Building for a Changing Culture and Climate


Book Description

The author of this book aims to encourage an awareness of sustainability as it is implemented across all areas of planning and design, and the ability to think and act on this knowledge. This book will explore in genuine depth the sustainable strategies that could be applied, along with the practical work of key figures in the built environment, setting these against historical experiences and traditional cultures. It also aimes to revive the discourse around these subjects. Achieving this will require the involvement of architects and structural, energy and environmental engineers, construction businesses and specialists, research institutes and universities. The five chapters and 333 show-cased projects reflect important stages in the architectural and engineering-based design process, stages which need to be addressed when dealing with sustainable strategies in the built environment.




Leveraging the Impact of Culture and Climate


Book Description

Together, culture and climate can make or break your school improvement efforts. Authors Todd Whitaker and Steve Gruenert help educators understand how to leverage culture and climate to drive deep and lasting change. Learn how to assess current culture, address climate issues, combat challenges, and work toward a collaborative school community dedicated to achieving high levels of learning for all. Rely on this book's effective school improvement strategies for creating a collaborative culture in schools: Understand the commonalities and differences between school climate and school culture. Identify the characteristics of specific types of classroom cultures for self-assessment and improvement in creating a positive classroom climate. Learn how to assess the values and beliefs of educators at the classroom and school levels. Discover your school's capacity for culture change using a step-by-step process. Consider how the elements of climate and culture influence school effectiveness and school improvement efforts. Contents: Introduction: How Culture and Climate Can Improve Schools Chapter 1: How to Define School Culture Chapter 2: Differences Between Culture and Climate Chapter 3: Elements of Climate Chapter 4: Classroom Cultures Chapter 5: The Culture Scorecard Chapter 6: The Capacity to Change Chapter 7: How to Assess School Culture Chapter 8: The Necessity of Culture Change Chapter 9: A Closer Look at Values Chapter 10: Not the Perfect Culture, the Right Culture Epilogue References and Resources Index




How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate


Book Description

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes people to reject or accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Synthesizing evidence from sociology, psychology, and political science, Andrew J. Hoffman lays bare the opposing cultural lenses through which science is interpreted. He then extracts lessons from major cultural shifts in the past to engender a better understanding of the problem and motivate the public to take action. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate makes a powerful case for a more scientifically literate public, a more socially engaged scientific community, and a more thoughtful mode of public discourse.




Culture and Climate Resilience


Book Description

This book addresses the importance of cultural values, local knowledge and identity in building community resilience in place based contexts. There is a growing impetus among policy makers and practitioners to support and empower capacities of communities under changing climatic conditions. Despite this there is little systematic understanding of why approaches work at local levels or not and what makes some communities resilient and others less so. Europe is typically thought to be well equipped for coping with the effects of a changing climate - because of its moderate climate, its manifold urban-industrialized regions, it’s typically highly skilled population, its successes in science and technology and its advanced climate change policies. However, there is a growing need to understand the effects culture has on communal resiliency and for decision makers and planners to pay attention to historical and cultural characteristics and the complexity of contextualized local conditions to enable successful and durable implementation of climate change policies, programs and measures. This book will be a valuable resource for researchers, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in facilitating sustainable, resilient communities.




Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change


Book Description

From the bestselling author of Ecohouse, this fully revised edition of Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change provides unique insights into how we can protect our buildings, cities, infra-structures and lifestyles against risks associated with extreme weather and related social, economic and energy events. Three new chapters present evidence of escalating rates of environmental change. The authors explore the growing urgency for mitigation and adaptation responses that deal with the resulting challenges. Theoretical information sits alongside practical design guidelines, so architects, designers and planners can not only see clearly what problems they face, but also find the solutions they need, in order to respond to power and water supply needs. Considers use of materials, structures, site issues and planning in order to provide design solutions. Examines recent climate events in the US and UK and looks at how architecture was successful or not in preventing building damage. Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change is an essential source, not just for architects, engineers and planners facing the challenges of designing our building for a changing climate, but also for everyone involved in their production and use.




Climate Change as Class War


Book Description

How to build a movement to confront climate change The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’ or individual ‘carbon footprints’ – it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such, it will take a class struggle to solve. In this ground breaking class analysis, Matthew T. Huber argues that the carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted for producing climate change. Yet, the narrow and unpopular roots of climate politics in the professional class is not capable of building a movement up to this challenge. For an alternative strategy, he proposes climate politics that appeals to the vast majority of society: the working class. Huber evaluates the Green New Deal as a first attempt to channel working class material and ecological interests and advocates building union power in the very energy system we need to dramatically transform. In the end, as in classical socialist movements of the early 20th Century, winning the climate struggle will need to be internationalist based on a form of planetary working class solidarity.




Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Urban Cultural Heritage


Book Description

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue titled "Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Urban Cultural Heritage" hosted at the Atmosphere journal. This topic has been chosen in light of cities' ever-growing role and immense potential in the climate adaptation and mitigation discourse and the particular challenges regarding urban heritage making and conservation. It is critical to recognise the complex set of factors governing the physical, social and political future of urban heritage in cityscapes in constant transformation and in an era of planetary urbanisation. The 10 papers (seven research papers, two reviews and one opinion piece) that comprise the issue give a broad cross-section of the issues pertinent to this important topic - accounts on practices and conceptual/methodological improvements in energy retrofit and reuse, risk mapping, urban planning, climate vulnerability assessment, and community engagement by 38 authors from seven countries are used to delineate the implications of current and likely future climates on heritage materials and systems, knowledge and practice gaps, as well as steps that need to be taken to ensure both their safeguarding and their valorisation to achieve climate resiliency.




Buildings, Culture and Environment


Book Description

With accelerating change towards globalisation, the efficacy of design solutions not embedded within regional culture has been prone to failure - technically, socially and economically. Environmental problems and questions surrounding how to achieve a sustainable built environment are now posing urgent challenges to built environment practitioners and researcher. However, international cooperation in setting targets and standards as well as an increasing exchange of environmental information and practices present designers, clients and occupants with new problems that comprise local needs and the built environment. This book addresses the role regional culture play in the successful (or otherwise) process of exchanging and adapting environmental practices and standards in the built environment. Using the specific case of the design of environmentally sound buildings, the book identifies a number of issues from different perspectives: The conflict between regionally appropriate environmental building practices within a global technical and economic context. How human, social and cultural expectations limit technological advances and performance improvements. To what extent information on environmentally progressive buildings can be transferred across cultures without compromising regional and local practices. Which ideas travel successfully between regions – generic principles, specific ideas or specific solutions? How the idea of regional identity is being redefined as the process of globalisation both widens and accelerates.




Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate


Book Description

"The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate provides an overview of current research, theory and practice in this expanding field. The editorial team and the authors come from diverse professional and geographical backgrounds, and provide an unprecedented coverage of topics relating to both culture and climate of modern organizations.... Well-known editors Neal Ashkanasy, Celeste P. M. Wilderom, and Mark F. Peterson lend a truly international perspective to what is the single most comprehensive and up-to-date source on the growing field of organizational culture and climate. In addition, the Handbook opens with a foreword by Andrew Pettigrew and two provocative commentaries by Ben Schneider and Edgar Schein, and concludes with an invaluable set of combined references." --Publisher.




Building Cultures and Climates for Effective Human Services


Book Description

It is widely acknowledged that many healthcare, behavioral health, and social service organizations provide less-than-optimal services and that the challenge of improving services depends on successfully changing organizational culture and climate. However, there are almost no organizational-level strategies that have been tested with randomized controlled trials. Building Cultures and Climates for Effective Human Services addresses the need for evidence-based organizational strategies for improving human service quality and outcomes by uniquely describing the authors' own case examples, nationwide studies, and randomized controlled trials to explain how organizational culture and climate can be assessed and changed. The two authors use their decades of research and practice experience in assessing and changing human service organizations to explain how organizations can improve the services they provide using the authors' ARC model, which effectively removes service barriers and supports the implementation of evidence-based practices and other innovations. The book also blends case examples with research from nationwide studies, regional experiments, and randomized controlled trials to explain the ARC model of organizational effectiveness and how it works to improve services. It provides a balance between theory, empirical research, and actual case examples to help researchers, organizational consultants, administrators, and service providers gain a practical understanding of how culture and climate affect services and how they can be improved. Furthermore, the text describes the three ARC strategies, each composed of multiple elements, to: (1) embed key organizational principles, (2) implement core organizational component tools, and (3) apply mental models to alter shared reasoning and beliefs that affect success. No other organizational-level strategies for improving services have been so well documented and tested.