This book applies the Total Human Ecosystem as a guiding concept in coastal urban communities to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship between industrial parks and their surrounding wetlands. The early 21st century has been shaped by a need for economic recovery, and by climate change. Consequently, new development models that promote both economic growth and environmental preservation are urgently needed.
In turn, the book puts forward an innovative proposal to achieve the shift from a hard path to a soft path through landscape architectural interventions, one that will help industrial factories and their surrounding wetlands coevolve toward sustainability. Through the incorporation of science and design, the proposal for the Total Human Ecosystem on Blakeley Island integrates industry with its surrounding environment. The design scenarios for this new living system are based on scientific principles of landscape ecology that take into account both the human and nonhuman environments as components of the land mosaic.
Sustainability is not a final status that is achieved once and for all; it is an ongoing challenge. As a case study, this proposal outlines the urgently needed reconciliation between industrial parks and their surrounding natural ecosystems, and promotes the evolution of both components toward sustainability.