Ecocity Builders: Designing the Sustainable Urban Experience
Photo Credit: Ecocity Builders
What if your commute to work included an experience in the following:
- Plant and pedestrian-friendly plazas
- Pedestrian streets
- A bike ride
- Rooftop gardens
- Bridges between buildings
- Car-free streets
- And neighborhood waterways
How different would we feel if our cities were designed “for the long term health of human and natural systems?”
At Ecocity Builders, this question is asked every day with an urban re-design approach that treats each city as a giant living organism, with each building an organ, and each human being a cell in it.
Blending social and environmental ecology to reshape our cities by “returning healthy biodiversity to the heart of our cities, agriculture to gardens and the streets, and convenience and pleasure to walking, bicycling and transit,” Ecocity Builders uses various educational materials, world wide conferences, and local hand-on projects to provide a medium for integrating urbanism with dynamic living systems.
Coming up in 2008, the next Ecocity World Summit will be held in San Francisco. “We want to encourage people who have great ideas and projects to write it up and present it at the academic and talent scouting sessions,” says executive director Kristin Miller. Click on the website’s call for papers to learn more, or check out www.ecocitybuilders.org and read the newly released EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature
Tags: Activism, Agriculture, Bay Area, Bicycles, Biology and Biodiversity, Climate Change, community, Community-building, Conservation, Culture, education, Environment, Food Production, Gardening, Green Building, Home and Garden, Landscaping, Local Food, Oakland, Organic food, Outdoors, Public Transportation, Recreation, Renewable Power, Renovation and Repair, san francisco, solar, Transportation, Urban Design
May 8th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Sara, I just wanted to say thanks for letting people know about the ecocity vision, and also that space for the Academic and Talent Scouting Sessions part of the conference is going to be limited due to location. The Main Conference should have plenty of space avaiable, as it’s a much bigger venue. So submit those abstracts soon and register for the conference early if you want to participate in the first part. We already have signs ups from places like Bandladesh and Slovania! All the best, Kirstin