Springer Sustainable Landscape Planning in Selected Urban Regions (Science for Sustainable Societies)

This book provides a unique contribution to the science of sustainable societies by challenging the traditional concept of rural-urban dichotomy. It combines environmental engineering and landscape sciences perspectives on urban region issues, making the book a unique work in urban study literatures. Today’s extended urban regions often maintain rural features within their boundaries and also have strong social, economic, and environmental linkages with the surrounding rural areas. These intra- and inter- linkages between urban and rural systems produce complex interdependences with global and local sustainability issues, including those of climate change, resource exploitation, ecosystem degradation and human wellbeing. Planning and other prospective actions for the sustainability of urban regions, therefore, cannot solely depend on “urban” approaches; rather, they need to integrate broader landscape perspectives that take extended social and ecological systems into consideration. This volume shows how to untangle, diagnose, and transform urban regions through distinctive thematic contributions across a variety of academic disciplines ranging from environmental engineering and geography to landscape ecology and urban planning. Case studies, selected from across the world and investigating urban regions in East Asia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia, collectively illustrate shared and differentiated drivers of sustainability challenges and provide informative inputs to global and local sustainability initiatives. Review “This wonderful book is full of such insights, reflections, analyses, appraisals, and even anecdotes, and should be a smash hit: we should all seek to know more about these foundations, and we have a wonderful set of essays here, based off Hilbert’s original wonderful lectures, and a lot more.” (Michael Berg, MAA Reviews, July, 2018) “The book provides innovative ways of thinking about the linkage between planning and environmental issues. I recommend this book to all researchers, policymakers, and planning practitioners engaged in searching for effective solutions for future sustainable urban and rural development.” (Eduardo Oliveira, Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 40 (6), December, 2017) Review   Review   From the Back Cover This book provides a unique contribution to the science of sustainable societies by challenging the traditional concept of rural-urban dichotomy. It combines environmental engineering and landscape sciences perspectives on urban region issues, making the book a unique work in urban study literatures. Today’s extended urban regions often maintain rural features within their boundaries and also have strong social, economic, and environmental linkages with the surrounding rural areas. These intra- and inter- linkages between urban and rural systems produce complex interdependences with global and local sustainability issues, including those of climate change, resource exploitation, ecosystem degradation and human wellbeing. Planning and other prospective actions for the sustainability of urban regions, therefore, cannot solely depend on “urban” approaches; rather, they need to integrate broader landscape perspectives that take extended social and ecological systems into consideration. This volume shows how to untangle, diagnose, and transform urban regions through distinctive thematic contributions across a variety of academic disciplines ranging from environmental engineering and geography to landscape ecology and urban planning. Case studies, selected from across the world and investigating urban regions in East Asia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia, collectively illustrate shared and differentiated drivers of sustainability challenges and provide informative inputs to global and local sustainability initiatives. About the Author Dr. Makoto YOKOHARI (Professor at The University of Tokyo) Dr. Akinobu MURAKAMI (Associate Pr