Author Description

Human ecology is an emerging discipline that studies the inter-relationships between humans and their environment, drawing on insights from biology, sociology, anthropology, geography, engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and conservation. In Human Ecology, noted landscape planner Frederick Steiner synthesizes the work of diverse, sometimes divergent, scholars to illustrate how human interactions can be understood as ecological relationships, using hierarchy as an organizing device. He builds on the work of leading thinkers to present a historical and analytical examination of how humans interact with each other as well as with other organisms and their surroundings. Human Ecology brings together scholarship from the social and natural sciences as well as the environmental design arts to offer an over-view of the field of human ecology and to show how the field may help us to envision our futures. While the approach is largely theoretical, it has broad policy and practical implications, and represents an important new work for anyone concerned with interactions between humans and the environment.--BOOK JACKET.