Concrete Jungle
eBook - PDF

Concrete Jungle

New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future

  1. 288 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Concrete Jungle

New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future

About this book

If they are to survive, cities need healthy chunks of the world's ecosystems to persist; yet cities, like parasites, grow and prosper by local destruction of these very ecosystems. In this absorbing and wide-ranging book, Eldredge and Horenstein use New York City as a microcosm to explore both the positive and the negative sides of the relationship between cities, the environment, and the future of global biodiversity. They illuminate the mass of contradictions that cities present in embodying the best and the worst of human existence. The authors demonstrate that, though cities have voracious appetites for resources such as food and water, they also represent the last hope for conserving healthy remnants of the world's ecosystems and species. With their concentration of human beings, cities bring together centers of learning, research, government, finance, and media—institutions that increasingly play active roles in solving environmental problems.

Some of the topics covered in Concrete Jungle:

--The geological history of the New York region, including remnant glacial features visible today

--The early days of urbanization on Manhattan Island, focusing on the history of Central Park, Collect Pond, and Manhattan Square

--The history of early railway lines and the development of New York's iconic subway system

--The problem of producing enough safe drinking water for an ever-expanding population

--Prominent civic institutions, including universities, museums, and zoos

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
No, books cannot be downloaded as external files, such as PDFs, for use outside of Perlego. However, you can download books within the Perlego app for offline reading on mobile or tablet. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
  • Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
  • Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Concrete Jungle by Niles Eldredge,Sidney Horenstein in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Physical Sciences & Ecology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Preface: The Yin and Yang of Cities
  7. 1. Regarding Broadway: The Urban Saga and the New York Microcosm
  8. 2. Forest Primeval
  9. 3. Landscape Transformed
  10. 4. Growth of the Concrete Jungle
  11. 5. Fouling, and Cleaning, the Nest
  12. 6. Invasion and Survival
  13. 7. Resilience, Restoration, and Redemption
  14. 8. Cities, Globalization, and the Future of Biodiversity
  15. Notes, References, and Suggestions for Further Reading
  16. List of Illustrations
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. Index