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Book Review
| Inventing for the Environment. Edited by Arthur Molella and Joyce Bedi. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. ix+ 398 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $29.95.
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| Inventing for the Environment is a collection of twenty essays by scholars from the natural and social sciences, engineering, architecture, and history. The essays by Timothy Davis, Martin Melosi, Stephen Pyne, Christine Rosen, and Richard White connect human history to natural history and anchor the built environment to the natural world. For planners, public-policy analysts, and advocates who search for new inventions, plans, and designs that promote sustainable urban, suburban, and rural living, this collection provides a rich and varied response to current development strategies. |
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Following two introductory essays on the relationship between nature and technology, the volume is divided into six categories, each of which attempts to answer a broad empirical question. They include the following: What role does innovation play in urban landscapes? How do innovations in city planning shape the environment? How do innovations in architecture affect the environment? How are technological innovation, public health, and the environment related? How can innovations in alternative energy sources affect the environment? And finally, how are the principles of industrial ecology applied to benefit the environment? |
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A three-part response follows each question using the same format. A lengthy case study places the question in narrow historical context. Each case study provides historical perspective and a framework for a futuristic essay on the question. Finally, a third essay addressing the question appears in the form of a "portrait of innovation," a brief biographical sketch of an innovator and inventor. This format is an imaginative way of linking environmental historians and scientists with practitioners in addressing the collection's core questions. Unfortunately, little effort is made either to connect historical studies to futuristic, somewhat utopian essays, or to link one set of essays to others in the collection. However complicated this linkage may be, the editors don't facilitate the mixing of ideas, historical perspectives, and proposals for sustainability. Ultimately, the mixing is left to the reader and that may be the intent of the editors. However, a collection that emphasizes inquiry across the disciplines would serve its readers by connecting a few of the dots. |
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For example, the highly informative essay titled "Inventing Nature in Washington, D. C." describes the impressive physical transformations of the nation's capital during the last two-hundred years, including L'Enfant's urban plan and the centrality of the Mall. It also describes how nineteenth- and twentieth-century-plans for waterways and the Rock Creek and Potomac parkways were brought to fruition. The National Zoo is barely mentioned in the context of preserving recreational and open space in a booming metropolitan area plagued by sprawl and congestion. Reference to the zoo is intended to provide a segue to an imaginative futuristic proposal to preserve urban spaces titled "Bioliteracy, BioParks, Urban Natural History, and Enhancing Urban Environments." The segue is contrived and unnecessary and becomes apparent as one reads further about the natural link between the future of open space and the highly readable biographical sketch of the landscape architect Jon C. Coe, famous for zoo design. In fact, the "portraits of innovation" features in the collection profiling Coe, Erick Valle, David Hertz, Devra Lee Davis, Subhendu Guha, and Martha Davidson offer the reader intimate glimpses into the lives of these inventors. A valuable contribution would have included a discussion section about their creative and inventive qualities. |
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An excellent summary of the collection's essays by Roderick Nash and Martha Davidson appears as a conclusion. I would recommend that it be read first for those looking to read selectively in this wide-ranging volume that includes historical essays on comparative techno-cities in New Deal America and Nazi Germany, straw-bale building, water supply and sewerage, automobile emissions, and industrial ecology. |
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Anthony N. Penna teaches environmental history at Northeastern University. |
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