Abstract:In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities, and solar cities. They have become frames-sometimes the dominant frame-used to orient the construction of new pieces of a city in a growing number of countries. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social, and design-based terms. Ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different contexts. This article presents an original typology of ecourbanism as the integration of seven extreme type principles. We developed this typology through an abductive approach, or the back and forth testing of observed practices with arguments advanced in theories of sustainable development, planning and urban studies. While ecourban neighbourhood developments by definition express integrative goals, this typology permits assessment of the extent to which outcomes are being achieved in terms of each specific principle. We define and present a limiting case for each of these extreme type principles. Rather than attempting to render different standards equivalent across national contexts, this typology-based approach to understand the outcomes of ecourban neighbourhood developments promises a means to OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2015, 7 11419 facilitate orienting these developments toward higher levels of integration within a common set of principled boundaries, as they are developed around the world.
Neighbourhood scale sustainability districts are appearing in an array of cities around the world (Barton 2000; Barton et al. 1995; Taylor 2000; Winston 2009; Jabareen 2006). They are promoted as part of urban sustainability plans and strategies within formal government, advanced by private developers driven by profit and niche marketing motivations, and advocated for by citizens groups as part of sustainability, climate change, and affordable housing action strategies. In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbonpositive cities, ecopolises, One Planet Communities and solar cities. These are other varieties of ecourban developments have become frames-sometimes the dominant frame-used to justify and orient the construction of new pieces of city in a growing range of OPEN ACCESS 2 countries worldwide (Joss et al. 2013; Chang and Sheppard 2013). This paper documents our work to catalogue such ecourban developments worldwide. The compendium we are producing provides evidence that ecourban developments today are part of a movement toward green global cosmopolitanism (Blok 2012) through a number of standards competing for a key role in redefining relevant and meaningful sustainability efforts in specific economic, political, social and design-based terms. At the same time, and for many of the same projects, they also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different world regions. We will also document the ways in which ecourban developments both respond to a crisis in urban development and create new crises, both respond to the need for greener, cleaner, less extractive modes of life and create a host of new ecological and climate contradictions. The ways in which ecourban developments respond to global standards and local contexts, urban development crises and ecological crises, also of course will vary in different contexts where they are beginning to appear around the world. Their variability along these axes forces us to ask whether ecourban developments are intended to "fit in" to the existing cities in which they are springing to life, or whether they are, rather, intended primarily to "break free" from or even "fix" crises springing up from within these existing cities. Our catalogue of eco-urban developments around the world will serve as a first step to a deeper understanding of these social and political dynamics and trends at global and regional scales.
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