From the Back Cover
For much of the first 200 years of industrialization, the urban water environment was developed by trial and error, often with unintended consequences. The modern "water closet" became widely used; public officials realized that sewers were needed, epidemics of cholera and typhoid were rampart, and eventually, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio literally caught fire. Along the way, we developed new science, new technology, and new institutions. Will we do better in the future? Can we do better in the developing world? This central premise of this book is that we can, if we plan the urban water environment holistically.
The Water Environment of Cities is the first book to develop this holistic vision. To accomplish this, core chapters are written by leading experts in academia, consulting, and government. It is written for the broad audience of urban water managers: engineers, planners, ecologists, hydrologists, social scientists, and others. Chapters are written to be accessible to students and practitioners across disciplines, each incorporates cross-cutting themes, and the book is supported by a glossary. Chapters examine urban water budgets, groundwater management, urban water infrastructure, the movement of pollutants through urban systems, management of urban streams, integration of water into planning design, urban water recreation, the legal framework for urban water management, institutions to manage urban water, and the economics of water supply. Importantly, after writing their core chapters, chapter authors participated in an NSF-funded synthesis workshop to integrate concepts throughout the book. The result is a unique synthesis chapter that outlines five core principles for managing the urban water environment in the 21st century.
Dr. Baker is a Senior Fellow in the Minnesota Water Resources Center and owner of WaterThink, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in innovative approaches to water quality management. He had been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University and served as Technical Director for a national synthesis of surface water acidification at EPA's Corvallis EPA laboratory. His research examines water in human ecosystems, at scales from households to urban regions, with the goal of developing novel approaches for reducing pollution that are more effective, cheaper and fairer than conventional approaches.
He has published more than 100 technical papers, edited one book, Environmental Chemistry of Lakes and Reservoirs, and is on the editorial board of the journal Urban Ecosystems. In addition to technical articles, he frequently writes columns for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, The Minnesota Journal, and several practitioner magazines. His is currently working on a trade book, The End of Pollution.
He has served on a number of environmental science and policy synthesis projects at the national scale and in Minnesota and Arizona.
Chapter authors include Robert W. Adler, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and James I. Farr Chair and Professor at the University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law; Cliff Aichinger, Administrator for the Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District in St. Paul; Brian Bledsoe, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University; Derek Booth, President and Senior Geologist at Stillwater Sciences, Inc. and an Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering and Earth & Space Sciences at the University of Washington; John Crittenden, the Richard Snell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University; K. William Easter, Professor in Applied Economics at the University ofMinnesota and former Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy; Kristina Hill, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Virginia; Jim Holway, Associate Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and formerly, Assistant Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources; Ingrid E. Schneider, Professor in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota and Director of the University of Minnesota's Tourism Center; Peter Shanahan, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT; Claire Welty, Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Paul Westerhoff, Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University.
