Island Press: 819 books

In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them...

Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to maximize access to mass transit and nonmotorized transportation with centrally located rail or bus stations surrounded by relatively high-density commercial and residential development. New Urbanists and smart growth proponents have embraced the concept and...

The suburban dream of a single-family house with a white picket fence no longer describes how most North Americans want to live. The dynamics that powered sprawl have all but disappeared. Instead, new forces are transforming real estate markets, reinforced by new ideas of what constitutes healthy...

Solving Sprawl shines a spotlight on American communities applying smart growth principles in successfully addressing the problem of sprawl. It offers examples that illustrate key concepts and tells the story of how this new approach to developmhas caught hold across America. It reports the good news...

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development is the mcomprehensive overview of worldwide ecotourism available today, showing how both the concept and the reality have evolved over more than twenty-five years. Here Martha Honey revisits six nations she profiled in the first edition—the Galapagos Islands,...

Health and Community Design is a comprehensive examination of how the built environmencourages or discourages physical activity, drawing together insights from a range of research on the relationships between urban form and public health. It provides important information about the factors that influence...

The bicycle enjoyed a starring role in urban history over a century ago, but now it is back, stronger than ever. It is the single most important tool for improving our cities. Designing around it is the most efficient way to make our cities life-sized—to scale cities for humans. It is time to cement...

This E-ssential is a three-part series that covers John Davis's epic journey from Florida to Maine. In 2011, with support from the Wildlands Network, Davis traveled 7,600 miles in 10 months from Florida to Maine by foot, bicycle, skis, and canoe/kayak. His extensive travels were motivated by wanting...

In the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire "the Beast.” It seemed to be alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it's not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live...

In The Forgotten Founders, Stewart Udall draws on his vast knowledge of and experience in the American West to make a compelling case that the key players in western settlemwere the sturdy families who travelled great distances across forbidding terrain to establish communities there. He offers an...

Today, “Love Canal” is synonymous with the struggle for environmental health and justice. But in 1972, when Lois Gibbs moved there with her husband and new baby, it was simply a modest neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. How did this community become the poster child for toxic disasters? How...

In Satellites in the High Country, journalist and adventurer Jason Mark travels beyond the bright lights and certainties of our cities to seek wildness wherever it survives. In California's Point Reyes National Seashore, a battle over oyster farming and designated wilderness pits former allies against...

It's easy to feel powerless in the face of big environmental challenges—but we need inspiration more than ever. With political leaders who deny climate change, species that are fighting for their very survival, and the planet's last places of wilderness growing smaller and smaller, what can a single...

Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is widely regarded as one of the minfluential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquplea for the developmof a "land ethic" -- a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that...