Ecocity World Summit addresses the way humanity builds its home. It promote the understanding and development of cities that are ecologically healthy and sustainable, economically prosperous and fair, and socially just and caring.
Also known as ECOCITY, these inspiring gatherings of urban stakeholders from across the globe focus on key actions cities and citizens can take to rebuild our human habitat in balance with living systems.
The hybrid physical-virtual summit will take place in the iconic Barbican Centre, London.
The pioneer global conference on sustainable cities, Ecocity World Summit brings together urban stakeholders from across the globe to focus on key actions cities and citizens can take to rebuild our human habitat in balance with living systems.
First held in Berkeley/USA in 1990, the Ecocity World Summit is the longest standing international conference series on ecocities and has been hosted by the following cities:
ECOCITY 14 ROTTERDAM |
Rotterdam, Netherland |
URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS FOR NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS
Building on the success and innovation of previous meetings, Ecocity 2021-22 featured a wide range of sessions, workshops, and other learning opportunities, showcasing the latest research and developments in urban design and city transformation practices.
ECOCITY 13 VANCOUVER |
Vancouver, Canada |
Socially Just and Ecologically Sustainable Cities
Vancouver is a diverse and multicultural city that represents International Ecocity Standards in action, achieving high-density, mixed-use living, and a commitment to managing its ecological footprint in order to achieve one-planet living.
Ecocity 2019 helped to build an infrastructure of ideas, strategies, and actions that can be used to promote cities that are socially inclusive and ecologically healthy. The primary theme was “socially just and ecologically sustainability cities.” Important sub-themes included: climate action, circular economy, and informal solutions for sustainable development. These themes were woven through the conference tracks.
ECOCITY PRINCIPLES
The Summit was organised with deep awareness of ecological consequences, and was based on an economy of engagement. Central to its sessions was the principle that urban settlements should actively develop ongoing processes for dealing with the uncomfortable intersections of identity and difference, including the current tension between culture and nature.
Ecocities in Challenging Environments
The first Ecocity Summit to take place in the Middle East, Ecocity 2015’s conference theme revolved around ecocities in areas of resource limitations, especially those imposed by hot and arid climates.
ECWS 2015 aimed to build on UAE’s role as a serious player in sustainable development; support the development of sustainable growth strategies at the city-scale for the region and globally; and create a local, national and regional movement to accelerate sustainable city planning, land use, development, and green buildings.
TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE CITY
The Nantes summit focus on the following core themes:
CITIES BECOMING ECOCITIES
Ecocity 9 focused the following 6 themes:
1) Climate Change and Urban Planning
2) Ecomobility, Urban Planning, Public Space
3) Governance and Democracy in the Ecocity
4) Economics of the Ecocity
5) Health and the Built Environment
6) Biodiversity and Urban Agriculture
CITY PLANNING AND THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY
Ecocity 8 launched with the highest national official yet at any of our conferences. Veysel Eroglu, Minister of Environment and Forestry and head of the governmental body for all issues related to climate change in Turkey, led off with the opening keynote address on his country’s strategy for more sustainable cities and forests.
Citing his own country’s participation in the Kyoto Protocol, he said: Climate change is the most pressing and complex challenge that humanity faces today. Combating climate change requires strong solidarity of the international society…
CITIES IN BALANCE WITH NATURE AND CULTURE
The 7th International Ecocity Conference (Ecocity World Summit) focused on how cities and citizens can stop and reverse global climate change, biodiversity collapse, loss of wilderness habitat, agricultural lands and open space, and severe social and environmental injustices.
THEMES – People: population, health, equity, and access; Nature: protecting and restoring the planet’s living systems and agricultural lands; Sustainable Development: land use, transportation, architecture and infrastructure; Economies & Technologies: building the supporting markets, businesses and technologies; Incentives & Support Structures: role of government, organizations, institutions and individuals
PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES
The capital of high tech, the Silicon Valley of India, busy Bangalore provided Ecocity 6 with another spotlight illuminating problems and opportunities on ecocity front lines, this time hosted by an NGO called Project Agastya and Raja Rajeev Kumar.
Bangalore is famously prosperous as the Garden City of India, but equally renowned for frantic, titanic traffic congestion.
ECOCITY GOVERNANCE AND NATURAL SYSTEMS
Garden City Shenzhen enthusiastically hosted Ecocity 5, organized by Rusong Wang, director of the Center for Environmental and Ecological Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Science.
Shenzhen had just won a national prize as a garden city for its natural restoration efforts: in strips and patches of natural and agricultural areas, in mangrove forests on the coast and agricultural allotments adjacent and inside its rapidly expanding boundaries.
CLOSEST TO AN ECOCITY
Ecocity 4 featured explorations of such features in Curitiba as we outsiders could until then only dream about. Twenty-seven blocks of pedestrian streets, dozens of parks and plazas and a transit system co-developed with five arms of high-density residential and commercial development along streets reserved for buses – all these became objects of study and envy.
Educational programs incorporating ecological lifestyle changes along with basic skills for life in the city were provided in old recycled buses that became classrooms for a community of sparse economic means.
HOMEGROWN HOSPITALITY
This conference on the edge of hot desert and the thundering cold North Atlantic was an adventure deep into another culture and a rare perspective.
Many considered it the most exciting conference they had ever attended, thanks in large measure to the generous hospitality of the village of Yoff, near Dakar, which provided foreign conferees with lodging and a fair portion of their fish catch, drumming and dance, and to the hospitality of the city of Dakar, which provided the National Conference Center.
Local Action for Ecocities
Ecocity 2 was characterized by the passionate desire of our hosts in Adelaide to build a real project — ASAP!
Their chief effort was to use the conference to organize action for securing community support for a project for downtown Adelaide, Australia. Years after, they called the project an “urban fractal” – a fraction of the whole city made up of the crucial elements of housing, jobs, commerce, learning, food and public transport, all held together in a design so all parts best complement one another’s roles, just like the whole city is supposed to do — thus a potentially powerful example.
ENTHUSIASM BORN OF FRESH INNOVATION
Hands-on talent permeated the First International Ecocity Conference. Several testimonials came back from the participants in following years: “Your conference changed my life.”
Having great local talent provided a solid foundation and leading speakers from the US and 12 foreign countries made the event representative of the some of the best of what has since become known as “green” and “sustainable” design, technology, lifestyle and even philosophy.
