BREAKOUT SESSIONS & WORKSHOPS

Draft Recommendations

Scientific Approaches to Healthy Urban Form and Function

Background:

Ecocity Builders is an educational and research non-profit based in Berkeley California that instigates ecological city design, planning and building projects in Berkeley and Oakland, California and participates in and organizes conferences and seminars around the world exploring these subjects.  Projects have included creek “daylighting,â€� street redesign and “calming,â€� fruit and native tree planting, design consulting on new buildings for ecological features and functions and advocacy and development of ecological urban policy.

We have worked with numerous environmental activists, academics, government officials, developers, professionals and students in creating local, national and international ecological city conferences, major ones now held on four continents with the next to be hosted by several NGOs, academic institutions and local governments in China: the Fifth International Ecocity Conference.

Ecocity Builders assembles the information base and serves as talent scout in a quest to better understand the theoretical basis of sustainable city and village development and to discover, develop and apply the best tools for transforming cities and villages into healthier environments.

The International Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD) is a nonprofit located in Maryland. ICSD’s mission is to involve U.S. industry in the fostering of sustainable development around the world in a way that respects and serves the global ecosystem and future generations, while promoting employment and business development domestically.

ICSD was formed in part to bring private-sector participation into USDOE’s international sustainable-energy and sustainable-development-related activities, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Renewable Energy and Energy-Efficiency Programs, which involve 21 APEC-member nations in the Asia-Pacific region. Working with APEC, ICSD is identifying opportunities to demonstrate sustainable development practices and technology.

The International Center for Sustainable Development is developing projects in several countries. One of these projects is a Sustainable Village in Guanghan. Guanghan is in the Sichuan Province in China. As part of its Land Reform Plan, the city of Guanghan is centralizing its rural communities.  ICSD is in the initial stages of designing a sustainable village model for the city's officials. If successful, this model village will be replicated throughout China.

Purpose and Goals:

This breakout session will present successful examples of efforts to create sustainable villages through urban design.  In the session, participants will discuss scientific approaches to these efforts including:

1. There are health sciences that take for granted that many actions can be taken to improve health and avoid pathology. There are criteria here that apply to healthy cities as well as other living organisms; many of them would be called "ecological."  There is also the analogy with living systems in its own right as developed by James Miller and others (in his book Living Systems, for example).

2. We can look at the evolutionary and ecological context: miniaturization and complexification, and the meanings of ancient ritual of city orientation to earth and sky.

3. We can discuss the difference between extending trends, a kind of statistical approach, and exploring the implications of fundamental principles, crossing thresholds, reaching turning points.

4. Discuss the analogy of the city with the organism and the environment: basic geometries of urban health, based on the earlier slides of maps, cross sections of cities in relation to resources, climate, sun angles, biodiversity, etc.

5. Think through the “lab� idea: building experiments with a high enough degree of “purity� that clearer conclusions are possible than would be otherwise the case, such as Richard Register’s Three Cities China proposal and Elizabeth Margold's Sustainable Model Village.

6. Consider the tools and techniques of urban transformation: TDRs, Eco General Plans, ecocity zoning maps, ecocity organizations, departments of ecological development, environmentalist/developer alliances, etc.

7. As in many sciences, predicting results and testing basic principles sometimes retrospectively might work well with cities and villages.  Example: Lewis Mumford's dire predictions for the effect of automobiles and their support systems long before we had today's full list of problems of sprawl and environmental impacts.  He understood and extrapolated from basic principles.  â€œLabâ€� cities and villages might help in exploring predictability of functioning.

EcoCity Builders’ presentation will explore basic ecocity ideas and look at the “piecesâ€� of the ecologically informed built habitat and how they can fit together harmoniously (housing, work space, open space, transportation, agriculture, education, nature). The talk will describe several tools to reshape cities into ecological cities.  Among these tools are transfer of development rights, ecocity zoning maps, car-free housing and “Heart of the City Projects.â€� Examples of particular applications around the world will be featured.

ICSD’s presentation on the Model Sustainable Village we will touch upon 6 basic principles: The Village is a Natural System; Maximize the use of the villages natural resources; Protect all natural living systems; Eliminate Waste; Improve the efficiency of all systems in the sustainable village; Establish community organizations to operate and manage the village for the benefit of ALL villagers.

Desired Outcomes:

To incorporate ideas discussed in relation to sustainable villages and urban design into the recommendations for the Rio +10 Earth Summit.

Potential Presenters:

• Richard Register, EcoCity Builders    
• Elizabeth Margold, ICSD

Session Format:

EcoCity Builders and ICSD will give presentations on their examples of sustainable villages.  After the presentation they will encourage interactive discussion on these principles and ask others to share similar experiences with creating sustainable villages.

Discussion continues following interests of workshop participants.  The organizers would like to return from time to time to what role scientific approaches might have in building communities, whether it seems the sort of "ecological" approach presented can be tested out and if so how would it be designed and assessed.  Are present approaches, such as New Urbanism "scientific" enough, take into account enough variables, confront problems honestly and thoroughly enough?

Related topics and possible questions that we might like to bring up:

• Looking at the economy producing and produced by the urban form Jane Jacobs' ideas fit here and lead into my own proposal for "Four Steps to an Ecology of the Economy".    
• Political science of getting it done: general plans, political roadblocks, neighborhood resistance to change, gentrification, equity factors....    
• The "engineering" of it all, that is, designing for applications and what does technology contribute?  What sort of retraining and retooling might be necessary?    
• Ideas for Rio + 10. I could include here the "International Ecological Rebuilding Program."    
• Relationship to global warming and species extinctions discussed.    
• Getting good number on the relationship of energy and other resources to urban form; seeing if we need to correct some numbers some of us are working with, e.g. “one rail track at full capacity carries as much as 8 lanes of freeway at full capacity,â€� and “bicycling on a flat surface is 8 times as energy efficient as walking.â€� 

Session Organizers:

Richard Register, President
Ecocity Builders, Inc.

Elizabeth Margold
Director of Development and Latin American Programs
International Center for Sustainable Development

Questions? conference@NCSEonline.org