ecopolis now

By the year 2020 over 50 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities. Most Australians already do. Clearly, our present patterns of urban settlement are not sustainable. In this article, first published in Habitat Australia, Volume 19 Number 4 August 1991 I introduced the idea of ‘Ecopolis’ (from Eco — ecological, Polis — self-governing city), an eco-city concept based on principles of ecological sustainability, bioregional integrity and social equity.

Ecopolis is about fitting human settlement into the living patterns of nature so that our cities become places of ecological restoration as well as of economic activity. More than a city plan, the Ecopolis vision is as much about process and people as it is about buildings. It looks to a future in which we will have made a serious commitment to caring for our planet home. At its core is the simple and powerful idea that we can, and must, revive the economy by restoring the ecology. Instead of destroying natural resources to create economic activity, Ecopolis would help create new economic resources by taking the legacy of our present destructive practices — our polluted cities and degraded lands — and bringing them back to ecological health again.

The worst modern cities result from the extrapolative, more-of-the same planning which produced Los Angeles (more cars mean more roads mean more cars, and so on). The creation of ecological cities would help us progress beyond such ‘fossil-fuelishness’ and may be the key to developing a sustainable civilisation. Ecopolis is about redefining the role of architecture and planning in this process, as the art and science, study and practice of sustainable human settlement.

Soil, sun and ancient wisdom

New and revitalised country towns are part of the Ecopolis vision. Denuded agricultural landscapes associated with the world’s cities could be recovered and protected by rural settlements acting as research centres for rediscovered crops, co-evolving an agriculture rooted in the region’s original ecoogy — and reintroducing genetic diversity to the food industry.

In existing cities Ecopolitan development could take place at almost any scale — from carparks to ‘pocket’ parks to the wholescale redevelopment of dying city centres. Empty office blocks would become quarries of recyclable building materials and redundant industrial sites would be favourite targets for ecological redevelopment.

As Ecopolis remade an old city, it would reshape its infrastructure. At first slowly, reducing the paved areas of streets, planting trees and recycling water, then more rapidly, pulling in neighbourhood boundaries, making suburbs denser, more vital and people-oriented, whilst releasing more and more land to nature. Contracting around old village cores in the sprawl of existing metropolitan regions, Ecopolis would eventually create smaller, friendlier cities of between 5,000 and 50,000 people separated by ecological corridors for healthy human settlement.

Nature would be integral to the city. Community gardens — growing food, filtering pollution, providing windbreaks and sheltering streets — would offer an ecologically and economically efficient lifestyle to ordinary people who have little time to tend their own gardens or enjoy wilderness far from their reach. Buying or renting a home, office, workshop or farm in Ecopolis would not just be a real estate deal; it would mean becoming part of a healthy living organism.

Ecopolis would also ensure that some places would not be developed. Ecological boundary zones, such as the vital mangrove swamps in Adelaide, are not fit places for building. The Bible exhorts us not to build on sand and ancient texts implore us to avoid swampy ground — some things do not change, regardless of our technological prowess. An ecological city is a healthy, safe city and degraded land should be restored — but it would be criminally negligent to place habitations or workplaces on toxic sites.

Beyond Technopolis

Global responsibility dictates that we reshape our energy-hungry urban structures.

An ecological city, however, is not just energy-efficient (nor is it inhabited by nuclear weapons builders or technophiles): it takes its proper place in the biosphere.

While Ecopolitan principles can be applied to any site, anywhere, any time, they seek diverse, place-specific solutions to the problems of human settlement. Maintaining a dynamic, regional ecology as the basis of a strong local economy, Ecopolis would work in concert with its hinterland gathering food, water and energy. There would be an ongoing effort to maximise biomass and ecological diversity within the natural limits of the local bioregion. In the semi-arid Mediterranean Tandanya bioregion which Adelaide occupies, for instance, thirsty lawns and golf courses would be dispensible luxuries rather than necessities.

Technopolis, on the other hand (of which, the multi-function polis, MFP, is an example), ignores the qualities specific to place in favour of universal, technocratic solutions requiring enormous resources of wealth and power. Whereas Ecopolis seeks to em- power its citizens by revitalising the best of human industry, community and enterprise, Technopolis emphasises the technological gulf between ‘First’ and ‘Third’ Worlds, widens the gap between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and fails to meet the needs of the majority of Earth’s inhabitants.

Ecopolis offers instead an adventure of exploration, proposes far-reaching redevelopment and both requires and promotes technological innovation as a means of serving the city rather than as an end in itself.

Ecopolis recognises that technology doesn’t make cities, people make cities.

Social, political and economic processes

The city is a virtual microcosm of human society; it has to accommodate all sorts of people, their values and goals. Up to a certain size, it is small enough to be understood and governed on the basis of that understanding. Ecopolis would be owned and controlled by its inhabitants and appropriate financial structures would afford every citi- zen profit from the ecological and economic activity of their home. Owners and tenants of eco-city property would be shareholders in the enterprise of creating their city. The Australian conservation Foundation Green Bond is one existing mechanism which could lead to the creation of ethical, environmentally-friendly real estate. With developments of a sufficient size, internal economic structures could be organised so that the vesting of ownership and control became increasingly equitable and democratic.

As an evolving system, the Ecopolis process would never be finished: the continual remaking of our cities would provide the basis for economic activity in which there would be continued growth in terms of quality but a continual reduction in the amount of physical resources consumed. The potential introspection and economic limitations of small eco-cities would be countered by socio-economic and cultural diversity, extensive telecommunications and public transport, and the consolidation of eco-city trade links.

Bioregional government

Ecopolis is more than a series of eco-cities — it ties cities and regions together as ecological, economic and administrative entities. In a sense, it extends the concept of the self- governing city state into the ecological realm by recognising that State boundaries are recent inventions imposed on the landscape, cutting through rivers, watersheds and mountains, with little regard for bioregional realities.

Recently in South Australia, after 40 years of procrastination, the imperatives of salt and water finally forced six local authorities to allow the urgent creation of a deep drain for a desalination and revegetation program. Local government offers a vehicle for achieving bioregional government but the transition requires that local government be revitalised in the service of the whole community rather than the vested interest of a few.

Closing the circle

We cannot afford the ecological price of waiting for economic changes before we start eco-city programs. We have to accept the challenge of using the development process to create healthy environments. Bringing together economics and ecology is our main task and values are central to that. The art market demonstrates we can value anything however we choose. The stock market itself allows for resources to be constantly revalued. The reluctance of radical environmentalists to engage with the economic system has meant that the most powerful mechanism for change has been neglected.

The skills and technologies for developing ecological cities already exist all over the world. What has been lacking is the vision to bring this expertise together, and the political will to realise the economic potential of eco-city projects as a way of moving from a destructive war economy to an environmentally healing peace economy.

We talk about setting things in concrete for permanency, but concrete is quickly eroded by vegetation: a seed needs but the smallest crack in the pavement to take root and grow. We see growth as a linear process, forgetting its corollary of decay in the circle of life.

Fifty years ago TV was experimental, telephones were luxuries, and there were few cars. Streets were safer, there were more trees and suburban sprawl had barely begun. But in 50 short years, as fast as electronic communications have brought us together, our exploding cities have driven us apart, and urban decay has set in.

Ecopolis would turn things around. Where now we widen roads, Ecopolis would make them narrower; where we now destroy life with buildings and paving, Ecopolis would restore living systems; whereas we now seek increasing privacy, Ecopolis seeks community. Economic activity need not rely on exploitation of diminishing resources: it could be generated through the re-use of urban resources, from renewable energy and appropriate new crops. Creation of effective public transport systems and life-enhancing technologies could provide more employment and value to the community than car factories and submarine manufacture. Peaceful, positive redevelopment could create an economy as powerful as Japan’s, which was prevented from wasting resources on armaments and grew richer and cleverer as a consequence. But whereas now we strive to be merely clever, Ecopolis seeks wisdom.

With vision and commitment to the future based on an understanding of the past and the best use of the present, we can make Ecopolis now!