Edgy Stuff: October 2014 Recommendations

October 2014 Recommendations

11 Responses

  1. This is one of the more useful booklists that have come across my screen. Edge Effects has got me thinking anew about the ecotones, the edge effects, that evolve where urban spaces interface with the rural and “the wild.” Any suggestions for further readings on this subject? Of course, we have “Nature’s Metropolis”, which is ground-breaking, and Raymond William’s work, which is equally so – but others?

    Keep up the good work.

    • Spring Greeney says:

      Thanks for your kind words, Jim. Your interest in urban ecology brings a few books immediately to mind: geographer Dawn Biehler’s recent “Pests in the City” (2013), a work that uses cockroaches and bedbugs to show the messiness—and doggedness—of our attempts to control nature in the domesticated places we inhabit. Richard T. T. Forman’s “Urban Ecology” (2014) is also rich with analysis of specific city systems, written with his keen ecologist’s eye and his wry sense of humor. For works of historical geography, case studies like Matthew Klingle’s “Emerald City” and Craig Colten’s “An Unnatural Metropolis” concretize and historicize aptly.

      … This is all to say: you’ve lit the fire under us here at Edge Effects to post a more complete list of works about urban nature. Thanks for that prod, and glad to know you’ve enjoyed our work thus far.

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