Design for Sustainability

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"Design for Sustainability" signals the crucial paradigm shift of the 21st Century: the transition from "environmental management" to "systems design" - eco-solutions that integrate social, political, and economic factors and radically reduce resource use, while increasing health, equity and life quality.

By using radical and innovative design solutions, everyone could be living in buildings and settlements that are more like gardens than cargo containers, and that purify air and water, generate energy, treat sewage and produce food - at lower cost.

This sourcebook presents inspiring and detailed examples of integrated systems design thinking by many of the foremost designers in the field. They cover applications in industrial design, materials, housing design, urban planning and transport, landscape and agriculture, and energy and resource use. They cut across traditional academic and professional boundaries to demonstrate a new transdisciplinary approach to environmental problem solving.

The volume makes a very valuable reference and teaching resource in areas from environmental sciences to design and planning. Each of the 14 topics within the field of environmental management and social change have pairs of short readings providing diverse perspectives to compare, contrast and debate. Informational boxes, sets of questions and exercises are also provided.

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Table of Contents:
Introduction
I Design for Sustainability
II The Concepts of Growth and Waste
III Industrial, Urban and Construction Ecology
IV Design Within Complex Social Systems
V Permaculture and Landscape Planning
VI Values Embodied in, and Reinforced by Design
VII Design for Community Building and Health
VIII Design for Productivity, Land and Transport Efficiency
IX Design for Self-Sufficiency in Energy, Materials and Waste
X Low-Impact Housing Design and Materials
XI Construction Management and Environmental Regulation
XII Environmental Planning and Project Assessment
XIII Embodied Energy and Life Quality Indicators
XIV Implementing Change in a Consumer Society
Glossary, Index, Biographies