Ecocity Builders - Richard Register

Richard Register is one of the world's great theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. He is also a practitioner with three decades of experience activating local projects, pushing establishment buttons and working with environmentalists and developers to get a better city built and running.

It is unusual for an author to be his own illustrator, but he is, and his books are considered as pleasurable for his imaginative drawings as profound in their ecological urban content. Register is a frequent guest of organizations and conference hosts large and small--in his home town, which he calls the Bay Area, California (San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland)--and around the world. He has traveled the equivalent of 22 times around the Earth (as of Summer 2003) speaking on behalf of the pedestrian city to save the world--by avoiding cars, global warming, massive sprawl, natural habitat displacement, air and water pollution and other harms. More important, he believes, is the kind of city that can contribute to humanity's creative and compassionate evolution on a healthy Earth, in an exciting and rewarding built community from village to town and city scale. We can build it, he believes, and thinks he knows how.

Register has spoken at the "alternative events" at all the major environmental conference organized by the United Nation: Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg, plus Habitat II, a.k.a. "the City Summit" in Istanbul. University classes, architectural firms and futurist conferences, the Smithsonian Institution and National Council for Science and the Environment, associated student body organized events at colleges, Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, business councils, small local creek restoration groups, city government agencies, departments and mayors have all hosted his talks or classes. He has spoken before transportation experts, in experimental towns like Arcosanti, Arizona, for Curitiba's Open University for the Environment in Brazil and at crafts schools like Haystack Mountain School of crafts and Oakland's California College of Arts and Crafts. Register is the author of ECOCITIES: BUILDING CITIES IN BALANCE WITH NATURE, (2002), editor of VILLAGE WISDOM / FUTURE CITIES (1997), author of ECOCITY BERKELEY: BUILDING CITIES FOR A HEALTHY FUTURE (1987) and ANOTHER BEGINNING (1978).

He was founding president of Urban Ecology (1975) and founder and current president of Ecocity Builders (1992), both non-profit educational organizations. He convened the First International Ecocity Conference (1990); was advisor to the second in Adelaide, Australia (1992); the third in Yoff, Senegal (1996); the fourth in Curitiba, 2000 and co-convener of the fifth in Shenzhen, China (August 2002) where he was also the Keynote Speaker. These events have involved approximately 1,800 people and 325 speakers to date.

Presently, he is exploring transfer of development rights (TDRs) for reshaping cities and proposing an ecocity redesign of downtown Berkeley thorough an effort called the "the Heart of the City Project" funded partially by the State of California Coastal Conservancy and (pledged) City of Berkeley. At the Fifth International Ecocity Conference in Shenzhen, China, August, 2002, he proposed “Three Experimental Cities for China” – 1.) strictly pedestrian, 2.) pedestrian and bicycle, 3.) pedestrian, bicycle and streetcar. These are being considered in academic, government and development circles in China.

Register was recently appointed to the international “Scientific Advisory Committee” to the “Active Ecological Urban Development” of SCOPE, the Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment, an international association of several nation states and two dozen major scientific associations. The project is led by Rusong Wang, Ecocity 5 Conference host and co-convener.

Talks last year included a round the world trip to Ecocity 5 in China and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa. Talks in 2003 so far, in Washington, DC; Charlottesville, Virginia; Toronto, Canada; New York, New York; Olympia, Washington; Eugene, Oregon; Portland, Oregon (twice); Santa Fe, New Mexico; San Francisco (twice including World Futures Society Conference), Berkeley and Oakland, California, Vienna, Austria (Victor Gruen’s 100th birthday conference/celebration), the Eco Wave conference on ecological architecture sponsored by San Francisco Institute of Architecture at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

Invitations for up-coming talks in Ukiah, California; Providence, Rhode Island; Louisville, Kentucky; Blacksburg, Virginia; Berlin, Germany; Langkawi, Malaysia; Beijing, China and Chamber of Commerce in Berkeley, California. In past years he has also spoken in Canada, Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, India, Nepal, China and Australia, as well as in nine European countries and 25 states of the United States. Register's speaking fee ranges from $1,000 to $3,000, plus transportation and expenses, depending on the nature of the event. If you are a small local organization, contact us for additional rates.