Michael A. Richards

Now in its second volume, Regreening the Built Environment provides an overview of physical and social environmental challenges that the planet is facing and presents solutions that restore ecological processes, reclaim open space, foster social equity, and facilitate a green economy.Healing the planet requires a combination of strategies networked across multiple scales of development, including buildings, sites, communities, and regions. Case studies from a range of locations in the United States, Denmark, Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom, among others, demonstrate how existing gray infrastructure can be retrofitted with green infrastructure and low-impact development techniques. From this, the author shows how a building can be designed that creates greenspace or generates energy; likewise, a roadway can be a parkway, an alley can be a wildlife corridor, and a parking surface can be a garden. This new edition also includes case studies that have successfully reconnected communities that were fragmented by unjust planning practices and irresponsible patterns of development, resilient design solutions in response to natural disasters, passive design strategies that can make interior spaces more efficient and healthier, and expanded discussions on capturing carbon, renewable energy, agriculture, waste, public transit, and adaptive reuse, including innovative ideas on how to reimagine the shopping mall in the era of e-commerce.The strategies presented in this book will stimulate discussions within the design profession and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental studies, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.

Now in its second volume, Regreening the Built Environment provides an overview of physical and social environmental challenges that the planet is facing and presents solutions that restore ecological processes, reclaim open space, foster social equity, and facilitate a green economy.Healing the planet requires a combination of strategies networked across multiple scales of development, including buildings, sites, communities, and regions. Case studies from a range of locations in the United States, Denmark, Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom, among others, demonstrate how existing gray infrastructure can be retrofitted with green infrastructure and low-impact development techniques. From this, the author shows how a building can be designed that creates greenspace or generates energy; likewise, a roadway can be a parkway, an alley can be a wildlife corridor, and a parking surface can be a garden. This new edition also includes case studies that have successfully reconnected communities that were fragmented by unjust planning practices and irresponsible patterns of development, resilient design solutions in response to natural disasters, passive design strategies that can make interior spaces more efficient and healthier, and expanded discussions on capturing carbon, renewable energy, agriculture, waste, public transit, and adaptive reuse, including innovative ideas on how to reimagine the shopping mall in the era of e-commerce.The strategies presented in this book will stimulate discussions within the design profession and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental studies, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.

When Nathan Montserrat entered Spaso House in Moscow, he decided not to kill the future Secretary of State. Instead, he would only deliver a message. He had no idea a Mossad assassin would do the job for him or that the killer would fire a .45 caliber slug into his chest. A former CIA deep cover operative, Montserrat is blackmailed by the Director of the CIA to undertake one last mission. After the debacle in Spaso House, the Russian police drag him to a Moscow prison - the first step into a bewildering spiral of deceit. Rescued by Gideon Yoel, an Israeli spymaster, he agrees to a Faustian pact to kill the CIA Director. Montserrat has no way of knowing that his actions will lead to a terrorist attack on American soil. With nonstop action, exotic locales, and twisting plots, A THOUSAND ENEMIES takes readers on the thrill ride of their lives.

A tale of greed, betrayal, and vengeance, CHOICE OF ENEMIES is the first in a series of espionage novels featuring Nathan Monsarrat, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative with an extensive knowledge of Africa and expertise in weapons, women, and Benjamins. Light sweet crude is the mother's milk of the Niger Delta. As the price for each barrel rises on the international markets and the stakes for securing the black gold increase, a consortium of American oil companies and the Central Intelligence Agency plot to secure the flow of the crude. In Africa, though, plans unravel as quickly as cheap socks, and promises between partners have the lifespan of a mayfly.Nathan, now a dean at a small college in Massachusetts, is visited by his former mentor at the Agency, who offers him a blunt choice: either travel to the Dark Continent to lay the groundwork for the coup d' tat, or condemn the woman who saved his life to a brutal execution. Out of options, he returns to Africa, where he discovers that the Agency plans to reward his services with an oil soaked grave. Assisted by a coterie of new and old allies, including a beautiful vor with a thirst for power and a yeshiva bocher with a fondness for Armani suits, as well as his own sharp intelligence, considerable wit, and substantial charm, Nathan parries the Agency, circumvents the consortium, and exacts his own vengeance. In doing so, he learns that his choice of friends is as important as his choice of enemies.