Results 1 to 4 of 4
- Urban jungle : the history and future of nature in the city / by Wilson, Ben,1980-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior. Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle, Ben Wilson--the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called "a towering achievement"--looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis. Whether it was the market farmers of Paris, Germans in medieval forest cities, or the Aztecs in the floating city of Tenochtitlan, pre-modern humans had an essential bond with nature. But when the day came that water was piped in and food flown from distant fields, that relationship was lost. Today, urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat on Earth and in Urban Jungle Ben Wilson finds that we are at last acknowledging that human engineering is not enough to protect us from extremes of weather. He takes us to places where efforts to rewild the city are under way: to Los Angeles, where the city's concrete river will run blue again, to New York City, where a bleak landfill will be a vast grassland preserve. The pinnacle of this strategy will be Amsterdam: a city that is its own ecosystem, that makes no waste and produces its own energy. In many cities, Wilson finds, nature is already thriving. Koalas are settling in Brisbane, wild boar may raid your picnic in Berlin. Green canopies, wildflowers, wildlife: the things that will help cities survive, he notes, also make people happy. Urban Jungle offers the pleasures of history--how backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversity--alongside a fantastic vision of the lush green cities of our future. Climate change, Ben Wilson believes, is only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city"--- Subjects: Climatic changes.; Urban ecology (Biology); Urban ecology (Sociology);
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- What's wild outside your door? : discovering nature in the city / by Wohlleben, Peter,1964-; Wuthrich, Belle,1989-;
"In this fascinating and interactive guide, kids will learn about how birds build their nests on bridges, where salamanders and toads hide, and how plants push through sidewalk cracks"--- Subjects: Urban animals; Urban ecology (Sociology);
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Rat city : overcrowding and urban derangement in the rodent universes of John B. Calhoun / by Adams, Jon,author.; Ramsden, Edmund,author.;
"How a landmark experiment in rat behavior changed the way we think about cities. In the decades following WWII, the American metropolis was in peril. Modern high rises hastily erected to replace slums became incubators of criminality, while civic unrest erupted across the nation. Enter John B. Calhoun, an ecologist employed by the National Institute of Mental Health to study the effects of overcrowding. Calhoun decided to focus his study on rats. From 1947 to 1977, Calhoun built a series of sprawling habitats in which a rat's every need was met -- except space. As the enclosures became ever more crowded, resident rats began to react to social stress, culminating in the terrifying world of Universe 25: a rodent habitat where escalating social disorder collapsed to violent extinction. Did a similar fate await our own teeming cities? Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden's Rat City is the first book to tell the story of maverick scientist Calhoun and his now-viral experiments. Following the rats from the baiting pits of Victorian London to the laboratories of NIMH, and Calhoun from rural Tennessee to inner-city Baltimore, Rat City is an enthralling mix of dystopian science and urban history. Social design, housing infrastructure, a burgeoning current of racism in city planning: Calhoun influenced them all, and Rat City connects Calhoun's work to the politics of personal space, the looming threat of global overpopulation, and the eclipsing of environmental psychology by pharmaceutical psychiatry. As the "war on rats" continues to be waged around the world, and our post-pandemic society reevaluates the necessity of urban living, the riveting story of Rat City is more relevant than ever"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Calhoun, John B.; Ethologists; Human beings; Human ecology.; Overpopulation.; Rats; Rats; Urban ecology (Sociology);
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Solved : how the world's great cities are fixing the climate crisis / by Miller, David,1958-author.; McKibben, Bill,writer of foreword.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."If our planet is going to survive the climate crisis, we need to act rapidly. We cannot wait for national governments to agree on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the average temperature rise to within the 1.5 degrees scientists agree is needed to stave off cataclysmic consequences. David Miller argues that cities are taking action on climate change because they can--and because they must. His makes a clear-eyed and compelling case that if replicated at pace and scale, the actions leading global cities have taken to protect their citizens and become more resilient point the way to creating a more sustainable planet."--- Subjects: City planning; Climate change mitigation; Sustainable urban development; Urban ecology (Sociology); Urban policy;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 1 to 4 of 4