SPACES Sept issue 2017

ARCHITECTURE
have ever since been held in various
countries: 1992 Adelaide, Australia,
1996 Yoff, Senegal, 2000 Curitiba,
Brazil, 2002 Shenzhen, China, 2006
Bangalore, India, 2008 San francisco,
USA, 2009 Istanbul, Turkey, 2011
Montreal, Canada, 2013 Nantes,
France; 2015 Abu Dhabi, UAE; 2017
Melbourne, Australia.
THE ECOCITY
WORLD SUMMIT 2017: MELBOURNE
AUSTRALIA AND THE CONCEPT OF ECOCITY
TEXT : Sangeeta Singh
The ecocity world summit 2017 which
took place in Melbourne, Australia
from 11-14 July 2017, provided Ms.
Sangeeta Singh, associate professor
at the Department of Architecture
and Urban Planning at the Institute
of Engineering, a unique platform
not only in presenting a paper on the
“Challenges and opportunities in urban
ecological planning in the context of
Nepal” but also in understanding the
world views on building sustainable
cities.The Economist’s annual
global liveability survey has declared
Melbourne as the most liveable city in
the world for the seventh year running.
During the three days of the summit it
was an overwhelming and a difficult task
to choose from the 300 sessions from
the three tracks on Urban Leadership,
Academic Research, and City Practices
which was participated by more than
900 delegates from 30 countries.
Although all the plenary sessions were
interesting, the one that garnered a lot
of attention was the plenary session
where Al Gore was the keynote
speaker. Discussing the dimensions of
sustainable cities with Richard Register
during the summit was indeed a totally
enriching experience.
Eco city as a concept for planning cities
is seen to have been popularized by
Richard Register with the establishment
of non- profit organization Urban
Ecology in 1975 and Eco city Builders
in 1992 which urged discussions on
ecological aspects in urban planning
and also with the publication of a book
Eco-city Berkeley (1987), the journal
“urban ecologist” and later some other
books on the subject matter. Register
envisions rebuilding cities “in balance
with nature”, and he stresses on “as we
build, so shall we live”. He further raises
concern on the impact of “peak oil”
situation where practically everything
from transportation, indoor climate,
food, clothing, shelter depends on oil.
“Given the crisis state of life systems
on earth, the collapse of whole habitats
and the increasing rates of extinction
of species, it follows that cities need
to be radically reshaped; they need
to be reorganized and rebuilt upon
ecological principles. “When we build
the automobile sprawl infrastructure,
we create a radically different social
and ecological reality than if we
build closely knit communities for
pedestrians” .
Richard Register has been tracking
many of the dilemmas cities face and
has written extensively on the ecocity
building approach. Register’s
organization the Urban ecology (later
Eco city Builders) have organized
eleven world eco city summits across
the globe which has been effective
in advocating the eco city principles,
formulating the policies frameworks
and standards and identifying the
elements of eco city. The summit
started in 1990 Berkeley, USA and
Human settlements from the ancient
times in history have emerged as a
response of mankind to fulfilling its
basic requirements and adapting to
nature and its diversity. Starting from
the Paleolithic (stone age) ages human
beings have gradually advanced
changing not only the surrounding
in which they provided themselves
with shelter and comfort but also
in the livelihood and consumption
patterns using the great potential of
the human mind which differentiated
them from the other species on earth.
With the industrial development and
technological advancement creating
unlimited possibilities there has
been a further shift in the livelihood
and consumption pattern leading
to societies largely depending on
mechanized systems. In the process
there has been a rapidly accelerating
gap between the nature and man, and
more and more exploitation of natural
resources. The air and water pollution
is increasing, waste assimilation
is becoming more and more
complex and burden some with the
consumption pattern becoming more
and more sophisticated and advanced.
With the increasing population, the
land is increasingly being occupied
by the human species, expanding in
all directions of the globe, driving all
the other species to extinction in the
process of exploiting the forests and
agricultural land and disturbing the
other natural ecosystems of the earth
creating increasing number of urban
ecosystems instead.
With increasing globalization through
improved technology, the impact of
development on ecological systems
have shifted from local to regional to
global level threatening the survival of
human beings. With growing realization
of this increasing impact on a global
scale there has been yet another
62 / SPACES SEPTEMBER 2017