Books by Robert L. France

What if environmentally damaged landscapes could not only be remediated from an ecological standpoint, but also designed to replenish an entire community and the nature surrounding it? Focusing on integrated solutions that incorporate community needs, this book balances remediation strategies with design needs for creating a sustainable community on repaired lands. It provides a new paradigm for environmental restoration and the renewal of urban and cultural sites. The book is one in only a handful to address the system conditions necessary for the repair of severely degraded landscapes such as industrial landfills, Superfund sites, and abandoned factories, and more.

This unique book takes an in-depth look at the process of restoring damaged or abandoned landscapes to benefit both nature and people. With a focus on history, planning, methodology, design, and construction, it explores five projects in regenerative landscape design. Supported by extensive illustrations and a question-and-answers discussion with project designers and managers, two comprehensive case studies of wetland parks in Las Vegas and London illustrate the interdependence between innovative site technologies and novel planning and design strategies and processes. Emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary cooperation, the book presents lessons learned from some of the most successful projects in regenerative landscape design.

The Iraqi marshlands housed a 3000+ year-old civilization until Saddam Hussein ruthlessly drained the marsh region following the 1991 uprising. Many of the insurgents fled to the marsh wetland region (between the Baghdad in the North and Basra in the South, and between the Tigris and Euphrates) when Saddam Hussein crushed the rebellion.