In late December, the U.S. State Department confirmed a Phase 2 of our 2016 Secondary Cities Urbinsight pilots in Medellín, Colombia and Cusco, Peru. They also introduced a third, new Pilot City: Santiago, Dominican Republic.After initial preparation and conversations, Ecocity Builders, the Secondary Cities program,...
By Richard RegisterI’m just back from a conference in Tianjin, China called the Vertical City Conference where I had the chance to dig a little deeper into the notions of Kenneth King and the approach to city design seen from the point of view of...
I have to credit two people for transforming cities around the world, starting in the US, into horizontal, that is, flat cities. I’ll show you a picture of both of them. Their world impact has been incalculable.First is Henry Ford who created probably the most...
Something big is coming up and something important might be neglected and set us way, way back. It is Earth Day 2020, and maybe we will not take advantage of a powerful opportunity to get cities right. This has everything to do with an honest...
Several of us, after a day of planning for the 11th International Ecocity Conference coming up in Abu Dhabi, headed out to dinner to eat, converse, think about the day and just plain relax. We were in Barcelona at the time and the time was...
I woke up yesterday thinking of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the guy condemned to forever be struggling, pushing an enormous rock up the hill, only to see it break away and roll back down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat… Sometimes pursuing the elusive “ecocity” feels something...
The international Ecocity Standards (www.ecocitystandards.org) call for “Access by Proximity,” a design solution that enables people to meet their needs on a daily basis without relying on motor vehicles for transportation. This requires pedestrian oriented design (POD) to be the dominant focus in urban planning.Many...
I think one of the most promising ideas for the Bay Area and cities everywhere would be a vision that weds the simple concept of 1.) building on artificial mounds of earth in a 2.) ecocity layout, a pattern we could be calling an “ecotropolis.”“Artificial...
A sustainability gap is the difference between the resources a person or population consumes and the resources available to support them. If demand exceeds supply, the sustainability gap measures by how much. If supply exceeds demand then no gap exists.The concept can be applied to...
By Richard RegisterIn the perfect world of politics and economics rolling along, direct and official accountability to the public, through free speech, open deliberation and voting (decision making) and taxing and spending (getting real about doing something) would be mainly through government and the law-making...