Title The agile city : building well-being and wealth in an era of climate change / James S. Russell

Published Washington, DC : Island Press/Center for Resource Economics, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xviii, 290 pages) : illustrations (some color) Contents Part 1. Introduction -- The Concrete Metropolis in a Dynamic Era -- Part 1. The Land -- Climate Change in the Landscapes of Speculation -- A New Land Ethos -- Part 2. Repairing the Dysfunctional Growth Machine -- Real Estate -- Financing Agile Growth -- Re-engineering Transportation -- Ending the Water Wars -- Megaburbs -- The Unacknowledged Metropolis -- Part 3. Agile Urban Futures -- Building Adaptive Places -- Creating Twenty-first-century Community -- Loose-fit Urbanism -- Green Grows the Future Summary Annotation In a very short time America has realized that global warming poses real challenges to the nation's future. The Agile City engages the fundamental question: what to do about it?Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming-and blunt its effects-by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly. Adapting buildings (39 percent of greenhouse-gas emission) and communities (slashing the 33 percent of transportation related emissions) offers numerous other benefits that tax gimmicks and massive alternative-energy investments can't match. Rapidly improving building techniques can readily cut carbon emissions by half, and some can get to zero. These cuts can be affordably achieved in the windshield-shattering heat of the desert and the bone-chilling cold of the north. Intelligently designing our towns could reduce marathon commutes and child chauffeuring to a few miles or eliminate it entirely. Agility, Russell argues, also means learning to adapt to the effects of climate change, which means redesigning the obsolete ways real estate is financed; housing subsidies are distributed; transportation is provided; and water is obtained, distributed and disposed of. These engines of growth have become increasingly more dysfunctional both economically and environmentally. The Agile City highlights tactics that create multiplier effects, which means that ecologically driven change can shore-up economic opportunity, can make more productive workplaces, and can help revive neglected communities. Being able to look at multiple effects and multiple benefits of political choices and private investments is essential to assuring wealth and well-being in the future. Green, Russell writes, grows the future Analysis Environmental sciences Architecture Urban Ecology Climatic changes Environmental management Sustainable development Environment Climate Change Urbanism Building Types and Functions steden towns urbanisatie urbanization gebouwen buildings klimaatverandering climatic change stedelijke ecologie duurzame ontwikkeling milieubeheer milieu Environmental Sciences (General) Milieuwetenschappen (algemeen) Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Subject Climatic changes Climatic changes -- Government policy. Economic development. Sustainable development. Financial crises -- History -- 21st century Climate Change climate change. economic development. sustainable development. TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Environmental -- Pollution Control. Climatic changes Climatic changes -- Government policy Economic development Financial crises Sustainable development Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 2011005024 ISBN 9781610910279 1610910273 1597267244 9781597267243 1597267252 9781597267250

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