jean-Paul D. Addie

Download or read book Infrastructural Times written by Jean-Paul D. Addie and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether waiting for the train or planning the future city, infrastructure orders—and depends on—multiple urban temporalities. This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure, and urban society. Conceptually rich and empirically detailed, its interdisciplinary dialogue encompasses infrastructural systems including transportation, energy, and water to bridge often-siloed technical, political-economic and lived perspectives. With global coverage of diverse cities and regions from Berlin to Jayapura, this book is an essential provocation to re-evaluate urban theory, politics, and practice and better account for the temporal complexities that shape our infrastructured worlds.

Territorial Ecology and Socio-ecological Transition

Download Territorial Ecology and Socio-ecological Transition PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119821355
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (198 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Territorial Ecology and Socio-ecological Transition by : Nicolas Buclet

Download or read book Territorial Ecology and Socio-ecological Transition written by Nicolas Buclet and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the same realm as social ecology, industrial ecology and the circular economy, a new interdisciplinary field is growing: territorial ecology. Based on the analysis of the metabolism of human societies at a local level, it helps us diagnose a socioecosystem. This diagnostic is not only based on what is circulating, but also on how it is organized and why. Who is at the origin of a flow? What are their motivations? Who has the power to make decisions about it? This methodology, taking into account both the material description of human societies and the analysis of decisionmaking processes, might also be relevant for territorial diagnostics. It leads us to a systemic view of the consequences of individual and collective actions on the sustainability of local socio ecosystems. Socio-ecological transition implies a substantial evolution of human societies. Innovation, be it technological, organizational or social, is intrinsically involved in this evolution. However, if transition calls for disruptive rather than incremental innovations, we must also assess these innovations with a systemic view of their consequences.

Vegetal Politics

Download Vegetal Politics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317387228
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Vegetal Politics by : Lesley Head

Download or read book Vegetal Politics written by Lesley Head and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural geography has a long and proud tradition of research into human–plant relations. However, until recently, that tradition has been somewhat disconnected from conceptual advances in the social sciences, even those to which cultural geographers have made significant contributions. With a number of important exceptions, plant studies have been less explicitly part of more-than-human geographies than have animal studies. This book aims to redress this gap, recognising plants and their multiple engagements with and beyond humans. Plants are not only fundamental to human survival, they play a key role in many of the most important environmental political issues of the century, including biofuels, carbon economies and food security. This innovative collection explores themes of belonging, practices and places. Together, the chapters suggest new kinds of ‘vegetal politics’, documenting both collaborative and conflictual relations between humans, plants and others. They open up new spaces of political action and subjectivity, challenging political frames that are confined to humans. The book also raises methodological questions and challenges for future research. This book was published as a special issue of Social and Economic Geography.

Smart Cities

Download Smart Cities PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119075602
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Smart Cities by : Antoine Picon

Download or read book Smart Cities written by Antoine Picon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As cities compete globally, the Smart City has been touted as the important new strategic driver for regeneration and growth. Smart Cities are employing information and communication technologies in the quest for sustainable economic development and the fostering of new forms of collective life. This has made the Smart City an essential focus for engineers, architects, urban designers, urban planners, and politicians, as well as businesses such as CISCO, IBM and Siemens. Despite its broad appeal, few comprehensive books have been devoted to the subject so far, and even fewer have tried to relate it to cultural issues and to assume a truly critical stance by trying to decipher its consequences on urban space and experience. This cultural and critical lens is all the more important as the Smart City is as much an ideal permeated by Utopian beliefs as a concrete process of urban transformation. This ideal possesses a strong self-fulfilling character: our cities will become ‘Smart’ because we want them to. This book opens with an examination of the technological reality on which Smart Cities are built, from the chips and sensors that enable us to monitor what happens within the infrastructure to the smartphones that connect individuals. Through these technologies, the urban space appears as activated, almost sentient. This activation generates two contrasting visions: on the one hand, a neo-cybernetic ambition to steer the city in the most efficient way; and on the other, a more bottom-up, participative approach in which empowered individuals invent new modes of cooperation. A thorough analysis of these two trends reveals them to be complementary. The Smart City of the near future will result from their mutual adjustment. In this process, urban space plays a decisive role. Smart Cities are contemporary with a ‘spatial turn’ of the digital. Based on key technological developments like geo-localisation and augmented reality, the rising importance of space explains the strategic role of mapping in the evolution of the urban experience. Throughout this exploration of some of the key dimensions of the Smart City, this book constantly moves from the technological to the spatial as well as from a critical assessment of existing experiments to speculations on the rise of a new form of collective intelligence. In the future, cities will become smarter in a much more literal way than what is often currently assumed.

Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities

Download Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1800889151
Total Pages : 483 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities by : Olivier Coutard

Download or read book Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities written by Olivier Coutard and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-04-12 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributing towards a thriving research area, this comprehensive Handbook presents a broad discussion of infrastructure as social phenomena. It compiles diverse perspectives to delineate the current ‘infrastructural turn’ and assess policy and research challenges relating to contemporary forms of infrastructural development.

Dreams of disconnection

Download Dreams of disconnection PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526146886
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Dreams of disconnection by : Fanny Lopez

Download or read book Dreams of disconnection written by Fanny Lopez and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we live in homes and communities built around the century-old industrial model of large service networks that use polluting resources? For more than a century, creative architects and planners have dreamed of decentralisation and self-sufficient living, not to cut themselves off from society, but to invent new modes of consumption and to rethink collective public services around common environmental values. In a time of climate crisis, changing society means changing energy infrastructures. Dreams of disconnection tells the story of this strand of design and planning, from its pioneers in the late nineteenth century to those applying similar ideas to tomorrow’s technology two hundred years later. Lopez takes in many a utopian visionary in her tour of dreamers of disconnection, from theorists and architects to industrialists and engineers. Technology and design are the centrepieces for these projects, and their complexity, particularly around sustainable supplies of energy, food and water, so often find solutions in aesthetics. Whether these models were based around single homes or whole cities, Dreams of disconnection reveals that there is much to be learnt and marvelled at in the history of self-sufficient design.

Spatial Ecologies

Download Spatial Ecologies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1846317541
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (463 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Spatial Ecologies by : Verena Andermatt Conley

Download or read book Spatial Ecologies written by Verena Andermatt Conley and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spatial Ecologies asks why French cultural and critical theory since 1968 has turned from investigating questions of time to examining space. Verena Conley ranges over the work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Jean Baudrillard, Marc Auge, Paul Virilio, Bruno Latour, and Etienne Balibar to analyze how they reconsidered the experience of space in the midst of political and economic turmoil and to find out what writing about space can tell us about life in late capitalism. Conley links this question to Heidegger's concept of habitality and shows how this concept of space informs much of French theory.

Cities and Low Carbon Transitions

Download Cities and Low Carbon Transitions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136883274
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Cities and Low Carbon Transitions by : Harriet Bulkeley

Download or read book Cities and Low Carbon Transitions written by Harriet Bulkeley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities and Low Carbon Transitions presents a ground-breaking analysis of the role of cities in low carbon socio-technical transitions. Insights from the fields of urban studies and technological transitions are combined to examine how, why, and with what implications cities bring about low carbon transitions. The book outlines the key concepts underpinning theories of socio-technical transition and assesses its potential strengths and limits for understanding the social and technological responses to climate change that are emerging in cities. It draws on a diverse range of examples including world cities, ordinary cities and transition towns, from North America, Europe, South Africa and China, to provide evidence that expectations, aspirations and plans to undertake purposive socio-technical transitions are emerging in different urban contexts.

Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions

Download Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319705482
Total Pages : 1761 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (197 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions by : Amjad Kallel

Download or read book Recent Advances in Environmental Science from the Euro-Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions written by Amjad Kallel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 1761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume includes the papers presented during the 1st Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration (EMCEI) which was held in Sousse, Tunisia in November 2017. This conference was jointly organized by the editorial office of the Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration in Sfax, Tunisia and Springer (MENA Publishing Program) in Germany. It aimed to give a more concrete expression to the Euro-Mediterranean integration process by supplementing existing North-South programs and agreements with a new multilateral scientific forum that emphasizes in particular the vulnerability and proactive remediation of the Euro-Mediterranean region from an environmental point of view. This volume gives a general and brief overview on current research focusing on emerging environmental issues and challenges and its applications to a variety of problems in the Euro-Mediterranean zone and surrounding regions. It contains over five hundred and eighty carefully refereed short contributions to the conference. Topics covered include (1) innovative approaches and methods for environmental sustainability, (2) environmental risk assessment, bioremediation, ecotoxicology, and environmental safety, (3) water resources assessment, planning, protection, and management, (4) environmental engineering and management, (5) natural resources: characterization, assessment, management, and valorization, (6) intelligent techniques in renewable energy (biomass, wind, waste, solar), (7) sustainable management of marine environment and coastal areas, (8) remote sensing and GIS for geo-environmental investigations, (9) environmental impacts of geo/natural hazards (earthquakes, landslides, volcanic, and marine hazards), and (10) the environmental health science (natural and social impacts on Human health). Presenting a wide range of topics and new results, this edited volume will appeal to anyone working in the subject area, including researchers and students interested to learn more about new advances in environmental research initiatives in view of the ever growing environmental degradation in the Euro-Mediterranean region, which has turned environmental and resource protection into an increasingly important issue hampering sustainable development and social welfare.

MANUAL OF URBAN ECOLOGY.

Download MANUAL OF URBAN ECOLOGY. PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9782378962432
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (624 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis MANUAL OF URBAN ECOLOGY. by :

Download or read book MANUAL OF URBAN ECOLOGY. written by and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Landscape and Sustainable Development

Download Landscape and Sustainable Development PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317108248
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Landscape and Sustainable Development by : Yves Luginbühl

Download or read book Landscape and Sustainable Development written by Yves Luginbühl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published in French by Éditions Quae, this volume presents findings of a major research programme into landscape and sustainable development. While led by French scholars, the research team and geographical scope of the project was international, collaborative and comparative. Using case studies from across Europe, the interdisciplinary team of contributors discuss the relationship between landscape as defined by the European Landscape Convention and the concept of sustainable development. This English edition has a new introduction written by Yves Luginbühl and Peter Howard. The book is then divided into three sections: Biophysical Realities and Landscape Practice; Landscape Resources-Inheritance and Renewal; Governance and Participation. Some of the topics covered, such as wind-farm landscapes, will be familiar to English language readers, but others, such as footpath economics, non-woodland trees, inter-generational equity, and the insistence on the necessary developments in governance less so.