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Ecocities Emerging
To support humanity's transition into the Ecozoic Era
| Ecocity Builders
March 2011
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Greetings,
Welcome to the March 2011 edition of Ecocities Emerging, an initiative of Ecocity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference Series. It's nearly impossible to keep up with the astonishing rate of change happening in the world. Our heart goes out to the people of Japan as the horrific tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown continues to unfold. The world seems vastly different every day now, as new critical situations emerge and spread across the spectrum of land and cities, politics, economics, social structures, and environment. We've been slow on getting our newsletter out over the past few months -- but not for lack of news to report -- just really busy. Here is our quick update: - Richard Register is working on two books, one a compilation of his illustrations and one on ecocity economics. We have a cool Kickstarter campaign going to help raise funds needed for Richard to finish up Ecocities Illustrated, his ecocity picture book -- we've reached the target we set, but are still hoping to bring in more to help promote the book, so please consider helping with this project! Still about a week to go...
- Preparations for Ecocity World Summit 2011 in Montreal Canada this coming August are well underway. The Call for Papers received almost 600 submissions from over 40 countries. Please join us in Montreal if you can, this will be an excellent ecocity conference, hosted by a top notch organization, Urban Ecology Montreal.
- Our international advisory committee has been steadily advancing the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Project, and we've already successfully piloted it in several workshops, including one in Santa Barbara several weeks ago.
- Our ambitious plan for Living City Kathmandu has been submitted to the Living City Design Competition; winners will be announced at the Living Futures Conference in Vancouver BC at the end of April, please come join us there and see if we get a prize! Meanwhile our team in Nepal is already getting to work on the plan - they are convening the first workshop on WATER this month, with a pilot project underway. The Nepali team, headed up by Resource Center for Primary Heath Care is dedicated, proactive and ambitious.
- Close to home, our project with the City of Berkeley and the community, Center Street Plaza, is continuing to evolve and move towards the next phase of design development. Last March, Berkeley City Council endorsed the Hood conceptual design. At this time, as directed by the Council, we are working with the City to plan the implementation program and identify and apply to funding sources. Stay tuned as we launch a fundraising campaign to raise the matching funds needed to be competitive for upcoming grant awards. It's going to be fun and involve a stellar lineup of Berkeley luminaries and changemakers.
- With our partners in West Oakland, the Black Dot Artists, we are assisting in the design and development of the Village Bottoms Moveable Cultural District on Pine Street, an exciting project that is part urban farm, part museum, part artist and community workshop. We recently received a generous donation from the Oakland Museum of California (thank you!) of a number of stainless steel containers, formerly part of the museum's Canned Spinach exhibition, designed by Walter Hood.
Thank you for your interest in our work and for your continued support and encouragement. It is much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Kirstin Miller for Ecocity Builders
Ecocity Builders
339 15th Street, Suite 208
Oakland CA 94612 USA
www.ecocitybuilders.org
Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series
Ecocity Builders is a non-profit organization dedicated to reshaping cities, towns and villages for long-term health of human and natural systems.
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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? Our role in exploring ecocities is to clarify a vision of cities that can. And then go out and build them. There is no way to be certain we will succeed, but our position is that there's no time to just sit around and wonder about it: now is time for action.
Maybe one day all cities will be ecocities.
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CHECK OUT OUR Ecocities Illustrated KICKSTARTER VIDEO CAMPAIGN ENDS MARCH 26
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Eco City Hamburg
A city determined to show how we can live without being dependent on fossil fuels or nuclear energy
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The Huffington Post
Tianjn Eco-City in China: The Future of Urban Development?
 Tianjin Eco-City is a fascinating, 30 square kilometer development designed to showcase the hottest new green technologies and to serve as a model for future developing Chinese cities. Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, the city is being built just 10 minutes away from the business parks at the Tianjin Economic-Development Area, making for a commute that should be a breeze with the development's advanced light rail transit system. Even cooler, the community's expected 350,000 residents will be able to choose different landscapes ranging from a sun-powered solarscape to a greenery-clad earthscape to enjoy. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/13/tianjin-eco-city_n_806972.html#s221860 |
Ecocity Builders in the Movies!
See us featured in these films
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Car Free Journey
By Steve Atlas
CAR FREE IN PHOENIX ARIZONA
When we think of a weekend vacation without a car, Phoenix does not usually come to mind. But that is changing, thanks largely to new light rail and subway systems. Since Phoenix's light rail system opened on December 27, 2008, a non-driving weekend in Phoenix can be fun and easy to accomplish. In this month's column, Scott Dunn, from the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors' Bureau, (assisted by customer service reps from Valley Metro in Phoenix) shares some tips for anyone who wants to visit Phoenix for the weekend without driving.
Read On
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"The problem is the present design of cities only a few stories high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles. As a result of their sprawl, they literally transform the earth, turn farms into parking lots and waste enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over their expanses. My solution is urban implosion rather than explosion."
-Paolo Soleri
www.arcosanti.org |
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ECOCITY WORLD SUMMIT 2011
August 22-26, 2011
Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada
Hosted by Urban Ecology Montréal, Ecocity World Summit 2011 will build on work of past Ecocity World Summits while adding new conference themes, participatory methods, and projects that will last beyond the life of the conference. Detailed conference content and design will be developed in collaboration with local and international partners, making sure that the particular urban ecological expertise of Montréal is highlighted.
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ECOCITY ECONOMICS -
An Economics Built on What We Build
By Richard Register
I will be presenting a paper the international Society for Human Ecology, of which I'm a member, in April in Las Vegas, Nevada. What follows is a much shortened and somewhat reorganized version of what I've prepared for that event, and which relates closely to some of the research I'm currently doing for my next book. The ongoing economic crisis that began with the unraveling of wildly inflated real estate prices and the Wall Street derivatives bubble in 2007 and the crash into near depression in October of 2008 resulted in trillions of dollars of public bail out money for banks and other institutions around the world. Other banks and businesses collapsed or went bankrupt and many individuals lost their homes and/or their jobs. Talk of recovery and getting back to where we were with continued world economic GDP growth, back to "normal," based on improving stock prices and with a stabilizing of real estate prices in the United States averaging almost 40% less than what they were in 2007 is highly unlikely to be correct. That is because of the high unemployment rates, lost value in retirements, far more expensive costs for education and health insurance than before, cuts in public services from closed swimming pools, parks and libraries, streets wearing out without maintenance, immense debts and deficits in all but two state governments in the United States and hundreds of cities and so on and on. Our police force here in Oakland, California where I live, for example, a city with an extraordinarily high murder rate, has had to fire 80 police officers five months ago due to enormous city government deficits. The same is the situation for the State of California where Jerry Brown the new Governor (who was also governor 30 years ago) is cutting deeply into almost all services the state provides and has proposed the elimination of all California Redevelopment Agencies in an effort to balance the budget. But there is a much more profound reason not to expect "full recovery" of the economy if, as almost always implied, that means a return to all those comfortable economic indicators of on-going growth. In this regard there are two big problems: 1.) infinite growth in a finite environment is impossible and 2.) you have to know what to build to thrive and all evidence is that humanity has a very ill-considered and dangerous notion of what to build at this time in history. Read on
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Principal Features of an Ecocity
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