Edens Lost & Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities - Softcover

Wiland, Harry; Bell, Dale; D'Agnese, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933392266 ISBN 13: 9781933392264

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006

With Edens Lost & Found, award-winning filmmakers Harry Wiland and Dale Bell herald an exciting sea change in the relationship between ordinary citizens, environmental groups, and government. From across America they gather evidence of a new spirit of cooperation among neighbors, planners, architects and builders, city officials, and government agencies. Indeed, as urban issues have become undeniably urgent problems that demand answers, people from disparate backgrounds and political leanings are joining forces to recast life in American cities.

As citizens take action where government has failed, they are finding support, encouragement, and help from their neighbors. Conversely, as progressive-minded government agencies and organizations explore nontraditional solutions, an energized community rallies to the cause. Neither exclusively top-down, nor grassroots, we are in the midst of an unprecedented movement that unites efforts from every quarter in a common cause.

Focusing on Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle—four cities that face vastly different challenges—Edens Lost & Found highlights the remarkable power of hope, pride, ingenuity, and chutzpah that characterize this era of collaboration.

Bioengineering concepts—now increasingly understood by many to offer the most effective, cost-efficient solutions—are playing a central role. Working with—rather than in opposition to—nature is leading to such innovations as rooftop and urban gardens, restored parks, transformed vacant lots, the re-greening of city streets, and eco-friendly watershed management. Edens Lost & Found shows how working to reshape the land also transforms the relationships people have to one another.

From the Inside Flap:

"An inspiring collection of innovative, constructive project ideas for environmental and neighborhood improvement activists The companion book to the PBS television program of the same name, Edens Lost And Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities is co-authored by Harry Wiland and Dale Bell with Joseph D'Angnese and is an inspirational and instructive guide to environmental restoration projects undertaken by ordinary cities in the cities of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Chicago, as well as the remarkable work of many individual activists in their pursuit for a stronger, greener urban environment. Exploring the landscape and natural intervention of many smaller communities and neighborhoods, Edens Lost And Found carries its readers through the processes of remarkable transformations, and reshapings which these ordinary people in collaboration with one another help were able to achieve in a variety of circumstances and conditions. An invaluable addition to community library collections, Edens Lost And Found is particularly recommended reading as an inspiring collection of innovative, constructive project ideas for environmental and neighborhood improvement activists." - Midwest Review of Books May 7, 2006

About the Author:

Individual productions by filmmakers Harry Wiland and Dale Bell have received an Academy Award, five Emmys, one Peabody, two Christophers, and two Cine Golden Eagles, among other awards. Their collaborative award-winning project on caregiving, "And Thou Shalt Honor," was broadcast by PBS in 2002 to wide acclaim. Their "Edens Lost & Found" PBS Series won North American Environmental Educators' First Prize in 2007. They are both Ashoka Lifetime Fellows and Purpose Prize Fellows. Together they have authored Edens Lost & Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities, and Going to Green: A Standards-Based Environmental Education Curriculum for Schools, Colleges, and Communities.

• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1933392266
• ISBN 13: 9781933392264
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306