An eco-city is an ecological city in balance with nature , living within its environmental means, a human habitat built with relationship to living natural systems. The concept of eco-cities, first proposed by Richard Register in his 1987 book, imagines cities as living systems, ecologically healthy and enhancing the health and well-being of both their human and non-human urban dwellers. It acknowledges the legacy of the destructive power of urban construction, yet also the creative potential in building and living in cities that seek to connect with the ecosystems in which they are located, and that contribute towards ecological restoration (Register 1987, 2006). Creating eco-cities brings together planners, environmental scientists, architects , urban designers and engineers (Tang and Wei 2010); āthe idea of an eco-city implies an agenda for society, culture, economics, and government with a vision and intention for action that stretches indefinitely into the futureā (Downton 2017).
The strategies to achieve eco-cities include minimising energy , water and waste , such as through the use of renewable energy and reduced car use. They strive towards social, environmental and economic sustainability (Wong and Yuen 2011). But eco-cities and their designers and inhabitants need to go much further than a focus on sociotechnical efficiency. An eco-city seeks to connect with human imagination, creativity and ingenuity to create cities that are not just more efficient but that actually generate positive benefits. This calls for cities that āactually build soils, cultivate biodiversity , restore lands and waters and make a net gain for the ecological health of the planetā (Register 2006, 1), that go beyond approaches that seek to be āless badā by minimising negative impacts and actually create positive benefits and positive impacts.
As eco-city ideas and concepts have developed and matured, so too have approaches to sustainability. Is it enough to understand sustainability as eco-efficiency, or as reducing the negative impacts of overuse of resources and energy? Where sustainability has been critiqued as an approach that focuses on efficiency, on measurement and on goals and targets, going beyond these approaches to envision āthrivingā eco-cities involves an expanded focus on well-being, on relationships and on fostering communities through an enhanced sense of affinity with each other and with the biosphere. Where sustainability includes a focus on optimisation, regenerative development and thriving creates space for experimentation and abundance that underpins the āredundancyā or spare capacity required for resilience .
This book argues that what is holding us back from a thriving future is that we are trying to create sustainable outcomes that improve social and ecological well-being, within the same worldview or framework that created the degradation. After decades of working towards sustainability, findings from international studies, such as the Millennium Assessment Reports (MEA 2005) and the 2014 IPCC assessment report on climate change, indicate that the situation is getting worse, not better, prompting the Worldwatch Institute, in its 2013 State of the World report, to ask whether sustainability is still possible (Worldwatch Institute 2013). Our current framework structuring sustainability practice is couched in the language of quantitative, performance-based indicators reporting on performance in isolated categories, compliance with which is largely driven by individual interest: reputational, financial or simply avoiding prosecution. Much has been written about the flaws in this framework and its foundation in a āmechanisticā worldview, as well as the need to shift towards a more relational worldview that will help us develop frameworks suitable for working with living systems (Hes and du Plessis 2015; Murray 2011).
1.1 The Need for a New Approach, a New Worldview
This more relational worldview is called by many the ecological worldview, and its needs highlighted in built environment practice as early as the 1960s by Ian McHarg (McHarg 1969). Since then numerous authors have explored the characteristics of the emerging ecological worldview and its main narratives (Goldsmith 1988; Capra 1997; Elgin and LeDrew 1997). The consensus is that the ecological worldview represents a shift from looking at the behaviour, performance and interests of individual āpartsā to considering the well-being of the whole as expressed through interdependent relationships āa web of life of which humans are irreducibly part. That is to design solutions that work at the biophysical level, within inherently nested systems, across scales including and most importantly at the mental level. The critical aspect here is the interrelatedness and connectedness of the world; in many respects, the current approach to sustainable development has forgotten to engage with the hearts and minds of people. It has forgotten that what we need to create is an irresistible narrative that will change behaviour not just because we have to but because we want to. Unfortunately the current irresistible narrative is based on the values of the mechanistic worldview, those of competition, imperialism and rationalism, a narrative that rewards power, monetary wealth and status. To transition to eco-cities requires a shift from striving for āeco-efficientā sustainability (within what has been framed āa mechanistic worldviewā), towards thriving and regenerative development within an ecological worldview.
If the vision for the eco-city is limited to being a āsustainableā city, then we have set the goal too low. We can do better than minimising our footprint, we can create a positive one; we can do better than zero carbon by aiming for positive; we can do better than protecting biodiversity , we can create greater diversity. We live on a finite planet, but energy and ideas are not finite, and our cities can provide the substrate to add capacity. For example, all the additional surface area in cities provides opportunities for increasing green space, energy and water collection and so on. Lastly we need to shift our language from problem-solving to potential, created through celebration and building on what already works.
A thriving future envisions eco-cities in which connections and synergies, understandings of cities as urban systems of stocks and flows (Birkeland and Schooneveldt 2003) and relationships create the abundance that underpins our flourishing (Hes and du Plessis 2015). A thriving future brings together the twin objectives of living within our environmental means on a finite planet and of creating abundance through working regeneratively in partnership with nature .
Creating an eco-city is not just about the ability to envision and create new cities of the future. We cannot start from scratch. Existing cities and their legacies of built form, urban infrastructures and social practices are the foundations for creating eco-cities. Cities are expressions of human ingenuity and the power of technological and engineering solutions. They contain the evidence of human development as well as of environmental degradation, loss of habitat, biodiversity collapse, climate change and pollution. To create the eco-cities of the future, we need to work within existing cities and understand the history of a pl...