The Living Landscape, Second Edition: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning

by Frederick R. Steiner

Overview

The Living Landscape is a manifesto, resource, and textbook for architects, landscape architects, environmental planners, students, and others involved in creating human communities. Since its first edition, published in 1990, it has taught its readers how to develop new built environments while conserving natural resources. No other book presents such a comprehensive approach to planning that is rooted in ecology and design. And no other book offers a similar step-by-step method for planning with an emphasis on sustainable development. This second edition of The Living Landscape offers Frederick Steiner’s design-oriented ecological methods to a new generation of students and professionals.

The Living Landscape offers

• a systematic, highly practical approach to landscape planning that maximizes ecological objectives, community service, and citizen participation
• more than 20 challenging case studies that demonstrate how problems were met and overcome, from rural America to large cities
• scores of checklists and step-by-step guides
• hands-on help with practical zoning, land use, and regulatory issues
• coverage of major advances in GIS technology and global sustainability standards
• more than 150 illustrations.

As Steiner emphasizes throughout this book, all of us have a responsibility to the Earth and to our fellow residents on this planet to plan with vision. We are merely visiting this planet, he notes; we should leave good impressions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597263962
Publisher:	Island Press
Publication date:	03/23/2008
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Frederick Steiner is Dean and Paley Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Previously, he was Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas-Austin for 15 years. He has also taught planning, landscape architecture, and environmental science at Arizona State University, where he was Director of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture, College of Architecture and Environmental Design; Washington State University; and the University of Colorado-Denver.

Steiner is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture and a presidential appointee to the national board of the American Institute of Architects. As a Fulbright-Hays Scholar in 1980, he conducted research on ecological planning at the Wageningen Agricultural and Environmental Science University, The Netherlands. In 1998 he was the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome. Steiner has written, edited, or co-edited 17 books.

Table of Contents

Preface to Second Edition
Preface to The First Edition
Acknowledgments
 
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Identifying Issues and Establishing Planning Goals
Chapter 3. Inventory And Analysis of the Biophysical Environment
Chapter 4. Human Community Inventory and Analysis
Chapter 5. Suitability Analysis
Chapter 6. Planning Options and Choices
Chapter 7. Landscape Plans
Chapter 8. Continuing Citizen Involvement and Community Education
Chapter 9. Testing Planning Concepts through Design
Chapter 10. Plan and Design Implementation
Chapter 11. Administration of Planning Programs
Chapter 12. Conclusion
 
Appendix A
Appendix B
Glossary
Acronyms
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"It is a must for landscape architects, engineers, or anyone involved in urban planning."

Choice

"Frederick Steiner demonstrates how an organized and clear model of ecological planning can be a useful tool for planners to deal with projects at different scales and with different natural and human components."

Danillo Palazzo

"The Living Landscape offers a thoughtful and excellent examination of how we can understand, analyze, and interpret the landscape as interacting physical, biological, and cultural systems. This book is unique because of the emphasis the author places on understanding the landscape in terms of relationships among these systems. The Living Landscape is a useful and timely contribution to the growing body of knowledge on ecological planning."

Forster Ndubisi

"What makes this more than just another weighty planning treatise is the intellectual energy expended in placing planning activities into an overall framework. It's not just one damn thing after another. ....Don't miss this wonderful work of synthesis."

Planning

"It is a must for landscape architects, engineers, or anyone involved in urban planning."

CHOICE

"It is a must for landscape architects, engineers, or anyone involved in urban planning...Recommended."

Choice - B. Rowe

"What makes this more than just another weighty planning treatise is the intellectual energy expended in placing planning activities into an overall framework. It's not just one damn thing after another. ....Don't miss this wonderful work of synthesis."

Planning Magazine