EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature (Revised Edition) / Edition 2

by Richard Register

Overview

Most of the world's population now lives in cities. So if we are to address the problems of environmental deterioration and peak oil adequately, the city has to be a major focus of attention.

EcoCities is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth's biosphere. Unique in the literature is the book's insight that the form of the city really matters-and that it is within our ability to change it, and crucial that we do. Further, that the ecocity within its bioregion is comprehensible and do-able, and can produce a healthy and potentially happy future.

EcoCities describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. The reader is encouraged to plunge in to its economics and politics: the kinds of businesses, planning and leadership required. The book then outlines the tools by which a gradual transition to the ecocity could be accomplished. Throughout, this new edition is generously illustrated with the author's own inspired visions of what such rebuilt cities might actually look like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900865715522
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	04/01/2006
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Richard Register is one of the world's great theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. The founder of Urban Ecology and Ecocity Builders, he convened the first International Ecocity Conference in 1990, lectures around the world, and has authored two previous books as well as an earlier edition of Ecocities (Berkeley Hills Press, 2002).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Hazel Henderson
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction

Chapter 1: As We Build, So Shall We Live
What We Seem to Be Building
Getting down to Basics
A New Synthesis Architecture
Wilderness and the Wildness of Cities

Chapter 2: The City in Evolution
Gaia, the Self-Regulating Planet
The Urban Comet
Islands and Extinctions
The City as Organism
The Three-Dimensional City
Lessons

Chapter 3: The City in Nature
The Nature of the City
Elephants in Berkeley
Native Americans and Invaders
Bioregions, Hinterlands, and Cities
Buffalo Commons
Learning from Nature, Learning from Cities

Chapter 4: The City in History
Village Foundations
Emerging Cities
Bridging History, Nature, and Evolution
Modern Times
The Esthetic Tradition

Chapter 5: The City Today
Rebuilding and Rethinking — In That Order
Appropriate Technology
Paradigms and Permaculture Principles
"Improved" Suburbs, Revitalized Downtowns
Communities on the Cutting Edge
The State of the Theory

Chapter 6: Access and Transportation
Access and Adventure
Consequences of Our Car Addiction
Better Cars?
Freeway Battles
For Love of Rail and Ferry
Personal Transportation: Bicycles, Carts, Shoes
Being There Instead of Getting There
"Intelligent" Highways, Cars, and Buildings
Depaving while Rebuilding

Chapter 7: What to Build
The Builder's Sequence
Ecocity Principles
Bike Tour
Ecocity Layout
Walkable Centers
Complex Buildings and New Synthesis Architecture
Water
Natural Features and Biodiversity
Arcologies, Armatures, and Implantations

Chapter 8: Plunge on in!
Four Steps to an Ecology of the Economy: Map, List, Incentives, People
The Four Steps Exemplified: Ideas for Ithaca
Ecocities and Rethinking Economics

Chapter 9: Personal Odyssey
Berkeley: The Early Years
Ecocity Builders
Assessments

Chapter 10: Tools to Fit the Task
Ecocity Zoning: Mapping the Future
Transfer of Development Rights
The Ecological General Plan
Roll Back Sprawl
The International Ecological Rebuilding Program
The Ecocity Organization

Chapter 11: What the Fast-Breaking News May Mean
9/11 and 12/12: Dreams and Nightmares
The New American Empire
Climate Change
Peak Oil
Collapse
Best Options in Dark Times

Chapter 12: Toward Strategies for Success
Back to Basics: Example Strategies for Curitiba
Jon Jerde and Ken Yeang
Strategies for Built-out Cities
The Heart of the City Project
Ecocity Strategies
Building a Culture of Acceptance
Art and Imagination

Afterword: Rebuilding New Orleans
Further Reading
Notes
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"While most green city books are at best sustainability-light, Richard Register's Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature steers a course to deep green. His hard-hitting solutions are on a scale commensurate with the problem. Read it and work quickly to implement his many suggestions if you want a tolerable planet upon which to house your home."
— Randy Hayes, Executive Director, International Forum on Globalization & Founder of Rainforest Action Network

" Ecocities takes you on an exploratory journey into the cities of the future. You will wander along streets flanked by clear streams and flowering shrubs where there is no polluting traffic, or traverse bridges linking gardens and fruit trees many stories above the ground. Yet this is no half-baked dream, but rather a reality based on technologies, architectural designs and functioning buildings that actually exist in several places around the globe, and concepts that have been approved by down-to-earth city planners. I want everyone, especially high school and college students, to read and think about Richard Register's book. A copy of Ecocities should be in every school library."
— Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace www.janegoodall.org

"That we are entering a new world, one of rising temperatures and the coming of peak oil production is no longer debatable. What most people miss is that the largest things human beings create — the built community of cities, towns and villages — is the cause of and potential solution to these largest of all problems facing humanity and future life on Earth.

Ecocities places us all right there, well prepared with a vision, enthusiasm, and powerful, practical tools. This book enables us to challenge the doom-sayers and doom-makers to this race for a healthy, sane, compassionate future. We have to win, and, explains the author, here's how."
— Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble .

"There are few people who know and understand cities in the way Richard Register does and even fewer who are prepared to stand up and be counted as genuine friends of the city. Richard Register is one of those rare authors who can speak and write about cities from both the 'head and the heart', who combines solid technical knowledge and skills with a vision of the beauty and ecological possibilities of the city.

In this book Richard Register provides a wonderful account of how we can transform cities into places that are not only sustainable, but which are a joy and inspiration to live in. This book needs to be read not only for its intellectual contribution to future city development, but also for how it speaks to the heart about the true meaning of the city."
— Jeffrey Kenworthy, Professor in Sustainable Cities, Institute for Sustainabilty and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

"As an environmental activist I have long admired Richard Register and Ecocity Builders. It's so clear that with politicians and the private sector focused on bottom lines dictated by inter-election intervals or quarterly dividends, long-term ecological issues tend to lie out of sight.

By taking the perspective of decades and working for incremental change in the right direction, enormous changes can happen in the end. Richard gave me a powerful insight when he showed the rate of renewal within cities and how inculcating ecological principles could be integrated and have a huge effect over time."
— David Suzuki, The David Suzuki Foundation