Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era



November 2008

  ecocities.emerging                                       
Greetings,

Welcome to the November edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series.

Ecocity Builders recently participated in a United Nations sponsored event in China entitled "The Fourth Global Forum on Human Settlements" with the theme "Eco-City: Opportunities for Sustainable Human Settlements." The ecocity approach is gaining considerable traction in China as cities there seek ways to provide healthier urban environments in a rapidly changing country.

At this time, most Chinese cities are choking on their success. Double digit growth has been largely financed by polluting factories (outsourced from the developed countries looking for cheap labor and minimal environmental regulation) and fueled by coal-fired power plants spewing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere coming down as acid rain on Seoul and Tokyo.

But China's leadership is determined to try and shift the tide towards a new model of development, emphasizing reducing emissions and using clean energy sources like solar and wind. Their recently unveiled economic stimulus plan includes a huge push for rail and sustainable infrastructure. At the Fourth Global Forum, we met some of these Chinese leaders working for environmental restoration and sustainable development, including Wang Dehui, currently Director of the National Nature Reserve Appraisal Committee Office with the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

The ecocity approach to sustainable development has never been so relevant and needed. If we can all work together and encourage other countries and cities to adopt the ecological city model from the beginning, resulting environmental, economic and social benefits will be huge. The writing is on the wall: the car/fossil fuel/paving/freeway model of urban development is not sustainable and is killing people and planet.

As we build, so shall we live.

 signature
Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders
Oakland, California, November 2008
ecocitybuilders.org

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Photo from the Fourth Global Forum on Human Settlements and the Third China City Construction and Development Expo. Upper row, left to right: Kirstin Miller, Ecocity Builders; unidentified representative, Dali City; Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative; Zexin A, Mayor of Dali, Cultural Heritage City, Yunnan Province; Taj Hamad, Secretary General, World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations; Dr. Noel Brown, former Director of the United Nations Environment Program, North America



The Ecozoic Era refers to a vision, first promoted by cosmologist Thomas Berry, of an emerging epoch when humanity lives in a mutually enriching relationship with the larger community of life on Earth.

Will we be able to make the transition in time to retain a biosphere healthy enough to regenerate living systems now under extreme stress? There is no way to be certain, but our position is that there's no time to sit around and wonder about it: now is time for action.


Thank you for all that you are doing to help accelerate progress toward a civilization in balance with living systems.
Maybe one day all cities will be ecocities.



EWS2009

Ecocity World Summit 2009
Istanbul Turkey, December 13-15

http://www.ecocity2009.com
Presented by Yildiz Technical University Faculty Of Architecture, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Parantez International in Istanbul

Istanbul3

Welcome to Istanbul -

By land from Asia to Europe and back, and by sea from the Eurasian continental interior and the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and World Ocean beyond, explorers of geography, humanity and nature have found Istanbul at the geographic crossroads of civilizations mixing, competing, learning from one another and ever creating new worlds from their dreams of the future.

Never has there been a time more in need of learning together. More that that, some very creative people need to be heard and heeded, people who have been studying the crossroads of cultures' time, from Turkey's �atal Hoyuk, the Earth's oldest known city, to the conditions and needs of the deep future for all life on Earth deep into her soils and embraced by her changing, heating climate. Now we need the discipline and optimism, the humility and careful attention to learn from those warning us of things to come and best lessons from the past, which is deep indeed in Istanbul. More than that we need to forge fresh creative ideas and directions to make our world civilization of art and science, humane and spiritual questing a thing to endure into the world off our children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.

We are now at another crossroads, between the past and the future, success and failure. With humanity's immense population and pressure on resources, with oil, the energy source upon which society is most dependent, on the way out, with species diversity collapsing all around the planet and with climate rapidly changing in a threatening direction toward unknown outcomes, it is time to examine our options in building our global civilization and create a new one strong enough to forge success and guarantee a peaceful humanity that can endure forever.

There is another crossroads implied by our  International Ecocity Conference series that started in 1990 in Berkeley, California and traveled to Adelaide, Australia, then Yoff, Senegal, and on to Curitiba, Brazil; Shenzhen, China; Bangalore, India and, in 2008, San Francisco, California. We were in those years building a tradition of building an ecologically healthy civilization. The new crossroads, the intersection of that tradition with the growing awareness of people everywhere that we finally of force need to solve a problem never before faced by humanity, the very survival of climate and life systems of the Earth, gives the Eighth International Ecocity Conference the potential for powerful and extraordinary influence on humanity's literal building of the future.

May we do it well.

Richard Register
President, Ecocity Builders
Founder, International Ecocity Conference Series 

                                                                                        
Transition Towns Movement Builds

Transition Towns is a movement launched several years ago in England by Louise Rooney and Rob Hopkins (pictured). The aim of the project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil. The movement currently has member communities in a number of countries worldwide.
rob.hopkins
The Transition concept emerged from work permaculture designer Hopkins had done with the students of Kinsale Further Education College in writing an "Energy Descent Action Plan". This looked at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of energy production, health, education, economy and agriculture as a "road map" to a sustainable future for the town. One of his students, Rooney, set about developing the Transition Towns concept and presented it to the Kinsale Town Council resulting in the historic decision by Councillors to adopt the plan and work towards energy independence.

The idea was adapted and expanded in September 2006 to Hopkins' hometown of Totnes where he is now based. The initiative spread quickly, and as of September 2008, there were one hundred communities recognised as official Transition Towns in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Italy and Chile.

The main aim of the project generally, and echoed by the Towns locally, is to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local resilience in the near future. Communities are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self reliance - a slogan of the movement is "Food feet, not food miles!". Initiatives so far have included creating community gardens to grow food; business waste exchange, which seeks to match the waste of one industry with another industry that uses this waste; and even simply repairing old items rather than throwing them away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns
 
chinacityplayground
Huaibei school playground

Message to "Consumers" -- Someone has to be "Producers"
...or, Advice to a City in China

Report from China by Richard Register

Many on our mailing list are very interested in cutting edge ideas. I think you might like those our consulting team from the Research Center for Ecological and Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Science delivered to the city of Huaibei, 800 miles south of Beijing but only a few short hours on the new 150 mile per hour, smooth as silk train I took there with my colleagues.

Huaibei has two big problems. It is running out of coal and it will, after 2012 be out of the coal business, its economic mainstay. Worse, the city's suburbs on the south east flank, and thousands of acres of farmland are collapsing into the old mine shafts, a lake growing daily, swallowing up crops, houses, shrines, parks and more. But the subsidence will stabilize soon say the mining companies who have a record of where they took out how much coal. How to solve those problems?

The following is what I said in somewhat fewer words at our consultancy in the City Hall's main conference room and wrote up for our hosts, the Mayor, two Vice Mayors and heads of several departments in Huaibei. We were instructed before our site tours and meetings that our hosts would much like us to prescribe restoration and economic solutions that would make them "richer faster."

A New Direction for Restoration and Rebuilding in Huaibei, China

VISION
A far-sighted energy city becomes an energy conservation leader by transforming itself and its landscape.

LAND USE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Ecocities are beginning to capture the imagination of people around the world. They define a new yet timeless way of building our communities in balance with nature. Ecocities are the type of built communities, from village and town to city and metropolis, which provides the essential land and energy savings that are required for a healthy future. They describe the physical arrangement of where we live that leaves room for and encourages restoration of biodiversity and healthy soils and habitat.

Organic farming and its design variant rooted in ecological design principles, permaculture, are honored and thriving in many countries today, growing in scale of production and in number of practioners.  Lively and popular farmers markets are thriving and supported by a rapidly growing number of customers in the US and other countries. 

China, with its history of exuberant building and intensive farming could take the lead in putting ecocity-building and food producing together in a harmonious solution to future world and local problems. Its builders and farmers could remind all of us that their arts give us enduring prosperity.

china.farm
Wet terraces, traditional farming

CONDITIONS

Fossil fuels are a finite resource that will become scarce and uneconomically recoverable and, for all practical purposes, will run out forever.  First oil and gas, then coal and the shale oil and tar sands that require enormous energy to produce an ever-declining amount of energy will follow one another into oblivion. Healthy renewable energy sources need to be developed as quickly as possible, though these are intrinsically less concentrated and will not be as cheap as fossil fuels have been.

Global heating, mostly caused by burning fossil fuels, is having catastrophic effects on Earth's climate and biosphere driving many species to extinction and beginning to wreck economies, especially in areas of sensitive production, areas that are prone to desertification and flooding.

OPPORTUNITY

This means that cities presently specializing in fossil fuel energy production are in the position of enormous potential influence and prominence if they can take the lead in energy conservation. But not the kind of conservation of simply tightening the belt and doing less, but the conservation attained by building prosperous infrastructure - ecocity infrastructure - and creating a thriving healthy organic agriculture. Huaibei could take such a leadership position.

There is a story that captures attention there, a story of enlightenment, conversion and renewed success. It's a story worth thinking about that leads to further thoughts about how to progress with such a lesson in our own lives and in our own communities.

DESCRIPTION OF AN ECOCITY

An ecocity is a city or town that is compact - "high density" - and complete with a good balance of housing, jobs, commerce, culture and other of society's and economy's essentials.  This is sometimes called - "high diversity." The objective of ecocity design is largely to place people, natural resources and human-created resources, products, services and knowledge in close proximity. This general arrangement, also informed by local climate, soils, resources and historic conditions, by sun angles, wind or other renewable energy resources is connected by rail and bicycle, both externally and internally. Watercourses are celebrated and nature is restored adjacent and to some degree inside of such built communities. Very fundamentally, the ecocity is simply small enough in its appetite for land and resources that it makes possible the expansion of farming and restoration of nature. It makes possible the very high ratios of cultural and natural return for investment in material and energy use. This amounts to the most effective means available to humanity for solving climate change and biodiversity loss problems and attaining a new kind of prosperity that can endure forever into the future.

Link to rest of article

Richard Register is President of Ecocity Builders and author of Ecocities, Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.

Ziggurat Project, UAE


timeilnks


The Mayans and Egyptians constructed incredible feats of architecture able to weather the test of time, but they had no idea their pyramids would inspire the shape of the latest carbon-neutral super-structure to hit Dubai.

Dubai-based Timelinks, a an environmental design company, unveiled a city of the future at the Dubai International Exhibition Center from 6-9 October 2008.

The city - called the Ziggurat project - will be in the shape of a futuristic pyramid which, according to Timelinks, could support an entire community of up to one million people by harnessing the power of nature.

Ridas Matonis, Managing Director of Timelinks, says: "'Ziggurat communities can be almost totally self-sufficient energy-wise. Apart from using steam power in the building we will also employ wind turbine technology to harness natural energy resources."

"Whole cities can be accommodated in complexes which take up less than 10% of the original land surface. Public and private landscaping will be used for leisure pursuits or irrigated as agricultural land.

"'If these projects were realised today the world would see communities that are sustainable, environmentally friendly and in tune with their natural surroundings."

Transport throughout the complex would be connected by an integrated 360 degree network (horizontally and vertically) so cars would be redundant. Biometrics would provide security with facial recognition technology.

Timelinks has already patented the design and technology incorporated into the project and has applied to the European Union for a grant for technical projects.

Colin Grant Weighs In

colinbricks

Colin Grant is Founder and CEO of Visible Strategies and will be contributing a regular column in Ecocities Emerging.

November 2008

Food For Thought

As we come back down to earth from the euphoria of Obamamania and the truly historic events of last week, the harsh realities of life come creeping (or leaping) back in every news headline.  

Now the first two articles in this series have been pretty upbeat. I've provided examples of communities around the world that have already achieved the miracles of integrated energy transformation, community well-being and economic development that show there is nothing to fear and everything to gain from dramatic transformations towards what some refer to as an EcoCity and that Al Gore's calls for a 100% clean energy revolution by 2018 could be achieved. I've shown how almost any city could become energy and food self-sufficient, while creating new jobs and business and raising health and well-being.  But this month, I'm going to do my best to help people to realize just how big the challenge is as the rest of the world tries to catch up with the world's leading communities in a time of exponentially, increasing economic, social and environmental chaos.

The bad news is that the bad news is likely to get a whole lot worse in 2009 and, yet again, mainstream media is missing the clear signals. Last year's favourite crisis - rising energy costs - are about to come back with a bang. Just when we thought that it was safe to go back to the pumps - well if you can call it safe when today's prices are still around 500% higher than they were at the beginning of this century - Peak Oil is set to raise it's ugly head again.

According to leaks from an imminent report from The International Energy Agency (IEA), an organization that was a very slow embracer of Peak Oil theory, global oil depletion will be a staggering 9.1% in 2009.  While there is no doubt that the economic crisis will have a downward effect on demand, this could well be offset by such a massive reduction in supply should these predictions be accurate.  US communities already battered with massive unemployment will soon be witnessing the kind of chaos we saw in the 1970's with price hikes, shortages and rationing.

And of course, where go oil prices the price of almost everything else in our economy follows as oil plays such a critical role in almost every aspect of modern human existence.  Add the inflation that rising oil prices will cause to the inflation tsunami waiting to hit from the recent actions of emptying national financial reserves worldwide, and the picture looks increasingly bleak. 

oil.pump

Now at times these problems seem intractable without even considering the favourite crisis of those long lost days of the first few years of the century when all we had to worry about were ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, ever-decreasing natural capital and terrorists with box cutters.  But when I struggle to keep my belief going, (as I can assure you everyone of the speakers you see on stage at sustainability conferences inspiring you towards a sustainable future does from time to time), I go back to basics.  As I mentioned in the first article in this series, over twenty years ago, a few well meaning folk with very little money, lead by the brilliant Anna Edey, showed how almost any city could grow most of its own food using only sunlight as an energy source and working with, instead of against nature's genius www.solviva.com.  Anna and her team built a greenhousing system called "Solviva" (sun life) that was orders of magnitude more simple and more effective than any commercial greenhousing system before or since.

Think of communities such as Wilmington, Ohio, where DHL is closing its operation, cutting 8000 jobs in a town with a population of 12,000.  How else could you immediately put these people back to work with little funding and what more valuable work could they do than grow food in a world where the average food item travels around 2000 miles and where we are seeing airlines collapsing faster than Sarah Palin's ratings after the Katie Couric interviews?  Of all the solutions to the interacting social, environmental and economic crises that are building ominously around us, I can think of nothing that so elegantly tackles so many issues.  New jobs, cheaper, healthier and more secure food, increased community vitality, reduced illness and the beginning of the end of the ecological and social devastation that modern, industrial farming causes.  And for once, North America has a tremendous advantage over those annoyingly progressive Europeans with their Gussing and Overturnea and Freiberg EcoCities.  Think of all the gap space and flat roofs in the typical sprawled US city.  Method in the madness?  Food from Chaos?


visible.sm
www.visiblestrategies.com


Colin Grant will be hosting a free webinar,
"A New American President with an Aggressive Plan for Change - Will Your City Keep Up?"

Date: Thursday, December 4, 2008
Time: 11AM - Noon Pacific
Register:
http://www.visiblestrategies.com/obamawebinardec0408.html
 
Car-Free Journey
by Steve Atlas
 
walking                           

I want to share some good news about funding for public transportation in the United States from the Center for Transportation Excellence (www.cfte.org, for more details, and a complete newsletter e-mail [email protected]).

Here are a few highlights:

November U.S. 2008 Elections Were a Success for Transportation!

Because voters approved more than 70% of transportation-related measures, approximately $75 billion will be invested in the infrastructure, operations and maintenance of transportation systems across the country.

Yes to High-Speed Rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco!

After an aggressive campaign that received the support of the Governor and both California Senators and more than 100 business, taxpayer and environmental groups, 52% of voters approved the $9.9 billion high-speed rail bond (Proposition 1A). Construction on the high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles may begin as early as 2011.

chinacityplayground
"read on"

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