Review:

The voice of sustainability and environmentalism has repeatedly struggled with the retention of its message by those outside its group of core proponents. As environmental threats increase in their intensity, so too does the urgency of the pro-environmental message–an urgency that can often be misconstrued as aggression that only emboldens its opponents. Though every cultural […]

Review:

Four years after the release of Breathing Architecture, Garden City Mega City continues to chronicle the pursuit of sustainable architecture and planning by Pacific-based architecture firm WOHA. Folding in subsequent years of creative proposals–both built and unbuilt–this new publication focuses on the environmental and social challenges of hyper-density in tall buildings. Author and photographer Patrick Bingham-Hall helps […]

Review:

The roots of “permaculture” lie in sustainable farming practices. Centered around the use of natural, complementary relationships between crops in close proximity the resulting synergy produces higher yields per acre without the chemical backbone of single-crop farming. The idea is that any given plot can have a network of overlapping crops to form an agricultural ecosystem. The […]

Review:

Some could look at the 20th century as an era of achievement for American agriculture. Advancements in the crops we grow and how we grow them has bred an industry that can harvest more yield per acre than ever before. Companies have streamlined the processes of maintaining and harvesting produce to be ready for an […]

Review:

Authors John Mandyck and Eric Schultz peel back the rind on the issue of food waste to showcase the gravity of its effects on not only the environment, but economic and cultural realities across the world. Together, the authors frame our propensity of wasting food as a truly global dilemma, leaving virtually all cultures around […]

Review:

The American development pattern of suburban planning has reached a level of maturity that allowed for a more thorough critique by the design community. Beyond its original goals of increasing home ownership and fostering living potential outside of city centers, the full effects of suburban planning are clearer now than ever before. It would be […]

Review:

While there has been notable traction in the design community for efforts to retool the assumptions for sub-urban planning in America, in some ways the movement of “Smart Growth” suffers from the same haunting characteristics of “sustainability.” The very broadness of both terms, necessary to encapsulate the scale of all they contain and can possible […]

Review:

For those that have read the works of Jane Jacobs, she is not prone to writing about all of the things we are doing extremely well.  Her final literary installment is no different. Jacobs references historic Dark Ages–eras of where large amounts of resilience and cultural capital are lost–and relates them to the present course […]

Review:

In the age of millennials, walkability is all the rage. If you’re talking to people born after 1975 then chances are giving planning preference to bikers and walkers will get you some head-bobs or thumbs up. The data continually points to younger populations being less interested in automotive access and more keen on what can […]

Review:

The complexity of sustainability is one of its worse enemies. Our modern attempts to condense information can run counter to helping others understand the intricacies of our biosphere. With only portions of information the solutions can see deceivingly easy, mistakenly small in number or both. Some of the stronger voices end up being the ones […]