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Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature
(Revised Edition, New Society Publishers)
By Richard Register
Most of the world's population now lives in cities. So if we are to address the problems of environmental deterioration and peak oil adequately, the city has to be a major focus of attention.
EcoCities is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth's biosphere. Unique in the literature is the book's insight that the form of the city really matters — and that it is within our ability to change it, and crucial that we do. Further, that the ecocity within its bioregion is comprehensible and do-able, and can produce a healthy and potentially happy future.
EcoCities describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. The reader is encouraged to plunge in to its economics and politics: the kinds of businesses, planning and leadership required. The book then outlines the tools by which a gradual transition to the ecocity could be accomplished. Throughout, this new edition is generously illustrated with the author's own inspired visions of what such rebuilt cities might actually look like.
About the Author
Richard Register is one of the world's great theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. The founder of Urban Ecology and Ecocity Builders, he convened the first International Ecocity Conference in 1990, lectures around the world, and has authored two previous books, as well as an earlier edition of EcoCities.
...a wonderful account of how we can transform cities into places that are not only sustainable, but which are a joy and an inspiration to live in. EcoCities needs to be read not only for its intellectual contribution to future city developmet, but also for how it speaks to the heart about the true meaning of the city. —JEFFERY KENWORTHY, Professor in Sustainable Cities, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University
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Other publications from Ecocity Builders:
Ecocity Berkeley
Building Cities for a Healthy Future, by Richard Register
Ecocity Berkeley introduces the concept of ecocities and explains how people can take part in transforming their existing towns and cities into ecocities. The section on Berkeley illustrates the ideas with concrete examples of changes in planning, architecture, policy, and citizen action. This book is basic information for anyone interested in ecocities or the work of Ecocity Builders. Highly recommended.
Village Wisdom/Future Cities
Edited by Richard Register and Brady Peaks
This is a book for everyone concerned about the future of our communities and the health of our environment. It includes examples of design, planning, appropriate technology, and social and environmental activism in contemporary Africa and around the world.
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Well-prepared with vision, enthusiasm and powerful, practical tools, EcoCities enables us to challenge the doom-sayers and doom-makers to this race for a healthy, sane, compassionate future. We have to win, and the author explains how.
—LESTER R. BROWN, President, Earth Policy Institute
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While most green city books are at best sustainability-light, Richard Register's EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature steers a course to deep green. His hard-hitting solutions are on a scale commensurate with the problem. Read it and work quickly to implement his many suggestions if you want a tolerable planet upon which to house your home.
—RANDY HAYES, Executive Director, International Forum on Globalization & Founder of Rainforest Action Network
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EcoCities takes you on an exploratory journey into the cities of the future. You will wander along streets flanked by clear streams and flowering shrubs where there is no polluting traffic, or traverse bridges linking gardens and fruit trees many stories above the ground. Yet this is no half-baked dream, but rather a reality based on technologies, architectural designs and functioning buildings that actually exist in several places around the globe, and concepts that have been approved by down-to-earth city planners. I want everyone, especially high school and college students, to read and think about Richard Register's book. A copy of EcoCities should be in every school library.
—DR JANE GOODALL, DBE, Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace
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