Conservation for Cities

“Conservation for Cities is an excellent primer on both large scale and site scale green infrastructure. This truly enjoyable and well-paced survey spans from broad planning approaches to descriptions of specific ecosystem services. A focus on technical details, rather than specific regulatory, political, or environmental conditions, makes the book a universally relevant resource, and a good complement to more place-specific analyses.”–Mami Hara “Deputy Commissioner and Chief of Staff, Philadelphia Water””[Conservation for Cities] provides exponentially more value [for] anyone interested in the benefits of integrating natural infrastructure into our cities…offers a compelling trail head to these [nature’s] pathways of the future.“– “ASLA’s The Dirt”“Cities are the future of mankind, and Conservation in Cities is the ideal guide to making them work.”–David Owen “author of Green Metropolis”“Plainspoken, relentlessly practical, and appearing at a time when interest in the notion of urban livability is cresting, Conservation for Cities is a welcome new resource.”– “Civil Engineering”

Dr. Robert McDonald is Senior Scientist for Sustainable Land Use at The Nature Conservancy, where he is lead scientist for the organisation’s efforts to figure out how to make cities more sustainable. He holds a PhD in Ecology from Duke University and has published more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, many of them on the science of how cities impact and depend on the environment. He blogs for The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science blog and has published two recent essays on urban/environment interactions in a collection called Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Global Issues (McGraw-Hill) and in The Chronicle of Higher Education.