Ecocities
The idea of Ecocities is a new approach toward sustainable
living. Environmentalists used to believe that city living
was pollutive and destructive to the environment because
of the amount of sewage, trash, and unsanitary conditions
created and dumped onto the environment.
However, the alternative was to live in the suburbs,
which is also damaging to the environment because cars
are needed for transportation, and the amount of energy
used in a house by a single family (or a person living
alone) is much more per person than the amount of energy
used in an apartment for multiple family housing.
Contents
* 1 Solutions to urban sprawl
* 2 Politics of Urban Elitism
* 3 Agriculture in Ecocities
Solutions to urban sprawl
Because people would like to reduce urban sprawl, reduce
the length of daily commute, environmentalists, policy
makers, and developers are seeking new ways to allow people
to live closer to the workplace. Since the workplace tends
to be in the city, downtown, or urban center, they are
seeking a way to increase density without increasing the
problems usually associated with inner-city and urban
environment, such as burglary, murder, gangs, riots, and
other disruptions, as well as unsanitary conditions, like
old sewage, gum on the ground, and cars.
One of the new ways is the Smart Growth Movement.
Other solutions include increasing public transportation.
Again, the problem is that the viability of public transportation
depends on how many people are willing to take it. Increasing
population density as well as decreasing the appeal of
driving a car is a necessary step to encouraging people
to take public transportation.
Politics of Urban Elitism
Because the cities tend to resist new development, such
as more housing units, they contribute to the high costs
of living in the cities. As a result, there is an increasing
disparity in income between the rich and the poor in the
city, while middle-class people tend to live in the suburbs.
As a result, many of the recent political campaigns have
focused on "urban elitism," the idea that the
city is the domain of the rich, the bohemians, and those
who like to talk down to the middle-class.
This conveys the idea that the suburbs are home to "real
America," gun-toting, race-car loving, conservative,
average Joes, while the cities are home to elites who
are liberal in terms of government policies and progressivism.
Moreover, city-living people are considered to enjoy composting,
recycling, and taking public transportation — activities
portrayed as part of the fringe of mainstream society.
The reason for the lack of housing development is due
to the neighborhoods that comprise the city. They tend
to have strong community that are unwilling to allow developers
to disperse them by tearing down the old housing and building
new ones.
Agriculture in Ecocities
Not only are environmentalists, developers, and policy
makers looking to try to increase population density,
they are also seeking to put production of crops closer
to the cities to reduce transportation costs, amount of
pollution involved in transportation, and also increase
freshness of the crops produced. The Columbia University's
Vertical Farm Project is one of the most well-articulated
conceptions of this idea.
