Amazon: “The Restoration Economy, the Greatest New Growth Frontier by Storm Cunningham is a book that bridges the gap between business/ development and conservation/landscape management. Those with a business bent will find that it brings into focus what most of us have seen over the last few decades, a shift is taking place from new development being primary to redevelopment and restoration being primary. It explains a lot about the trends in redevelopment and gives great insights into where business might concentrate as more and more oportunities present themselves to restore the built environment we all live in. Making brownfields and industrial sites more livable; rehabilitating highways and bridges; upgrading water and waste water facilities; rebuilding after wars and natural disasters; and recreating historic sites and structures are all actions of the restoration economy. Cunningham does a superb job of showing how these activities are all pointing us in one direction: making our built environment more livable. But the story does not end there. As a society we are now also heavily involved in the restoration of forests, prairies, farms, wetlands, fisheries, etc, etc, etc. This is because humans have now been everywhere on earth, and almost everywhere that humans have been, we have left a mess that needs to be cleaned up. This provides literally thousands of oportunities for businesses, large and small, to get involved in clean up and restoration. By reading this book, one not only gets a sense of where business will be going in the future, one also gets the sense that as a society it is time to intergrate the management of built and natural environments into one comprehensive whole. This book helps us all understand more completely that the disparate sectors of our economy that have been involved in various phases of restoration now are feeling the pressure of a coming together. The more there is a coming together, the more effective will be the process of making landscapes livable throughout the world.”
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