Ecopolis: Architecture and Cities for a Changing Climate

Abstract

If there is one thing that the reader takes away from this book, it is the recognition of the importance of the role of our cities, and the hope that they hold, for our sustainable future. For it is right here in our cities that we must start looking for solutions to our global environmental problems, and it is here where these issues will be found and solved. Cities, as Paul Downton sees them, are integral to what we are as humans – rather than merely separate constructs that we build and occupy. It is here that the fundamental basis of our civilisations began. And it is these cities that we must now change and reinvent, with ourselves as Paul says, ‘urban evolutionaries’. The book takes us through the wide range of issues that confront us, and which we must now resolve if our cities are to survive. Paul’s ideas are illustrated and tested by his own endeavours to build a microcosm of his Ecopolis vision, in his Christie Walk project in Adelaide, Australia. What his case studies demonstrate is that all the essential pieces of this new eco-urban jigsaw, already exist. His city vision is for an Ecopolis – consisting of key ideas about how ecology, biology, design, development, economics and society are brought together. His chapter on city ecology, provides a lucid explanation of cities as living entities that must physically connect and integrate biologically with our built environments. This is a vision that we both share, and is close to what we do as ecodesigners, architects and planners – to seamlessly and benignly biointegrate our designed systems with the natural environment.