Planning Cities with Nature: Theories, Strategies and Methods [Hardcover]

This book explores novel theories, strategies and methods for re-naturing cities. It enables readers to learn from best practice and advances the current theoretical and empirical understanding in the field. The book also offers valuable insights into how planners and policymakers can apply this knowledge to their own cities and regions, exploring top-down, bottom-up and mixed mechanisms for the systemic re-naturing of planned and existing cities. 

There is considerable interest in naturalising cities, since it can help address multiple global societal challenges and generate various benefits, such as the enhancement of health and well-being, sustainable urbanisation, ecosystems and their services, and resilience to climate change. This can also translate into tangible economic benefits in terms of preventing health hazards, positively affecting health-related expenditure, new job opportunities (i.e. urban farming) and the regeneration of urban areas.

There is, thus, a compelling case to investigate integrative approaches to urban and natural systems that can help cities address the social, economic and environmental needs of a growing population. How can we plan with nature? What are the models and approaches that can be used to develop more sustainable cities that provide high-quality urban green spaces?

Introduction.- Part  1. Cities and Nature in History.- Chapter 1. Understanding Landscape: Cultural Perceptions of Environment in the UK and China.- Chapter 2. Green Wedges: the Resilience of a Planning Idea.- Chapter 3. Demystified Territories: City vs. Countryside in Andrea Branzis Urban Models.- Chapter 4. The Introduction of Nature in the Austrian Radicals Practice.- Chapter 5. University Campuses: Experimentations on the Relations Between City and Nature in Brazil.- Part 2. Planning Models, Theories and Methods for Renatls¾