Best Science Books 2011: Sustainable Cities Collective

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.

Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.

All the previous 2011 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Sustainable Cities Collective Best Books 2011.

• Landscapes in Landscapes by Piet Oudolf
• The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment by Ann M. Wolfe
• Field Notes from Science and Nature by Michael R. Canfield (Editor)
• Genius of Life: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted by Justin Martin
• Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability by Andrew Dannenberg (Editor), Howard Frumkin (Editor), and Richard Jackson (Editor)
• MAPS by Paula Scher
• The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening by Thomas Christopher (Editor)
• Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser
• The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina
• The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era in Climate Change by James Russell
• Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park by Alexander Brash (editor), Jaime Hand (editor), Kate Orff (editor)
• Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-carbon World by Catherine Tumber
• Urban Green: Architecture for the Future by Neil Chambers

I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or in the comments.

I am picking up a lot of lists from Largehearted Boy.

The summary post for 2010 books is here and all the posts for 2010 can be found here. For 2009, it's here and here.

For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn't a science book is squishy at best, especially at the margins, but in the end I pick books that seem broadly about science and technology rather than something else completely. Lists of business, history or nature books are among the tricky ones.

And if you wish to support my humble list-making efforts, run on over to Amazon, take a look at Steve Jobs and consider picking that one up or something else from the lists.