Saskia Sassen
Professor, Columbia University
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Saskia Sassen
“Cities have multiple connections to the biosphere. Today they are all negative, destructive. This book shows us in great detail and with splendid clarity how we can turn them positive. It goes well beyond standard solutions as it brilliantly explores the biosphere and makes discoveries.” (from Amazon)
A manual, monograph, and call to action, Toward an Urban Ecology points to the future of landscape architecture's role in making resilient, sustainable, and community-oriented spaces Kate Orff, 2017 MacArthur Fellow, has an optimistic and transformative message about our world: we can bring together social and ecological systems to sustainably remake our cities and landscapes. Part monograph, part manual, part manifesto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. In purely practical terms, SCAPE has already generated numerous tools and techniques that designers, policy makers, and communities can use to address some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the loss of biodiversity, the loss of social cohesion, and ecological degradation. Toward an Urban Ecology features numerous projects and select research from SCAPE, and conveys a range of strategies to engender a more resilient and inclusive built environment.