Core principles
Ecocity Builders is primarily concerned with promoting the creation of ecocities, a phrase first coined by Richard Register at the 1st International Ecocity Conference in 1990. [1] [2] Ecocity Builders defines an ecocity as an "ecologically healthy human settlement modeled on the self-sustaining resilient structure and function of natural ecosystems and living organisms." [3] An ecocity can encompass any size of settlement, from neighborhood or village up to metropolis, that functions in harmony with the ecosystems of which it is part. These greater environmental systems include the watershed, bioregion, and ultimately, of the planet, as well as human social systems such as local, regional, national and world economic, governmental, and cultural exchange systems.
Biometrics is central to the Ecocity concept through the analogy of the cities as living organisms. Cities (including their inhabitants) exhibit and require systems for movement (transport), respiration (processes to obtain energy), sensitivity (responding to its environment), growth (evolving/changing over time), reproduction (including education, construction, planning and development, etc.), excretion (outputs and wastes), and nutrition (need for air, water, soil, food for inhabitants, materials, etc.).
Ecocities exhibit characteristic design elements such as pedestrian-oriented "nodes" or centers of resources and social interaction, mixed-use planning, pervasive natural features (gardens, urban agriculture, parks), de-emphasis on individual vehicular transit, and equitable access to resources. Register's ecocities are influenced by the arcology movement including an emphasis on hyperstructures—large, complex interconnected buildings. Register has published collections of his extensive drawings of ecocity plans and interventions in several books (see “Sources”).
History and early years
Ecocity Builders was founded by Richard Register in 1992 in order to further specific aims of the first International Ecocity Conference (Berkeley, 1990). The first conference was convened by the Urban Ecology group, an organization also founded by Richard Register. Ecocity Builders went on to involve many of the same key actors as Urban Ecology. [4] Ecocity Builders' early years were characterized by a number of local projects in the San Francisco East Bay, primarily Berkeley. These projects included creek daylighting Cordonices Creek, Slow Streets, and community projects.
Creek daylighting
Ecocity Builders flagship project included one of the earliest daylighted and restored creek beds in the United States. The Codornices Creek project, 1994, removed the water channel from its cement culvert along the Albany/Berkeley border and created a mile-long park. Ecocity Builders collaborated with the Urban Creeks Council, who applied for and received $25,000 from the Department of Water Resources Board to fund the project. [5] [6] The second lower half of the creek park was restored in 2004 on a budget of $2.1 million under the auspices of the Codornices Creek Watershed Council.
Depaving
Ecocity Builders helped plan and provided support for a variety of small to medium-sized depaving projects in Berkeley. Examples include removing five parking spaces at University Avenue Homes' low income residence for a garden, and Halcyon Commons. [7] The latter converted a 28 space parking lot into a community-designed mini-park featuring a large grassy area surrounded by flowering shrubs and trees, a picnic area, and a tire swing. [8]
Slow streets
Starting in 1979 Richard Register and other Berkeley activists began advocating the City of Berkeley for traffic-calming street plans based on the Australian "slow ways" streets. [9] The Milvia Slow Street, part of the City of Berkeley's Bicycle Boulevard network, was finally designed under their guidance in 1990. The design covers roughly six blocks of residential street in which 30 curb bulb-outs were placed to narrow the street at intersections and mid-block locations. These bulb-outs and planted islands create a serpentine design, which requires vehicles to slow and negotiate a winding path along the street. Official studies confirmed the Milvia Slow Street to have a significant calming impact on vehicle speed and volume along the corridor. [10]
Ecocity district mapping
Richard Register piloted a method for identifying “urban villages” in large urban areas in his book Ecocity Berkeley (1987). He proposed the eventual densification of these areas to create more compact, efficient urban entities where goods and services can be accessed via walking and biking. Ecocity Builders conducted early GIS mapping projects to formalize this process. [11] The results identified actual active urban nodes (clusters of commercial, social and transit activity) as opposed to the on-the-book zoning for commercial/transit centers. They also identified barriers in these areas to being “complete” service access, such as a lack of large grocery store in West Oakland, and lack of integrated transit in Montclair Village. [12]
Policy and advocacy
In Berkeley Ecocity Builders successfully co-authored and lobbied for policies that are currently enforced, including the Ecocity Amendment to the 2001 General Plan, the Solar Greenhouse Ordinance, and the Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance (RECO). [13]
Task Forces, Committees
- UC Hotel Conference Center Task Force, Berkeley
- San Francisco Open Space Task Force, San Francisco
- Oil Independent Oakland by 2020 Task Force, Oakland
Policies, Campaigns
Current projects
International Ecocity Framework and Standards (IEFS)
The British Columbia Institute of Technology's School of Construction and the Environment and Ecocity Builders worked together to develop a scientific rubric for evaluating the Ecocity status of a human settlement. The rubric is based on 12 environmental, social, and resource-based indicators of urban health. The IEFS forms the basis for several other partnerships and projects aiming to measure, map, and act on these indicators.
Ecocitizen World Map Project
The Ecocitizen World Map Project is a suite of tools and methods that uses PUMIS and GIS technology to explore, understand, and measure holistic urban health from a citizen's perspective. The project provides an online mapping platform allowing residents to access and combine local, community-uploaded data with open-government data on key indicators such as air and water quality, access to transit, crime, and cultural amenities. The indicators measured by mapping align with the IEFS and can be used to evaluate a city or neighborhood's ecocity status.
The first Ecocitizen World Map Project pilots were conducted in April 2014 in the cities of Cairo and Casablanca. Students and community members participated in "bootcamps" to learn PUMIS surveying techniques and conducted parcel audits in the neighborhoods of Roches Noires and Imbaba. Initial surveying focused on water use.
The participatory approach to data collection enables stakeholders to acquire previously unknown data and is designed to empower local communities to engage in relevant issues, giving them incentive to become involved in finding solutions to existing problems.
This Ecocitizen World Map Project is a public-private partnership led by Ecocity Builders in collaboration with principal initial partners the Organization of American States (OAS), Esri, the Association of American Geographers, Eye on Earth (a partnership of UNEP + Abu Dhabi Environmental Data Initiative), along with local academic partners, NGOs and community organizations. The project's initial three pilot cities include Medellín, Colombia (supported by a grant from the OAS’ Sustainable Communities in the Americas Initiative), Cairo, Egypt, and Casablanca, Morocco (supported by a grant from Eye on Earth).
Advising and consulting
Ecocity Builders provides a set of policy development and advocacy tools as well as contracting as an adviser for projects worldwide. Ecocity Builders and Richard Register have consulted on construction, planning and development in Auroville, India; Changwon, South Korea, Willits, California, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Huaibei, China, Kathmandu, Nepal, and Tianjin Ecocity, China.
Ecocity World Summit Series
Chief ongoing project of Ecocity Builders is the biennial conference series known as the Ecocity World Summit (formerly the International Ecocity Conference Series). The series focuses on key actions cities and citizens can take to rebuild human habitat in balance with living systems. The conference focuses on design, planning, data-gathering, and governance of creating sustainable, equitable cities. This Ecocity Summit series, begun in Berkeley, California in 1990, was a first of its kind and is now the longest continuously running conference on ecological towns, cities and villages. [14]
Past World Summits have featured a wide range of leaders and innovators, including environmentalist David Brower; Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell; Rusong Wang, member of the Chinese Peoples Congress and head of the environmental sciences division of the Chinese Academy of Science; India's animal rights champion Ambika Shukla; CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Dr. Naoko Ishii; former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, architect/philosopher Paolo Soleri; and Denis Hayes, director of the original national Earth Day in 1970 and keynote for the first Ecocity Conference.
The 2015 Summit will take place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in October 2015.
Ecocity Conferences:
- 2015 Abu Dhabi, UAE
- 2013 Nantes, France
- 2011 Montreal, Canada
- 2009 Istanbul, Turkey
- 2008 San Francisco, USA
- 2006 Bangalore, India
- 2002 Shenzhen, China
- 2000 Curitiba, Brazil
- 1996 Yoff, Senegal
- 1992 Adelaide, Australia
- 1990 Berkeley, USA
Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term "smart growth" is particularly used in North America. In Europe and particularly the UK, the terms "compact city", "urban densification" or "urban intensification" have often been used to describe similar concepts, which have influenced government planning policies in the UK, the Netherlands and several other European countries.
New Urbanism is an urban design movement which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually influenced many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use strategies. New urbanism attempts to address the ills associated with urban sprawl and post-Second World War suburban development.
An eco-city or ecocity is "a human settlement modeled on the self-sustaining resilient structure and function of natural ecosystems", as defined by Ecocity Builders. Simply put, an eco-city is an ecologically healthy city. The World Bank defines eco-cities as "cities that enhance the well-being of citizens and society through integrated urban planning and management that harness the benefits of ecological systems and protect and nurture these assets for future generations". Although there is no universally accepted definition of an 'eco-city', among available definitions, there is some consensus on the basic features of an eco-city.
The term "sustainable communities" has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "green cities," "eco-communities," "livable cities" and "sustainable cities."
Strawberry Creek is the principal watercourse running through the city of Berkeley, California. Two forks rise in the Berkeley Hills of the California Coast Ranges, and form a confluence at the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The creek then flows westward across the city to discharge into San Francisco Bay.
Codornices Creek, 2.0 miles (3.2 km) long, is one of the principal creeks which runs out of the Berkeley Hills in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In its upper stretch, it passes entirely within the city limits of Berkeley, and marks the city limit with the adjacent city of Albany in its lower section. Before European settlement, Codornices probably had no direct, permanent connection to San Francisco Bay. Like many other small creeks, it filtered through what early maps show as grassland to a large, northward-running salt marsh and slough that also carried waters from Marin Creek and Schoolhouse Creek. A channel was cut through in the 19th Century, and Codornices flows directly to San Francisco Bay by way of a narrow remnant slough adjacent to Golden Gate Fields racetrack.
The sustainable city, eco-city, or green city is a city designed with consideration for social, economic, environmental impact, and resilient habitat for existing populations, without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 defines sustainable cities as those that are dedicated to achieving green sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. They are committed to doing so by enabling opportunities for all through a design focused on inclusivity as well as maintaining a sustainable economic growth. The focus also includes minimizing required inputs of energy, water, and food, and drastically reducing waste, output of heat, air pollution – CO2, methane, and water pollution. Richard Register first coined the term ecocity in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future, where he offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere. Other leading figures who envisioned sustainable cities are architect Paul F Downton, who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, as well as authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann, who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities.
Daylighting can be defined as "opening up buried watercourses and restoring them to more natural conditions". An alternative definition refers to "the practice of removing streams from buried conditions and exposing them to the Earth's surface in order to directly or indirectly enhance the ecological, economic and/or socio-cultural well-being of a region and its inhabitants”. The term is used to refer to the restoration of an originally open-air watercourse, which had at some point been diverted below ground, back into an above-ground channel. Typically, the rationale behind returning the riparian environment of a stream, wash, or river to a more natural state is to reduce runoff, create habitat for species in need of it, or improve an area's aesthetics. In the UK, the practice is also known as deculverting.
UC Village, also called University Village or University Village Albany, is a housing community for students and postdocs who are married or have dependents. It is owned and administered by the University of California, Berkeley. It is located within the city limits of Albany about two miles away from the main Berkeley campus, at an elevation of 26 feet. It was originally known as Codornices Village, and later, Albany Village. It is also commonly referred to as The Village.
Walkability is a term for planning concepts best understood by the mixed-use of amenities in high-density neighborhoods where people can access said amenities by foot. It is based on the idea that urban spaces should be more than just transport corridors designed for maximum vehicle throughput. Instead, it should be relatively complete livable spaces that serve a variety of uses, users, and transportation modes and reduce the need for cars for travel.
Paul F Downton is a sustainable city theorist and activist, ecological architect, urbanist and professional writer on architecture, ecocities, environment and the arts.
Friends of Five Creeks is a regional community volunteer organization founded in 1996 by Sonja Wadman originally dedicated to the stewardship of creeks in northern Alameda County and western Contra Costa, California, United States. Education about wildlife and restoration is also a major facet of the FFC's mission.
Sustainable urbanism is both the study of cities and the practices to build them (urbanism), that focuses on promoting their long term viability by reducing consumption, waste and harmful impacts on people and place while enhancing the overall well-being of both people and place. Well-being includes the physical, ecological, economic, social, health and equity factors, among others, that comprise cities and their populations. In the context of contemporary urbanism, the term cities refers to several scales of human settlements from towns to cities, metropolises and mega-city regions that includes their peripheries / suburbs / exurbs. Sustainability is a key component to professional practice in urban planning and urban design along with its related disciplines landscape architecture, architecture, and civil and environmental engineering. Green urbanism and ecological urbanism are other common terms that are similar to sustainable urbanism, however they can be construed as focusing more on the natural environment and ecosystems and less on economic and social aspects. Also related to sustainable urbanism are the practices of land development called Sustainable development, which is the process of physically constructing sustainable buildings, as well as the practices of urban planning called smart growth or growth management, which denote the processes of planning, designing, and building urban settlements that are more sustainable than if they were not planned according to sustainability criteria and principles.
Shattuck Avenue is a major city street running north–south through Berkeley, California, and Oakland, California. At its southern end, the street branches from Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Temescal district, then ends at Indian Rock Park in the Berkeley Hills to the north. Shattuck Avenue is the main street of Berkeley, forming the spine of that city's downtown, and the site of the Gourmet Ghetto in North Berkeley. The street was named for Francis Kittredge Shattuck, an early landowner and booster who later served as Mayor of Oakland. Shattuck was largely responsible for the original construction of the road as well as for a railroad built along its route.
The Gill Tract is 104 acres of land in Berkeley and Albany, California that the regents of the University of California purchased from the family of the late Edward Gill in 1928. As of 2021, the land is used for UC Berkeley housing, an elementary school, public fields, a community garden, and agricultural research plots.
Live Oak Park is a public park and recreation area of the city of Berkeley, California, it lies in the center of several North Berkeley neighborhoods, 5.5 acres of nature juxtaposed with facilities that form the beating heart of the area. It's a place where play areas, basketball and tennis courts, an indoor theater and the Berkeley Art Center share space with native oaks and California Bay Laurels, quiet shady picnic areas, a spacious grassy knoll and the lovely Codornices Creek, which flows through the park. Live Oak Park is one of Berkeley's oldest and most naturalistic public parks.
The Urban Design Lab (UDL) is an interdisciplinary research unit of Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York City. Established in 2005, it advances design-based solutions to issues in sustainable development and global urbanization. Richard Plunz, founder of the UDL, currently directs the program.
Carl Anthony is an American architect, regional planner, social justice activist, and author. He is the founder and co-director of Breakthrough Communities, a project dedicated to building multiracial leadership for sustainable communities in California and the rest of the nation. He is the former President of the Earth Island Institute, and is the co-founder and former executive director of its urban habitat program, one of the first environmental justice organizations to address race and class issues.
The Rockridge-Temescal Greenbelt also commonly known as Frog Park is a public park and greenway that connects the neighborhoods of Temescal and Rockridge in Oakland, California.
