With land planning, socioeconomics and natural systems as foundations, this book combines urban planning and ecological science in examining urban regions. Writing for graduate students, academic researchers, planners, conservationists and policy makers, and with the use of informative urban-region color maps, Richard Forman analyzes 38 urban regions from 32 nations, including London, Chicago, Ottawa, Brasilia, Cairo, Seoul, Bangkok, Canberra, and a major case study of the Greater Barcelona region. Alternative patterns of urbanization spread (including sprawl) are evaluated from the perspective of nature and people, stating land-use principles extracted from landscape ecology, transportation and hydrology. Good, bad and interesting spatial patterns for creating sustainable land mosaics are pinpointed, and urban regions are considered in broader contexts, from climate change to biodiversity loss, disasters and sense of place.

'It should certainly inform practice around the world over the coming years and help to construct the intellectual arguments for much more effective big urban region planning, with much more intelligent ecological consciousness.'

Source: esrevs.co.uk

'… an important contribution to the critically important debate about the future planning management of world cities at a time when their population will increase by 2 billion over the next 20 years. … a timely … attempt to demonstrate the significance of a spatial and ecological context to solving the problems that lie ahead.'

Source: Biologist

'Undoubtedly, the readers will be able to broaden and deepen their knowledge about the critical issues related to urban regions … a must-have addition not only for theorists but for practitioners, since the intellectual contents of this book could be very informative, practical and even more innovative when combined with their creativity.'

Source: Urban Studies Journal