Includes bibliographical references (pages 352-379) and index.

Regions and land mosaics -- Planning land -- Economic dimensions and socio-cultural patterns -- Natural systems and greenspaces -- Thirty-eight urban regions -- Nature, food, and water -- Built systems, built areas, and whole regions -- Urbanization models and the regions -- Basic principles for molding land mosaics -- The Barcelona Region's land mosaic -- Gathering the pieces -- Big pictures. "Natural systems and their human uses are of central importance in urban regions, where diverse greenspaces and built spaces of essentially value spatially intertwine. With land planning, socioeconomics, and natural systems as foundations, this book combines urban planning and ecological science in examining urban regions. Writing for graduate students, academic researchers, planners, conservationists, and policy makers, and with the use of informative urban-region color maps, Richard Forman compares 38 urban regions from 32 nations, including London, Chicago, Ottawa, Brasilia, Cairo, Beijing, Bangkok, Canberra, and a major case study of the Greater Barcelona Region. Alternative patterns of urbanization spread (including sprawl) are evaluated from the perspective of nature and people, and land-use principles extracted from landscape ecology, transportation, and hydrology are stated. Good, bad, and interesting spatial patterns for creating sustainable land mosaics are pinpointed, and urban regions are considered in broader contexts, from climate change to biodiversity loss, disasters, and sense of place."--Jacket.