About the Book
Questions of how to green the North American economy, create a green energy and transportation infrastructure, and halt the deadly increase in greenhouse gas buildup dominate our daily news. Related questions of how the design of cities can impact these challenges dominate the thoughts of urban planners and designers across the U.S. and Canada. With admirable clarity, Patrick Condon discusses transportation, housing equity, job distribution, economic development, and ecological systems issues and synthesizes his knowledge and research into a simple-to-understand set of urban design rules that can, if followed, help save the planet.
About the Author :
Patrick M. Condon is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, affiliated with the James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments. He is the author of numerous books including Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities (Island Press).
Review :
"For Condon, climate change is a fact, not a debate, and one (along with unsustainable dependence on cars and increasingly unaffordable infrastructure maintenance costs) that demands a response. Although it's clear that he's passionate about the impact of our current lifestyle on the natural world, he makes his points with data and lessons from the field, not emotion or aesthetic critiques. Issues are framed in terms of how they affect people's lives, not in abstractions about atmospheric temperature changes. Reading this book, you can just about believe a retrofit is possible."-- "Landscape Architecture Magazine"
"Professor Condon sums up the opportunities well: 'If we change the way cities are built and retrofitted, we can prevent the blackest of the nightmare scenarios from becoming real and can create the conditions for a livable life for our children and grandchildren. It is not apocalyptic to say we can save their lives.'"-- "Goldstream Gazette"
"Professor Condon's deep familiarity and engagement with the Vancouver model of city-building, and many other models from across North America, lends practical credibility to this much-needed book. With clear rules and real solutions, this is the kind of book practitioners and engaged citizens need to read."--Brent Toderian "Director of City Planning, Vancouver, British Columbia"
"Professor Patrick Condon uses his impressive knowledge of urban planning and his years of research and teaching at the University of British Columbia to create a comprehensive set of rules that may help to secure our future on this planet. His rules are simple and realistic, and are supported by extensive data. Although the rules themselves are not new ideas, Condon's ability to simplify and apply them to current urban design situations is impressive and inspiring...Well-written, concise, and thorough, this should not only be a required reading for students, but should be on the shelves of every planner, developer, architect, landscape architect and engineer in the city...Condon should be highly-praised for his ability to take the world's most complex problem and outline a set of realistic, and exciting solutions."-- "Re: place Magazine"
"While some of this has been said before, Condon offers a fresh take on the material. He starts with an uncompromising view of the reality and menace of climate change. His thesis is that urban areas are responsible for 80 percent of all greenhouse gases and that, therefore, fixing cities must be a priority...The shift in thinking Condon calls for is sizeable and has barely begun. 'No responsible planner, architect, landscape architect, politician, or developer, ' he writes, 'can escape the moral imperative to change the way he or she does business.'"-- "Planning"
"Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities is a compact, informative handbook to one of the most profound and intricate planning challenges of our time... Condon prescribes very specific and useful solutions ... Condon has assembled a concise, cogent plea to search for design strategies for the post-carbon world in our own backyards--as well as our streets, sidewalks, driveways, roods, houses, blocks, parks, waterways, and the planning policies we devise together to govern them"-- "Journal of Planning Education and Research"
"Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities builds on reflective practice to suggest better ways to design communities. In doing so, Professor Condon puts forth the essential building blocks for constructing the post-carbon city."--Frederick Steiner "Dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin"
"Seven Rules is worthy of our attention because it improves our understanding of how urban form affects greenhouse gas production. In referring to an imminent 'planetary meltdown' (p. 10), Condon sounds an alarm bell about global warming. Yet, he brings the discussion down to the level of designing individual sites, building neighborhoods, retrofitting cities, and promoting smart growth in regions. Planners who want to respond to the warning bell but have not yet deciphered exactly what can and should be done at local and regional (rather than national and global) levels will benefit greatly from Seven Rules."-- "Practicing Planner"
"A slim 166 pages, the book is rich in ideas and well-articulated arguments for those ideas. It frames the problems of our existing urban forms clearly and proposes solutions. The writing is organized and well illustrated with examples. It is very accessible to the casual reader and well suited to policy-makers, elected officials, and the public at large. This is the book to hand to elected officials to help them understand the issues and possible solutions for making their communities more sustainable...Fundamentally, Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities is about the design of cities. While it gives a comprehensive review of many strategies and techniques for achieving sustainability, its real value is the provision of an intelligent framework for integrating them into comprehensvie designs and master plans. The book sets a direction that the discipline of landscape architecture would do well to pursue as part of its research agenda."-- "Landscape Journal"
"Condon's intimate understanding of his neighborhood--of how a series of different elements work together to make Kitsilano a satisfying human habitat--ogives depth and persuasiveness to his Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities, one of the best books I've read on urban planning in the era of climate change."-- "New Urban News"
