• Linking North American cities with Brazil's Sustainable Cities Program and the Latin American Network for Fair, Just and Sustainable Cities - open platforms, tools and campaigns
• Mozilla's Popcorn Maker: open urban web narratives + maps and ecocity tools
• Global ecocity standards + indicators with the World Urban Campaign and UN Habitat
• Ecocity working collective in Oakland?

Ecocities - Connecing Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth 

Remembering Sandy Hook and Columbine

by Richard Register, President, Ecocity Builders 

This might seem a stretch but when John Muir said everything in the universe is connected to everything else he was serious. He was speaking of the ecology of natural systems in the broadest sense - and human ecologies too, no doubt. Ecology in both senses has to do with systems with complex chains of causes and effects and networks of cross influence, the patterns through time of which we, all of us living creatures, are a part.

The first chapter in my book "Ecocities" is titled "As we build, so shall we live." The notion there is that what we make - build in the largest sense - from buildings laid out as cities, the technologies within, the knives, forks, spoons and guns are all built by us and show everyone, especially our impressionable young ones, the character of our society. All that we build provides an environment encouraging certain kinds of behavior, justification for things we do, in at least a subtle sense. All that we make teaches and tends to reproduce in society more of the same, which generally changes over time rather slowly, if not hit by a hard shock like a big war, a cultural collapse or a major change in the climate.

It is not too surprising, then, that there may be real connections between the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut three weeks ago and with what we build.

Here's what I think some of the psychological/social connections are to the physical cities we build and more generally all that we make.

First, creativity coexists with destructivity, standing like polar opposites, with gradations between. If we build a world that has to destroy our resource base to thrive, as infinite growth does in a limited environment, on some level we can't all help but notice what's happening as we join in on the action. There is a thick layer of denial there but underneath it we are learning how to destroy on a grand scale. A society that paves farmland by the millions of acres and drive natural species into small pockets and then into extinction, whose transportation system is based on hurtling heavy objects about powered by flaming liquids, that kills four times as many people as it's public transportation system alternative per passenger mile does not only causes destructive effects but serves as an example of what society thinks is normal behavior. People learn this "normal" intuitively just by living the life largely determined by what we build. Bicycle deaths (not caused by cars) are rare. And as my daughter once asked me at about five years of age, "has anybody ever died in a pedestrian accident?"

Video game car chase gun battle.

What if we built ecocities that by design enriched soils and defended biodiversity? What would the children learn if we did that? What if it were conspicuous in our cities by the presence of public spaces that were designed around views to important local natural features, pedestrian plazas facing a bend in a river, nearby mountain, coastline, forest, large swatch of a natural grasslands? Would that help wake people up to our relationship to nature? What if we had rooftop gardens attracting native birds, with cafes, promenades accessible to everyone, streets for people and bicycles and scaled that way, whole car-free areas and many more community gardens than we see now. What would that teach by example and experience? Such ecocity features exist in modest to small number so we know such things are possible.  

Lockheed Martin Public Relations Officer Evan McCollum sees no connection between his company's weapons manufacturing and teenagers' violence.

In Bowling for Columbine, the movie about the Columbine High School massacre in Jefferson County just outside of Littleton Colorado, filmmaker Michael Moore tries to find the connections. It is almost surrealistic that right in Jefferson County only a couple miles from Columbine High School where two students went on a rampage that killed 12 other students one teacher and then themselves is a manufacturing plant of the world's largest weapons maker. (In terms of fire-power and cost we assume in the context of the film: it's Lockheed Martin and the plant is where they build the Atlas and Titan delivery rockets for nuclear weapons.)  

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Water is essential for life. Cities cannot be sustained without access to potable water. The International Ecocity Framework and Standards identifies "clean and safe water" as an essential bio-geo physical condition. Everyone should have "access to clean, safe, affordable water" (www.ecocitystandards.org). Ecocity mapping begins with identifying the natural waterways that flow across the land. Although streams and rivers may have been channelized or put underground, a goal of the ecocity is that "water sources, waterways and water bodies, including oceans, are healthy and function without negative impact to ecosystems" (www.ecocitystandards.org). Therefore, protecting and rehabilitating the natural hydrological systems within the city and its bioregion becomes a priority for ecocity development. Several cities have found that daylighting streams and celebrating the waterways that run through the city provide numerous benefits. For example, the River Walk in Austin Texas, USA serves as both a major tourist attraction and co-functions as a greenway for pedestrians and cyclists (Newman and Kenworthy 1999). Indeed, the ecocity movement arguably got started in Berkeley in 1981 with a focus on daylighting Strawberry Creek, and the project still brings people together and strengthens the local community today. It's influence reached all the way across the Pacific Ocean to Seoul, Korea, where city officials got word of the Berkeley project in the early 1990s and sent a delegation to study the creek opening strategy and by 2000, they had formulated a plan to remove and downtown double deck highway and restore the large creek buried underneath. By 2006 the city had spent several billion dollars, restored their waterway and made the downtown far more pleasant and prosporous.

Strawberry Creek daylighting project, West Berkeley, California.

Conservation of water is also important. Many cities lack efficient water infrastructure, resulting in leaks that represent losses of up to 20% of total urban water demand. In wealthy cities, water use is often metered and a premium is charged for excessive consumption, meaning above a level needed for health and sanitation purposes. Ultimately, ecocity planning requires consideration of the bioregion's natural hydrological capacity and how this impacts both the total urban population that it can sustain as well as what types of activities it can support. In contrast to the efforts of some cities to conserve water, others have chosen an unsustainable path. For example, building golf courses in the desert represents an inappropriate water use, especially if there are simultaneous challenges pertaining to maintenance of sufficient water levels in-stream to support agriculture and wildlife habitat (National Geographic 2010).

British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Construction and the Environment is Lead Sponsor of the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Initiative 

How the US is behind the rest of the world in GMO policy
by Sven Eberlein for

Matador Network 

Wolfgang at his seed musem in Gonningen. Photo: Sven Eberlein

I come from a long line of seed traders in the small village of Gönningen in the Swabian region of Germany. As far back as the 17th century, my ancestors were traveling all over Europe, selling tulip, hyacinth, and narcissus bulbs and heirloom tubers, from the Netherlands to the Black Sea. In the 18th century, these intrepid villagers took their high-value seeds all the way down the Mississippi River Valley, traveling by foot, ship, and train via Liverpool and New York all the way to Memphis, Tennessee.

Books have been written and films have been made in Germany to document this important piece of history, not just for the entertainment value of this pre-television version of The Amazing Race, but because the very idea of small-town merchants disseminating saved seeds has all but become a thing of the past, thanks to giant agribusiness conglomerates like BASF, DuPont, and Monsanto. When my uncle, Wolfgang Ziegler, closed his small seed store a few years ago, he was the last member on my mother's side of the family to have called himself a seed trader.

Photo: Sven Eberlein

Fast forward to November 6th, 2012, an ocean, continent, and centuries away from the Gönningen of yore: In the State of California, USA, residents are being asked to vote on Proposition 37, a referendum whose passing would require food products made from plants or animals with genetically modified organisms (GMO) to be labelled as such.

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful and special in every way.

Our first "Car Free Journey" column this year will spotlight a popular family vacation spot: Orlando,

Florida-home of Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando, and much more.

But Orlando offers much more than just Disney World. Today, we will explore two parts of Orlando itself: downtown Orlando, and International Drive, and include links for additional information. You will find out how to

use local public transit to visit Disney World. (For detailed information about visiting Walt Disney World and its 4 theme parks, I recommend the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2013, published by Wiley and available in local bookstores and from Amazon.com.)  

Downtown Orlando

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