Patch Atlas: Integrating Design Practices and Ecological Knowledge for Cities as Complex Systems - Softcover

Marshall, Victoria J.; Cadenasso, Mary L.; McGrath, Brian P.; Pickett, Steward T. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300239939 ISBN 13: 9780300239935

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2020

Synopsis

A new tool for mapping urban land cover that integrates design principles and ecological knowledge for understanding cities as complex, patchy and dynamic systems

Using a new, hybrid approach to urban land cover classification as an impetus to bring ecologists and urban designers together, this atlas is a unique conceptual tool to describe and analyze cities as complex systems. It brings together over a decade of shared knowledge from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study to inspire ecologically motivated design practice.
 
The atlas displays maps and tables depicting land cover classes and the relationships between them; information on how the specific cover arrangements evolved over time; and speculations on how they might change through design, disturbance, or succession. Rather than separating human-constructed spaces from predominantly biological and geological ones, this book integrates social and ecological structures and shows how this can contribute to the scholarship of ecology and the practice of design. Interdisciplinary and strikingly illustrated, the atlas is a new way to study, measure, and view cities with a more effective interaction of scientific understanding and design practice.

About this title

About the Author

Victoria J. Marshall is President’s Graduate Fellow at the National University of Singapore and founder of Till Design. Mary L. Cadenasso is professor of landscape and urban ecology at the University of California, Davis. Brian P. McGrath is professor of urban design at Parsons School of Design. Steward T. A. Pickett is distinguished senior scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and director emeritus of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study.

Review

"This brilliant study creates a methodology that enables architects, urban designers, landscape architects and ecologists to share a language that defines urban patches in terms of their dominant ground cover, and then degrees of hybridity in a matrix of cover mixtures."—Grahame Shane, Columbia University
“Patch Atlas provides an invaluable bridge between the science of urban ecology and the art of urban design. The authors offer an important template for understanding our interactions with our surroundings, crucial for designing better futures in this age of cities.”—Frederick Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
“If we are to transition to sustainability in an urban century, we need urban designers to understand ecology, and we need ecologists to understand urban design. This much-needed and timely volume brings together the practice and aesthetic of design with urban ecology to uncover hidden patterns in urban systems. It will help designers and ecologists read the urban landscape with a fresh perspective.”—Karen Seto, Yale University, and co-author of City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet
 

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0300239939
• ISBN 13: 9780300239935
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128