Urban Mountain Beings


Book Description

Urban Mountain Beings is an ethnographic and historically grounded study of recognition strategies and ethnogenesis carried out on the flanks of Mt. Pichincha in Quito, Ecuador. Kathleen S. Fine-Dare employs feminist geographical and Indigenous pedagogical frameworks to illustrate how histories of exclusion have created attitudes and policies that treat Native peoples as “out of place and time” in cities. Fine-Dare concentrates on two overlapping contexts for Indigenous vindication: the Yumbada of Cotocollao, an ancestral performance through which mountain and other spirits are called into the urban plaza; and Casa Kinde (Hummingbird House), a cultural organization that engages in workshops, filmmaking, photography, commerce, community education, and the formation of alliances with anthropologists, activists, filmmakers, engineers, and teachers.




Urban Mountain Spirits


Book Description

Urban Mountain Beings is an ethnographic and historically-grounded study of recognition strategies and ethnogenesis in post-neoliberal times carried out on the flanks of Mt. Pichincha in Quito, Ecuador. Fine-Dare examines how histories of exclusion have created attitudes and policies treating Native peoples as "out of place" in cities.







Santa Monica Mountain and Seashore National Urban Park


Book Description




Urban Mountain Waterscapes in Leh, Indian Trans-Himalaya


Book Description

The city of Leh is located in the high mountain desert of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas and access to water has always been limited there. In recent years, the town has experienced high rates of urbanisation on the one hand, and tourist numbers have increased exponentially on the other, which has implications for the water supply of the people living there. Through several years of on-site research, challenges on various levels were documented and current governance approaches were analysed. This research forms the basis for future approaches to sustainable development.




The Cougar Conundrum


Book Description

The relationship between humans and mountain lions has always been uneasy. A century ago, mountain lions were vilified as a threat to livestock and hunted to the verge of extinction. In recent years, this keystone predator has made a remarkable comeback, but today humans and mountain lions appear destined for a collision course. Its recovery has led to an unexpected conundrum: Do more mountain lions mean they’re a threat to humans and domestic animals? Or, are mountain lions still in need of our help and protection as their habitat dwindles and they’re forced into the edges and crevices of communities to survive? Mountain lion biologist and expert Mark Elbroch welcomes these tough questions. He dismisses long-held myths about mountain lions and uses groundbreaking science to uncover important new information about their social habits. Elbroch argues that humans and mountain lions can peacefully coexist in close proximity if we ignore uninformed hype and instead arm ourselves with knowledge and common sense. He walks us through the realities of human safety in the presence of mountain lions, livestock safety, competition with hunters for deer and elk, and threats to rare species, dispelling the paranoia with facts and logic. In the last few chapters, he touches on human impacts on mountain lions and the need for a sensible management strategy. The result, he argues, is a win-win for humans, mountain lions, and the ecosystems that depend on keystone predators to keep them in healthy balance. The Cougar Conundrum delivers a clear-eyed assessment of a modern wildlife challenge, offering practical advice for wildlife managers, conservationists, hunters, and those in the wildland-urban interface who share their habitat with large predators.




Forests for human health and well-being


Book Description

Forests provide, directly or indirectly, important health benefits for all people – not only those whose lives are closely intertwined with forest ecosystems, but also people far from forests, including urban populations. Recognition of the importance of forests for food security and nutrition has significantly increased in recent years, but their role in human health has received less attention. Nutrition and health are intrinsically connected: Good nutrition cannot be achieved without good health and vice versa. Therefore, when addressing linkages with forests, it is essential to address health and nutrition at the same time. Yet forests also provide a wide range of benefits to human health and well-being beyond those generally associated with food security and nutrition. This publication examines the many linkages of forests and human health and offers recommendations for creating an enabling environment in which people can benefit from them. Designed for practitioners and policy-makers in a range of fields – from forestry to food security, from nutrition and health to land-use and urban planning – it is hoped that the paper will stimulate interest in expanding cross-sectoral collaboration to a new set of stakeholders, to unlock the full potential of forests’ contributions to greater human well-being.




Theory of Experience in Architecture and Urban Design


Book Description

This unique volume presents the practical tools for architects and urban designers to improve the work processes of architectural design—from conception to construction, taking into consideration the personalized world of users, architects, and urban designers. The volume starts from the conception of architectural space as a continuum that goes from the subjective depth of the mind to the objective reality, taking into consideration the perspective of building experiences for users. It is based on the idea that at the heart of that continuum is the experience of architecture and the city as the element that unites them and gives them meaning. The volume first defines what the architectural experience is from the processes of perception, cognition, and evaluation that users and architects make about workplaces and programs. It goes on to consider the knowledge and tools needed for the evaluation of users and places, providing the methods that will help to understand the architectural experience desired by the main users of both the architectural object and an urban design, providing a series of techniques that have proven effective. Key features: Describes the theoretical approaches, methods, and tools necessary for architectural and urban design for creating experiences for users Provides a deep understanding of the nature of built environments and what they express Discusses specific methods for in-depth research on users’ subjective space through making meaningful contact with them and through appropriate technological means, such as research on their expressions and communications on virtual social networks This book will help to make urban architects and designers aware of their importance for the implementation of public policies that will work in the very long term, with the expectation that by becoming aware of this role, they can act in accordance with an ethic based on values of protection of life, human solidarity, compassion, vitality, freedom, equality between people and social justice.




Belfast Imaginary


Book Description

In Belfast Imaginary: Art and Urban Reinvention, Katharine Keenan argues for the reimagining of place in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit. This deeply researched ethnography depicts the work of artists and policy makers as they imagine and perform a new urban identity for Belfast in the liminal time between the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit.




Hill Women


Book Description

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region. “Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review) “A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian communities and the resourceful women who lead them.”—Slate Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County, Kentucky, is one of the poorest places in the country. Buildings are crumbling as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women find creative ways to subsist in the hills. Through the women who raised her, Cassie Chambers traces her path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Granny’s daughter, Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County. With her “hill women” values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved home to help rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues from domestic violence to the opioid crisis, but they are also keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers breaks down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminates a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.