Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World

by Jared Green (Editor)

In Designed for the Future, author Jared Green asks eighty of today's most innovative architects, urban planners, landscape architects, journalists, artists, and environmental leaders the same question: what gives you the hope that a sustainable future is possible? Their imaginative answers—covering everything from the cooling strategies employed at Cambodia's ancient temple city of Angkor Wat to the use of cutting-edge eco-friendly mushroom board as a replacement for Styrofoam—show the way to our future success on earth and begin a much-needed dialogue about what we can realistically accomplish in the decades ahead.

Featuring an international roster of leading design thinkers including:

• Biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus
• Curator Barry Bergdoll
• Educator and author Alan Berger
• Environmentalist and author Lester Brown
• Architect Rick Cook
• Urban Planner Paul Farmer
• Critic Christopher Hume
• Architect Bjarke Ingels
• Landscape designer Mia Lehrer
• Architect Rob Rogers
• Critic Inga Saffron
• Artist Janet Echelman

Genres: Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Urban Studies, Sustainability

177 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 24, 2015

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a year seemingly overflowing with bad news, reading a book filled with hopeful ideas for how societies can grow together is a wonderful breath of fresh air.

With a very 'non-technical' take on urban planning (only a page or two for each idea), Green allows the focus of the text to shift to the outcomes for communities: are people happier, do they have more access, are they utilizing resources more efficiently?

The spaces we exist in help to define our sense of happiness and contentment. The message from this book is that no matter if it is top-down or bottom-up, there are many things which can and are being done to improve the function and form of our communities in a sustainable manner.

[H. Dair Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything I hoped it would be!

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick and easy read. Features lots of interesting green, low-impact infrastructure projects. Projects range from large scale like TVA to small scale community gardens.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool little book filled with interesting sustainability design ideas. I've been coming across more books that are simply curations of interviews with a long list of experts, and this is one of them.

[Wren Hess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sustainability in many senses of the word! I liked that there were examples of projects/buildings/areas from different places and cultures, including the very new and very old.

[Du · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very cool planning book written with the idea of not being a planning book. It is clearly written to engage community development and show how permaculture can exist in many forms. I really liked the flow and exchange of ideas with one page of text facing an image example of the idea.