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Cover image of Ecological Planning
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Ecological Planning

A Historical and Comparative Synthesis

Forster Ndubisi
foreword by Frederick R. Steiner

Publication Date
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Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003

Ecological planning is the process of understanding, evaluating, and providing options for the use of landscape to ensure a better fit with human habitation. In this ambitious analysis, Forster Ndubisi provides a succinct historical and comparative account of the various approaches to this process. He then reveals how each of these approaches offers different and uniquely useful perspectives for understanding the dialogue between human and environmental processes.

Ndubisi begins by examining the philosophies behind and major...

Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003

Ecological planning is the process of understanding, evaluating, and providing options for the use of landscape to ensure a better fit with human habitation. In this ambitious analysis, Forster Ndubisi provides a succinct historical and comparative account of the various approaches to this process. He then reveals how each of these approaches offers different and uniquely useful perspectives for understanding the dialogue between human and environmental processes.

Ndubisi begins by examining the philosophies behind and major contributors to ecological thinking during the past 150 years, as well as the paradigm shift in planning that occurred in recent decades as a result of a growing global ecological awareness. He then turns to landscape suitability analysis and discusses alternative approaches to ecological planning, such as applied human ecology, applied landscape ecology, and others. Finally, he offers a comparative synthesis of the approaches in order to reveal the theoretical and methodological assumptions inherent when planners choose one approach over the other. Ndubisi concludes that no one approach can by itself adequately address the whole spectrum of ecological planning issues. For this reason he offers guidance as to when it may be appropriate for landscape architects and planners to emphasize one approach rather than another.

Reviews

Reviews

Ecological Planning should be read by all institutional and public choice economists who work toward solving problems associated with human use of the natural environment.

[Ndubisi] writes with impressive clarity and command of the diverse literatures covered... Highly recommended.

It is a thoughtful and provocative book because it places ecological thinking centre stage... An original analysis in which the multiple intellectual origins and practices of dominant approaches to ecological planning are traced and analysed with sensitivity.

The author's goals are on target, for no other book sets the ideas of landscape planning into a set of developing concepts within a historical context. There are few books on landscape planning in general and none to my knowledge that attempt both a complete overview and a comparative analysis. Ndubisi's approach is sound in every way. This book is long overdue.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
7
x
10
Pages
304
ISBN
9780801877759
Illustration Description
25 halftones, 43 line drawings
Table of Contents

Foreword, by Frederick R. Steiner
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. ECOLOGICAL PLANNING IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 2. THE FIRST LANDSCAPE - SUITABILITY APPROACH
Chapter 3. THE SECOND

Foreword, by Frederick R. Steiner
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. ECOLOGICAL PLANNING IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 2. THE FIRST LANDSCAPE - SUITABILITY APPROACH
Chapter 3. THE SECOND LANDSCAPE-SUITABILITY APPROACH
Chapter 4. THE APPLIED-HUMAN-ECOLOGY APPROACH
Chapter 5. THE APPLIED-ECOSYSTEM APPROACH
Chapter 6. THE APPLIED-LANDSCAPE-ECOLOGY APPROACH
Chapter 7. ASSESSMENT OF LANDSCAPE VALUES AND LANDSCAPE PERCEPTION
Chapter 8. A SYNTHESIS OF APPROACHES TO ECOLOGICAL PLANNING
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index

Author Bio
Featured Contributor

Forster Ndubisi

Forster Ndubisi is a professor and director of the Interdisciplinary Design Institute at Washington State University, Spokane.