Added to Galway City Library Collection

Ecological Design, by Sim Van der Ryn
This book contends that "in many ways, the environmental crisis is a design crisis." It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and landscapes are used. We have used design cleverly in the service of narrowly defined human interests but have neglected its relationship with our fellow creatures. The book explores new ways of designing cities, neighbourhoods, buildings, industry, food systems, and other areas of human activity.

The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream by Peter Calthorpe
Calthorpe sets forth the principles of building good neighbourhoods and communities. He feels that the commons — public spaces that provide communities with convivial gathering and meeting places — have become increasingly displaced by an exaggerated private domain: shopping malls, private clubs, and gated communities. Even the street, our most basic public space, is given over to the car and its accommodation, while our private world becomes more and more isolated behind garage doors and walled compounds.

Design With Nature, by Ian L. McHarg
This book has done much to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design. Described as a "user's manual for our world," this book offers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. In so doing, it provides scientific, technical, and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization that will replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating and disappearing before our eyes.