Authors: Danilo Palazzo and Frederick Steiner (Island Press, 2012) Urban Ecological Design: A Process for Regenerative Places takes a very comprehensive and detailed look at urban design. The book is structured to reflect a 10-step process to urban design developed by the authors called the “not-only-one-solution” process. The ten steps are: processes, prerequisites, knowledge, synthesis, options, dialogues, master plan, presentation, details, and implementation. The book is both brilliant and disappointing, at the same time. While it is filled with an overwhelming amount of urban design history, ...

Authors: Lane H. Kendig and Bret C. Keast (Island Press, 2010/2011) Two books by Lane H. Kendig and Bret C. Keast, Community Character and A Guide to Planning for Community Character, address the issues surrounding the preservation and creation of community character from a planner’s perspective. The two volumes are meant to be read in succession as the former provides readers with definitions and measurements for community character while the latter sets guidelines and illustrates with examples on how community character can be achieved in settlements of different scales. The principle goal of these books is to establish a new perspective in planning, one that is focused on community character rather on density or zoning. This is quite a challenging task as the authors must define what character is, what types of neighbourhood character are currently present and how those might be quantified.

The quest to integrate a rapid urbanization with natural living systems is a top priority for cities around the globe. Tim Beatley's attempts to move the theoretical to the practical in Biophilic Cities. Author Timothy Beatley (Island Press, 2010) Reviewed by Kevin Jingyi Zhang