ecourb presentation

Table of Contents: as list of verbs towards action.

ANTICIPATE: to give advance thought, discussion, or treatment to.

COLLABORATE: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.

SENSE: a meaning conveyed or intended.

CURATE: to manage, administer, or organize a collection.

PRODUCE: to compose, create, or bring out by intellectual or physical effort.

COLLABORATE: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.

INTERACT: to act upon one another.

MOBILIZE: to put into movement or circulation.

MEASURE: to learn the amount, size or distance of something.

COLLABORATE: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.

ADAPT: to make fit (as for a specific or new use or situation) often by modification.

INCUBATE: to cause or aid the development of

*Definitions from Merriam Websters Dictionary

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: A definition

Ecology: Study of the complex relations between organisms and their environments.-Eugene P. and Homer T. Odum Fundamentals of Ecology, 1953

Urbanism: Study of the physical needs of urban societies.-Merriam Websters Dictionary

While Ecological Urbanism is concerned with the “moral imperative of sustainablity”, it includes and extends beyond the notion of ‘greewashing’ and rather looks at the city holistically in terms of its people, processes, and forms. It is intended as an oxymoron, responding to the world we’ve created that thrives on opposites.

Beyond a formal vision, ecological urbanism is a process and practice. It is a process that thrives on opposites, that is “lived in, that we breathe and smell, that encourages social interaction, participation, even disagreement.” According to Mostafavi, it is not “a new form of religiosity, not a fundamentalist green movement.”

“...ecological design practice does not simply take account of the fragility of the ecosystem and the limits on resources but considers such conditions the essential basis for a new form of creative imagining.”

It “utilizes a multiplicity of old and new methods, tools, and techniques in a cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach toward urbanism developed through the lens of ecology.”

“Yes another key characteristic of ecological urbanism is its recognition of the scale and scope of the impact of ecology, which extends beyond the urban territory. The city, for all its importance, can no longer be thought of only as a physical manifestation...distinctions between rural and urban contingencies can lead to uncertainties and contradictions

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM vs landscape urbanism

“In his introduction to the Ecological Urbanism conference, Mohsen Mostafavi described ecological urbanism as both a critique of and a continuation by other terms of the discourse of landscape urbanism. Ecological urbanism proposes (just as landscape urbanism proposed over a decade ago) to multiply the available lines of thought on the contemporary city to include environmental and ecological concepts, while expanding traditional disciplinary and professional frameworks for describing urban conditions. As a critique of the landscape urbanist agenda, ecological urbanism promises to render that dated discourse more specific to ecological, economic, and social conditions of the contemporary city”

-Charles Waldheim, Weak Work: Andrea Branzi’s “Weak Metropolis” and the Projective Potential of an “Ecological Urbanism”