Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future by Niles Eldredge and Sidney Horenstein

Synopsis: 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.

Published: October 2014 | ISBN: 9780520270152

Niles’ Homepage: http://www.nileseldredge.com

Mini-bio: Sidney Horenstein is a geologist and Environmental Educator Emeritus with the American Museum of Natural History and the natural history consultant to the Bronx County Historical Society. He has written extensively about New York City geology.

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Hardcover Edition: Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future
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