URBANmedias

Not only are many cities bursting at the seams from urban overcrowding; they are also increasingly starting to bear the strains of climate change.

Although there are numerous solutions to either challenge, the building up of new "eco-cities" tries to kill the two birds with one stone. But what is the role of these master-planned communities in our sustainable futures?

The concept of an isolated, ecologically minded community is by no means a new one. The forward-thinking Buckminster Fuller was talking about "domed communities" in the 1960s, and in 1975 writer Ernest Callenbach published his novel Ecotopia, greatly influencing the green movements that would quickly follow.

While smaller versions may have grown more organically, contemporary Eco-Cities are often top-down master plans designed by big-name firms. Since many of these Eco-Cities are still under development, we can only speculate about their future performance and whether they will be flexible enough to function as a "real city."

 

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Via Lauren Moss

During the last decades, the conurbation problem in large cities has increased, reaching alarming levels.

At present, the average time a person needs to travel from home to a workplace is around 4 hours, which represents a total loss of 20 hours every week, that is, 80 hours per month, 960 hours yearly, which translates into a total of 40 days in traffic a year.

This is reflected in time loss, otherwise destined for leisure, quality of life, time spent with family, in addition to the obvious heavy traffic, which results in enormous energy costs for moving this population, and this translates in huge CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, in other words, “pollution”.

Hence, the need to create urban microcenters, that are located in central areas in the city, where the necessary infrastructure for transportation, subway systems, metro buses, buses, etc., as well as water supply, sewage, energy power, is already present. Moreover, they integrate elements in the design of their façades and facilities that allow reductions of resources and generated waste; also, they are mostly vertical urban groups that merge different activities on one place, integrating housing, offices, commerce, hotels, fun, and mostly, public spaces in squares, gardens on the ground floor or even on higher levels. The objective is to reduce the need to travel around the city, which at the same time has a direct bearing on traffic density. This allows the quality of life of users, to improve, which makes the city more efficient...

Via Lauren Moss, Jandira Feijó