Utopian Visions and Real Estate Dreams: The Eco‐city Past, Present and Future

Rapoport, Elizabeth

doi:10.1111/gec3.12113

Cited by 94 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(105 reference statements)

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“…Inevitably, this addresses both transitions in urban form and transitions in infrastructure systems. Attempts to enact urban transitions has seen efforts to engage with 'retrofitting' innovations and systems at the level of a city [30,31] and, alternatively, to build new cities that encompass more ecologically 'sound' transport, energy, water and waste systems [32]. Of particular importance here are the ways in which institutional and social interests are organised through governance processes that seek to shape urban transitions [33].…”

Section: Current Understanding Of Urban Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

2017

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Cities, and the networked infrastructures that sustain urban life, are seen as crucial sites for creating more sustainable futures. Yet, although there are many plans, the realisation of sustainable urban infrastructures on the ground is uneven. To develop better ways of understanding why this is the case, the paper makes a conceptual contribution by engaging with current understanding of urban sustainability transitions, using urban sustainable mobility as a reference point. It extends these insights to argue that urban transitions are not about technological or social innovation per se, but about how multiple innovations are experimented with, combined and reconfigured in existing urban contexts and how such processes are governed. There are potentially many ways in which urban sustainable mobility can be reconfigured contextually. Innovation is in the particular form of reconfiguration rather than individual technologies. To make analytical sense of this multiplicity, a preliminary framework is developed that offers the potential to think about urban transitions as contextual and reconfigurational. We argue that there is a need to embrace multiplicity and to understand its relationships to forms of reconfiguration, through empirical exploration and further theoretical and conceptual development. The preliminary framework is a contribution to doing so and we set out future directions for research.

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Section: Current Understanding Of Urban Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

2017

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“…Currently, especially in the Middle East and Asia, a new trend can be identified of designing and constructing complete cities from scratch. According to Rapoport [76] many of such 'flagship' eco-city projects like Masdar in Abu Dhabi, Songdo in Korea, and Dongtan near Shanghai in China and the Sino-Singapore project Tianjin "come to see and promote themselves as 'models' of sustainable urban form, examples which should be replicated around the world ( [76], p. 143)". Keeton [77] describes how Tianjin would be a model for hundreds of new Chinese towns which are due to be constructed over the next decades [76,77].…”

Section: Hierarchism: the Planners' Perspective In Dongtan And Tianjinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustopia or Cosmopolis? A Critical Reflection on the Sustainable City

Beumer

2017

Sustainability

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A broader perspective on the role of cities and their relation to their inhabitants and the planet is essential to effectively answer urgent sustainability questions that emerge in and beyond cities. This essay provides a critical reflection on the notion of the sustainable city. The central question discussed is: how can the ideal of a sustainable city be best conceptualised? Through exploring historic and contemporary theories on the urban-nature-people relationship and analysing some current sustainable city projects with the help of Cultural Theory, it is argued that creating a sustainable city paradoxically means parting with Sustopia. Sustopia often turns into Dystopia when a single perspective on constructing a sustainable city becomes dominant. In order to assist the process of meaningfully conceptualising the sustainable city, the notion of Cosmopolis is re-explored. This notion of a city embraces creativity, critical practice, adaptation, and it places urban development and planning in a context of multiple spatial and temporal scales.

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“…While they point, for example, to concerns by Chinese government officials about "'false eco-cities'…and 'fake elements of eco-cities'" [22], they also concede that the Chinese newly-built techno-city presents a new breed of eco-cities, "quite unlike many other contemporary eco-city initiatives elsewhere…planned on a smaller scale within existing cities and with a focus on community-based social and technological innovations" [22] (p. 134). In this and other contexts, Rapoport [25] sees eco-cities as playing a valuable role in advancing urban sustainability, as sites of experimentation and innovation where new ideas are being tested and sustainability ambitions conceived.…”

Section: Origins Of Contemporary Ecourbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods around the World

Holden

Molina

2015

Sustainability

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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.

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Utopian Visions and Real Estate Dreams: The Eco‐city Past, Present and Future

Abstract: This article traces the evolution of the eco-city as a concept and an urban planning model over the last 40 years, outlining the various definitions, applications and critiques of the term historically and today.

Cited by 94 publications

References 62 publications

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

Sustopia or Cosmopolis? A Critical Reflection on the Sustainable City

The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods around the World

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