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Positive Development
From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design
By Janis Birkeland
'One of the best books on sustainability I've read in a long time ... clear, compelling, and dead on.'
David Orr, Oberlin College, author of The Nature of Design and Ecological Literacy
Paperback
Sample Chapter
August 2008 •
432 pages •
246 x 189mm •
ISBN 9781844075799
Janis Birkeland presents the innovative new paradigm of 'Positive Development' in which the built environment provides greater life quality, health, amenity and safety for all without sacrificing resources or money. With a different form of design, development itself can become a 'sustainability solution'. A cornerstone of this new paradigm is the eco-retrofitting of the vast urban fabric we already inhabit. The author presents a revolutionary new tool called SmartMode to achieve this end. This book challenges everyone working in or studying the areas of sustainable development, planning, architecture or the built environment to rethink their current ideas and practices.
'Birkeland's book takes the next step ... it argues that design for nature, or "design for eco-services", is long overdue, and explains how we can do it.'
Hunter Lovins, President and Founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions
'A heralding work of how a positive and innovative design agenda for the built environment, underlined by an uncompromising valuation of ecology and nature's services, can mobilize our efforts in becoming native to the planet.'
Michael Braungart, Professor of Material Flow Management at University Lüneburg, Germany and co-author of Cradle to Cradle
'What a great book! Thank you so much and congratulations on its great feat in effortlessly combining erudition with simplicity.'
Senator Bob Brown, Leader of the Australian Greens
'Invaluable not just to designers but to all those whose work impinges on the environment.'
Ken Yeang, Architect, Llewelyn Davies Yeang, UK
'An unusual, and heartening, combination of the radical and the realistic.'
Clive Hamilton, former Executive Director of The Australia Institute, author of Growth Fetish and co-author of Affluenza
'Birkeland is one of the world's leading thinkers on sustainable built environments. In this book she distils her wealth of experience into a very accessible text on how we can achieve net positive development.'
The Natural Edge Project, authors of The Natural Advantage of Nations
'Birkeland convincingly argues that we can "develop" in a way that replenishes and increases the planet's life-giving services. I urge that this book be read and championed by our infrastructure designers as well as all others.'
David A Hood, Chairman, Australian Green Infrastructure Council
'Birkeland brings a fertile and inventive mind to bear on the critical problem of how to cope with the planet's disappearing carrying capacity.'
David R. Godschalk, University of North Carolina in Urban Land
'This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner.'
Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, President, Australian Conservation Foundation
'I highly recommend Professor Birkeland's book...a required text for IGP's course on "Sustainable Architecture" that is a partial prerequisite for the Member (MIGP) or Fellow (FIGP) designations.'
Grant W Austin, President of the Institute for Green Professionals
'This book made me think. It will be a book that I will come back to on many occasions as it questions the conventional approach to sustainable development and goes far beyond, offering advice towards positive development. I will keep it to hand in order to stimulate thinking and to provoke debate.'
International Journal of Sustainable Engineering
CONTENTS
Introduction: Sustainability versus Negativity
Section A: Redefining the Problem and Goals
Design for Eco-services
The Case for Eco-retrofitting
Sustainable Urban Form
Section B: Critique of Methods,Tools and Processes in Building Design
Development Standards and Criteria
Building Rating Tools
Design Methods
Section C: Critique of Methods, Tools and Processes in Environmental Management
Urban Sustainability Assessment
Regional Sustainability Audits
Sustainability Reporting
Section D: Critique of Trends in Strategies, Incentives and Planning
Futures Thinking Tools
Eco-service Trading Schemes
Bioregional Planning
Section E: A framework for Eco-governance and Management
Constitution for Eco-governance
Reversing Resource Transfers
The SmartMode Process
Index
Janis Birkeland worked consecutively as artist, advocacy planner, architect, urban designer, city planner and attorney in San Francisco before entering academia in Australia. She has authored over 100 publications on built environment and sustainability and wrote the highly successful and widely adopted Design for Sustainability (Earthscan, 2002). She is now Professor of Architecture at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
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