The Evolution Of Eco-Cities
We can transform today's cities through
a three-step process: reduce, reuse, recycle
by Tony Dominski
One of the articles in Designing A Sustainable Future (IC#35)
Spring 1993, Page 53
Copyright (c)1993, 1996 by Context Institute | To order this issue ...
Tony Dominski has taught ecology, environmental analysis, planning, and
design at the Pratt Institute, School of Architecture and University of
California, Santa Barbara. Since 1984, he has specialized in land-use planning
and integrated waste management. He presently works with the
Florida Department of Community Affairs.
Transforming today's cities, with their predilection for destructive consumption,
is a daunting task. There are hundreds of billions of dollars and over a
century of effort invested in today's urban infrastructure - including the
buildings, the connecting freeways and roads, the utility networks, and
the landscapes in which everything else is embedded. Parallel to the physical
infrastructure is a legal and financial infrastructure in which there is
a huge emotional investment based on habit and familiarity.
Just as an ocean liner can't be turned on a dime, thousands of square miles
of buildings, roads, and landscapes, and business habits built up over decades
cannot be changed overnight. Complete renovation will take a century or
more.
However, the building of eco-cities is not a utopian task to be postponed
to the far-off future. Just below the surface are subtle but powerful forces
poised to take cities to an advanced stage. There is much that can be accomplished,
even within the next five to ten years.
Already there is a substantial body of theory and case histories that suggest
how eco-cities will be built. In fact, urban dwellers have already initiated
a three-stage ecological remodel based on reduction, reuse and recycling.
REDUCE
The first stage of this eco-city evolution, the reduction or quick-fix stage,
has already begun. In cities around the world, people are reducing the impact
of their consumption-oriented lifestyle by carpooling, switching to more
efficient light bulbs, insulating their homes, recycling trash, buying non-toxic
cleaners, and using gray water, compost, and mulch in their backyards.
The reduction stage is invaluable ecologically, economically, and educationally.
It is an introduction to a new ethic and it encourages the more far-reaching
measures of the reuse and recycling stages of evolution.
REUSE
In the reuse stage, existing buildings, roads, landscapes, and utility networks
are employed in novel ways. For example, commercial buildings can be partially
converted to stores and residential units.
Roofs, now used only for weather protection, are used to grow food and collect
energy. Existing roadways become rights-of-way for electric trains and bicycles.
Downtown streets become pedestrian malls and "slow streets." Ornamental
landscapes are converted to fruit orchards. The electric grid and rooftop
panels are used to recharge small in-town electric vehicles, and the corner
gas station becomes a battery exchange shop.
The reuse stage reaches further than the reduction stage in cutting consumption
and improving quality of life. It also sets into motion the forces that
will allow the modified building, road, and utility elements to be knit
together within the ultimate stage of recycling.
RECYCLE
The goal of the recycling stage is a city of greenbelt-framed urban spaces,
where the daily needs of work, play, shopping and recreation are brought
together within walking distance. This is the stage where the urban village
reigns supreme. Urban villages of between 50-200 acres condense around the
nuclei of the densest suburban and inner-city areas, often surrounding train
stations.
To achieve this ideal, some urban areas are more densely developed in a
checkered land-use pattern. Other urban areas are restored to farms, meadows,
forests, and open space for wildlife. This conversion involves some limited
demolition of streets and buildings. Demolition debris is re-manufactured
into concrete, asphalt, steel, glass and other building materials.
The local electric train systems are linked regionally as are local sections
of bike and footpaths. Similarly, sections of stream rescued from culverts
and open concrete channels are linked as linear parks and forests along
stream belts. Some freeways are converted into high-speed inter-city rail
corridors, which become viable alternatives to regional plane travel.
In this urban evolutionary succession, each stage prepares the necessary
conditions for the next step; this parallels the process by which a forest
eco-system regenerates itself. The three stages - reduce, reuse, recycle
- will be developing simultaneously in a patchwork fashion, much as regeneration
occurs in a large forest. As forest patches are always changing in response
to episodes of wind, fire, disease, and human disturbance, urban patches
change in response to emerging social and demographic conditions and expanding
ecological consciousness.
ECO-CITY EVOLUTION
The successful evolution of an eco-city will depend on our developing an
understanding of the ecological systems that we live with and how we need
to relate to them, and on our willingness to act on that information.
Three imperatives will form the basis for eco-city evolution: social justice,
prosperity, and a healthy natural environment. These are sometimes viewed
as separate and even contradictory, but are now merging in the overarching
vision of sustainability.
Social justice is the gateway to sustainability. Mutual trust and cooperation
between neighbors will be essential. A widening gap between the haves and
have-nots and the associated high crime rates would frustrate and retard
the evolution of eco-cities.
Secondly, an eco-city requires a coalition of businesses capable of responding
to, serving, and generating new enlightened consumers. The tasks will include
reweaving the urban fabric along ecological lines, and planning and building
the new urban infrastructures.
These businesses will be synergistic. For example, a gray water plumbing
retrofit business needs another business to produce a non-toxic detergent.
An electric car manufacturer will want to purchase efficient non-toxic batteries.
Energy conservation firms need non-toxic insulation and efficient roof-top
solar panels. Organic farmers and gardeners will want to purchase mulch
and compost products produced by recycling firms.
These eco-businesses will be reinforced by changing consumer preferences
and new government policies. An extraction tax for oil, coal, and uranium
will favor energy conservation firms and suppliers of solar energy products.
Similarly pollution taxes and high fees for landfills, in conjunction with
lower taxes on reused and recycled products, will encourage the manufacture
of non-toxic and recyclable products. To insure fairness, these policies
will have to insure that low-income people are protected from carrying the
major share of these extra burdens.
The link between the natural environment and human survival, prosperity,
and quality of life is a third potent evolutionary force. Environmental
destruction is inevitably accompanied by a decline in health and quality
of life, and ultimately, a decline in the health of the economy.
It is encouraging that the three-stage process of reduction, reuse, and
recycling is well underway. The first stage of awareness and application
of conservation techniques has gained widespread acceptance. The second
stage - the creative reuse of what is already built - is in the pilot or
demonstration phase. And already on the drawing boards are plans to recycle
existing roads, buildings, and landscapes into the qualitatively new forms
that will mark the eco-cities' mature stage.
There is a lot of interesting work to do and optimism is warranted. An evolutionary
perspective can illuminate the way toward the forging of a new urban space,
lifestyle, and ethic that harmonizes the heretofore conflicting elements
of fairness, prosperity, and ecological survival.
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