Designing To Avoid Disaster

• Introduction: Designed Catastrophes 1.The Increasing Incidence of Disasters 2. Our Planetary Ponzi Scheme 3. Fracture-Critical Design 4. Disasters on Demand 5. The Anti-Shock Doctrine 6. Redefining Success 7. Fracture-Critical Species 8. Re-sizing the Human Footprint 9. Fracture-Critical Population 10. Protective Design 11. Fracture-Critical Economy 12. Rethinking Work 13. Fracture-Critical Politics 14. Reimagining Government 15. Fracture-Critical Higher Education 16. Redesigning the University 17. Fracture-Critical Infrastructure 18. Going Dutch 19. Fracture-Critical Developments 20. A Better Way to Dwell 21. Fracture-Critical Buildings 22. Designing for Durability 23. Fracture-Critical Consumption 24. Creative Citizen Consumption 25. Why We Have So Much Bad Design 26. The Design Mind 27. The Process of Design 28. The Logic of Design 29. The Pragmatics of Design 30. The Holon of Design 31. Designing our Future 32. What We Can Live Without 33. The Adulthood of the Species 34. Media, Metaphor, and Meaning 35. The Nature of Things to Come 36. Hell or Paradise?

"In this essential book Fisher takes us through ‘fracture-critical’ design failures and provides solutions by articulating how ‘resilient design’ is the key to our longevity as a species. The research behind this theory spans many disciplines though the writing is accessible to all. This is required reading for designers, planners, politicians and citizens."Michael Zaretsky, architect and associate professor, University of Cincinnati, Ohio"Tom Fisher challenges us to think about disasters in a new way: not as the inevitable result of nature, but rather, problems that we can design our way out of. We, and the environments we create, are not the victims of circumstance. We can save ourselves through informed design and make a new world that rewards intelligence and foresight. In this book, Fisher throws us a life preserver of design. "Michael J. Crosbie, architecture critic and associate dean, University of Hartford, Connecticut