The need to find new approaches to the development of cities is
becoming increasingly urgent in this age of continuing population
growth, demographic transition, climate change, fossil fuel peak
and biodiversity losses. Restoring ecosystem services and promoting
biodiversity is essential to sustainable development – even
in the built environment.
Ecosystem Services come to Town: greening cities by working
with nature demonstrates how to make urban environments
greener. It starts by explaining how, by mimicking nature and
deliberately creating habitats to provide ecosystem services,
cities can become more efficient and more pleasant to live
in. The history of cities and city planning is covered with
the impacts of industrial urban development described, as well as
the contemporary concerns of biodiversity loss, peak oil and
climate change.
The later sections offer solutions to the challenges of
sustainable urban development by describing and explaining a whole
range of approaches and interventions, beginning at the regional
scale with strategic green infrastructure, looking at districts and
precincts, with trees, parks and rain gardens and ending with
single buildings, including with green roofs and living walls.
Technical enough to be valuable to practitioners but still
readable and inspirational, this guide demonstrates to town
planners, urban designers, architects, engineers, landscape
architects how to make cities more liveable.

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