 The "Bible" for Land Use Planning
I was first introduced to this book in 1970 at the time of the first Earth Day Event. I was studying at a university in Appalachia and was exposed to reclamation of land laid barren by strip mining. My roommate was studying to be an architect and introduced me to this book that he was using for one of his courses. I was so fascinated by the concepts in the book I just had to purchase my own copy. I grew up in urban wastelands of industrialized Detroit and Cleveland and always wondered if there was any such thing as urban planning or land use planning. Ian McHarg assured us it was possible and necessary. All the books written since in this field stand on the shoulders of this giant. Sadly, the author passed away in March of 2001 from pulmonary disease, likely acquired as a boy in industrialized Glasgow Scotland. Anyone interested in Sustainability and Green Design should have this in their library.
Before GIS There Was McHarg
Ian McHarg's Design with Nature revolutionized landscape planning just at the time when the modern built environment was being recognized for its devastating effects on natural systems. McHarg devised techniques for planners to envision not just the finished product of human development, but its complex interaction with watersheds, wildlife habitat, viewscapes and anything else that could be represented as a layer on a map. Fast forward to today....Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are complex databases that organize information into the "layers" that McHarg proposed. GIS analysis has found its way into urban planning, oil spill response, wildfire management, epidemiology, endangered species management, socio-economic analysis and many other forms of spatial planning and design. Maps that are products of GIS analysis are digital versions of the tissue and mylar overlays of McHarg's vision and technique. This book is essential reading -- not because planners aren't using its ideas (almost universally, with GIS, they are) but because they don't understand GIS's debt to McHarg's pioneering thinking.
LOVE IT!
My husband is a landscape designer and architect. So, he loves this stuff! I bought it for him as one of his birthday gifts. He has been wanting something of high quality and loves McHarg. I would recommend this book. We keep it on the coffee table because the pictures are wonderful and the design shows through. My husband and I love it!
 Too Long and Overpriced
As a former colleague of McHarg's at the University of Pennsylvania during the 1960's, and currently working in a planned community he designed (The Woodlands, TX), I decided to buy this book to try to understand the strange idiosyncracies of The Woodlands, TX.
The book is very wordy, but it is well illustrated. McHarg successfully blended community design with natural boundary conditions (watershed management, geology, forestry, slope properties, etc) with the case histories he presented (some of which I remember when serving on an invited basis on jury's in McHarg's academic program). The book's strength is his advocacy of melding human planning needs with nature's boundary conditions.
BUT, does it really work? Only at the expense of the time of people working and living in such a planned community. The inconvenient practices that go with such a planned community require a lot of adjustment that asks a bit much of people who work in such places but don't live there.
But it works fine for the affluent and the unhurried who can afford it.
la correcta dimension de la sostenibilidad
No has estudiado arquitectura si este libro no ha caido en tus manos. Sin Ian Mcharg la arquitectura sostenible no seria posible. Por lo menos la arquitectura sostenible pensada a escala regional."
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