Positive Development From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design

Janis Birkeland presents the innovative new paradigm of 'Positive Development' in which the built environment provides greater life quality, health, amenity and safety for all without sacrificing resources or money. With a different form of design, development itself can become a 'sustainability solution'. A cornerstone of this new paradigm is the eco-retrofitting of the vast urban fabric we already inhabit. The author presents a revolutionary new tool called SmartMode to achieve this end. This book challenges everyone working in or studying the areas of sustainable development, planning, architecture or the built environment to rethink their current ideas and practices.

Introduction: Sustainability versus Negativity * Section A: Redefining the Problem and Goals * Design for Eco-services * The Case for Eco-retrofitting * Sustainable Urban Form * Section B: Critique of Methods,Tools and Processes in Building Design * Development Standards and Criteria * Building Rating Tools * Design Methods * Section C: Critique of Methods, Tools and Processes in Environmental Management * Urban Sustainability Assessment * Regional Sustainability Audits * Sustainability Reporting * Section D: Critique of Trends in Strategies, Incentives and Planning * Futures Thinking Tools * Eco-service Trading Schemes * Bioregional Planning * Section E: A framework for Eco-governance and Management * Constitution for Eco-governance * Reversing Resource Transfers * The SmartMode Process * Index

Janis Birkeland worked consecutively as artist, advocacy planner, architect, urban designer, city planner and attorney in San Francisco before entering academia in Australia. She has authored over 100 publications on built environment and sustainability and wrote the highly successful and widely adopted Design for Sustainability (Earthscan, 2002). She is now Professor of Architecture at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.