Delve into new books on nature, design, and the climate that inform and inspire. Explore THE DIRT’s 10 best books of 2023:
Beyond Greenways: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes
Island Press, 2023
Robert Searns, a trails and greenways planner, offers a fresh take on how to make cities more walkable. He calls for designing “grand loops” on the edges of cities and shorter “town walks,” which are “branded, in-town walking loops” that tie parks, civic spaces, and neighborhoods together. These kinds of trails support good urban design that puts pedestrians’ access to nature and street life first.
The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023
Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell transformed a 3,500-acre dairy farm in Sussex, United Kingdom into a haven for wild plants and animals, including rare nightingales, turtle doves, and purple emperor butterflies; reintroduced beavers and storks; and free-roaming longhorn cattle, pigs, and ponies. With this vivid 560-page book, they offer a how-to manual on how to increase biodiversity in landscapes of all sizes — from a small backyard to a grand park.
Capturing Nature: 150 Years of Nature Printing
Princeton Architectural Press, 2023
Botanical print lovers will swoon over the hundreds of rare nature impressions depicted in this immersive, oversized book. Matthew Zucker and Pia Östlund have curated prints of leaves, flowers, ferns, seaweed, and even snakes dating from the 1700s to the 1900s. “The value of these illustrations lies in the fact that the plants, often depicted with flowers and roots, show their natural habitat, their bends and twists, their branches and ramifications, their hairs, spines, and thorns in a fidelity to nature that the greatest artist had not been able to reproduce,” writes Ernst Fischer, in one of the book’s essays.
The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life
Scribner, 2023
A study in the journal Science earlier this year found that between 2011 and 2022, light pollution on Earth increased nearly 10 percent. In this book, Swedish bat scientist and writer Johan Eklöf explores the impacts of light pollution on ecosystems and human health and well-being. He calls for incorporating motion-sensors into lighting in parks and on streets to reduce risks for insects, birds, and bats. Eklöf also looks at how Flagstaff, Arizona became the world’s first International Dark Sky City, and France instituted a national policy imposing curfews on outdoor lighting.
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
Simon & Schuster, 2023
Journalist Jake Bittle tells the stories of people who have already experienced displacement from floods, fires, hurricanes, and droughts brought on by climate change. He finds that federal, state, and local governments and the insurance industry aren’t prepared for the coming migration and are even enabling further loss of lives, property, and livelihoods. The Great Displacement calls for reforming the national flood insurance system, expanding affordable housing, and increasing post-disaster aid and climate adaptation. Landscape architects and planners can learn about the expected demographic shift northward and inland.
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Little, Brown and Company, 2023
This book is a gripping account of the growing danger of extreme heat, which is already the deadliest climate impact. Author and journalist Jeff Goodell outlines what more of the planet’s population will experience in coming decades — and how heat will affect underserved communities the most. From Phoenix to Paris, he looks at how cities are starting to adapt. While clear-eyed about the challenges of planting millions of trees across cities, Goodell sees great hope in what landscape architects do.
Land Art as Climate Action: Designing the 21st Century City Park
Hirmer Publishers, 2023
Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Perry are co-founders and co-directors of the dynamic Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), which is guided by the idea: “renewable energy can be beautiful.” Since 2010, LAGI has organized global art and design competitions that explore ways to weave renewable energy into our landscapes and create the infrastructure of the future. Featuring 300 color images from past competitions, the book inspires readers to “embrace the beauty, abundance, and cultural vibrancy of a world that has left fossil fuels behind.”
Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth about Urban Highways
Island Press, 2023
In her review, Diane Jones Allen, FASLA, director and professor of landscape architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington, writes: “This book exposes the intentional methods to remove citizens from their homes and level neighborhoods in the name of progress. Importantly, it also reveals methods for reconciliation, healing urban scars — literally and figuratively — and planning a path forward. In this effort, landscape architects can play a major role.” Read the full review.
Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City
Doubleday, 2023
“Every day an area of land the size of Manhattan gets urbanized,” writes author Ben Wilson, in this historical overview of cities and nature. He argues that the smart way to reduce the damage of global urbanization is to restore the ecological functions of cities. From New York City to Berlin and Singapore, he looks at how inventive cities are leading the way to bring nature back to urban life. Amsterdam “aspires to perform at least as well as a healthy ecosystem.”
Wisdom of Place: Recovering the Sacred Origins of Landscapes
ORO Editions, 2023
“Every day of our lives we are in the presence of genius — what our ancestor called the genius loci, or spirit of place,” write husband and wife co-authors Chip Sullivan, FASLA, professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley, and Elizabeth Boults, ASLA, landscape architect and lecturer in human ecology at the University of California, Davis. Through 78 beautiful drawings of tarot cards, they guide readers in rediscovering the “sacredness of everyday landscapes” and reconnecting with the “creative forces” of nature. They view the images in the book as “pathways to enchantment” and a means to reinvest landscapes with spiritual values.
Buying these books through THE DIRT or ASLA’s online bookstore benefits ASLA educational programs.