Ecological Urbanism

With the aim of projecting alternative and sustainable forms of urbanism, the book asks: What are the key principles of an ecological urbanism? How might they be organized? And what role might design and planning play in the process?

While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities.

Ecological urbanism approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment.

The book brings together design practitioners and theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policy makers, environmental scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future.

Contributors include:

Homi Bhabha, Stefano Boeri, Chuck Hoberman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Bruno Latour, Nina-Marie Lister, Moshen Mostafavi, Matthias Schuler, Sissel Tolaas, Charles Waldheim

Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. Previously he was the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University and the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture. Prior to that, he had been the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He studied architecture at the AA and undertook research on counter-reformation urban history at the Universities of Essex and Cambridge.
Gareth Doherty is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Senior Research Associate at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In addition to Ecological Urbanism, he is a founding editor of New Geographies and with Charles Waldheim edited, Is Landscape...? Essays on the Identity of Landscape.