Regreening the built environment : nature, green space, and sustainability / Michael A. Richards.

"Now in its second volume, Regreening the Built Environment provides an overview of physical and social environmental challenges that the planet is facing and presents solutions that restore ecological processes, reclaim open space, foster social equity, and facilitate a green economy. Healing the planet requires a combination of strategies networked across multiple scales of development, including buildings, sites, communities, and regions. This thoroughly revised second edition presents sustainable and resilient design strategies that preserve natural resources and reclaim open space consumed by irresponsible patterns of development. Case studies from a range of locations in the USA, as well as Denmark, Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, France, and the UK, among others, demonstrate how existing gray infrastructure can be retrofitted with green infrastructure and low impact development techniques. From this, the author shows how a building can be designed that actually creates greenspace or generates energy; likewise, a roadway can be a park, an alley can be a wildlife corridor, and a parking surface can be a garden. This new edition also includes innovative ideas on how to reimagine the shopping mall in the era of e-commerce, resilience planning for the ski/snowboard industry in response to climate change, and several new strategies that capture carbon, generate energy, improve transit, and make the earth a greener, healthier, and more resilient place. The strategies presented in this book will stimulate discussions within the design profession and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental studies, architecture, and urban design"-- Provided by publisher.