An Array of Utopian Flowers
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La Loba: Wild Woman, Luminous Wolf
Posted on May 15, 2013 | 1 Comment -
Vandana Shiva: Maintaining Biodiversity and the Seeds of Freedom
Posted on May 11, 2013 | No Comments -
African Garden Cities: Urbanization Without Planning for People
Posted on May 7, 2013 | No Comments -
Earth Sheltered Homes: Energy-Efficient, Living With the Land
Posted on May 6, 2013 | No Comments -
Robert Haw: Overcoming Climate Disaster with a Carbon Tax
Posted on May 3, 2013 | No Comments
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WilderUtopia in 64 Languages
Chasing Ice: The New “Inconvenient Truth”
Arctic Melting Before Our Eyes - In his new film on the disappearance of Arctic glaciers, “Chasing Ice,” author, award-winning photographer and reformed climate-change denier James Balog used time-lapse photography to capture global warming in progress.
Read MoreEcological Urbanism
A City Green Re-Imagination - We must demand an ecological retrofitting of our urban environments to live together more efficiently, giving credence to community, allowing space for the open wild.
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Sustainability Archive
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Earth Day: Sustainability Movement Heals Humanity in the Wild
Posted on April 20, 2013 | 1 CommentThis Earth Day 2013, world ecosystems face imminent danger from humanity's ecological overreach and climate change. Following the original 1970 theme of a national teach-in, promoting awareness of the acute problems, we must pose solutions to advance environmental sustainability, building a movement to work toward its implementation. -
Los Angeles River Revitalization: A City Rediscovers its Flow
Posted on April 9, 2013 | 1 CommentThe LA River, an over-engineered concrete "water-freeway," is undergoing a long-term greening and revitalization. A 32-mile greenbelt, developed through numerous projects, promises to improve the health of the ecosystem and the value of the river as a regional public amenity, while managing flows and protecting properties. -
Arcosanti: Paolo Soleri’s Visionary Eco-City Protoype in Arizona
Posted on January 18, 2013 | 3 CommentsA visionary eco-city in the Arizona desert, Arcosanti is an urban laboratory created by Paolo Soleri. Based on the concept of Arcology, or ecological architecture, it presents a compact, sustainable, energy-efficient urban form that confronts environmental destruction, economic collapse, and social dislocation. -
BioMilano: Italian Eco-Vision Grows 26-Storey Vertical Forest
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsNow under construction is the Bosco Verticale or Vertical Forest, the first phase of BioMilano, a re-envisioning of Milan, Italy, with an eye toward ecological urbanism, integrating tree and skyscraper, city and wild. -
Affordable and Green: Net-Zero House in Washington DC
Posted on December 27, 2012 | No CommentsEMPOWERHOUSE is a community-based approach to sustainable urban development showcasing the design of two affordable, energy-efficient solar powered homes and a neighborhood learning garden for inner-city Washington DC and beyond. -
China’s Urbanizing Utopia: Ghost Cities and Propaganda Theme Parks
Posted on December 19, 2012 | 2 CommentsChina has been building ghost towns for years, and like a never-ending vaudeville show, the bizarre overbuilding never stops. Here are four of 2012's most eyebrow-raising developments. -
Agricultural Urbanism: Designing Cities as Edible Ecosystems
Posted on December 8, 2012 | 1 CommentThe world’s population is expected to rise to 10 billion by 2050. Yet with 80 per cent of the planet’s usable farmland already cultivated, the effects of climate change wreaking havoc across large areas of existing farmland, and more than 10 per cent of humanity going to bed hungry every night, growing enough sustenance for three billion new mouths is not going to be easy. -
US EPA: 2012 Awards for Smart Growth Sustainability-Minded Projects
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe U.S. EPA recognized seven communities with its 2012 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. Specific initiatives include improving transportation choices, developing green, energy-efficient buildings and communities, and providing community members with access to job training, health and wellness education, and other services. -
Urban Ecology: Promoting Life in the Concrete Jungle
Posted on November 30, 2012 | No CommentsIn the growing field of urban ecology, scientists study cities as if they were ecosystems. With cities launching efforts to slash carbon emissions, reduce water use and improve habitats, scientists are beginning to evaluate how such policies affect the overall health of the urban environment. -
A Los Angeles Rail~Volution: A City in Sustainable Transition – By Jack Eidt
Posted on October 23, 2012 | No CommentsThe Rail~Volution Conference rolled into Los Angeles to illustrate how transit projects energize neighborhoods, meeting a significant demand for multi-density housing walkable to restaurants, offices, and shops. They can transform the landscape and mindset, in this case, of auto-addicted Southern California. One stop at a time. -
Earthship Biotecture: Self-Sufficient, Off-the-Grid Communities
Posted on October 16, 2012 | 2 CommentsPassive solar Earthships provide electricity, potable water, sustainable food production, with contained sewage treatment, and can be built anywhere in the world. Renegade eco-architect Michael Reynolds' construction and design process called Earthship Biotecture creates beyond LEED Architecture, a sustainable green building design made of natural and recycled materials. -
Sustainable Mobility: Rail~Volution Los Angeles 2012
Posted on October 10, 2012 | 1 CommentRail~Volution is a network, movement and conference that brings together community advocates, developers, and civic planners energized by a mix of ideas, cultures, and transit projects unique to the greater Los Angeles region, on the 14th to 17th of October 2012. -
Midway Atoll: The Plastic Plight of the Albatross – By Jack Eidt
Posted on October 9, 2012 | 16 CommentsThe Albatross journey across the sea takes them over the world’s largest dump: slowly rotating masses of partially-submerged trash. This is known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, part of a system of currents with light winds called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, between San Francisco and Hawai’i. -
Urban Neighborhoods Revitalized with Certified Greening
Posted on October 3, 2012 | 1 CommentThree LEED-ND pilot participants—the Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the SALT District in Syracuse, New York; and Tassafaronga Village in Oakland, California—show promise as neighborhood-scale revitalized green adaptive reuse in a difficult economy. -
Vision of Sustainable Mobility? High-Speed Rail Challenges California – By Jack Eidt
Posted on September 17, 2012 | 3 CommentsDespite an eventual pricetag of $68 billion and numerous engineering, environmental and political challenges, the California bullet train offers a promising vision of sustainable mobility, posing less impacts and competitive costs than expanding airports and freeways. -
Beasts of the Southern Wild: Bayou Culture Sinking into the Gulf – By Jack Eidt
Posted on August 28, 2012 | No Comments"Beasts," a hard-knock ecological fairy tale about the disappearing Louisiana bayou coastline, highlights the fragility of the region's hurricane defenses and the resulting devastation of communities and cultures living on the flooding margins. -
Electric Streetcars: Back to the Urban Future
Posted on August 25, 2012 | No CommentsThe movement toward revitalization of downtown areas in the United States with streetcars brings 19th century urbanism together with 21st century sustainability, despite the usual fossil fueled detractors. -
Detroit Works: Urban Farming and Reforestation as Neighborhood Preservation
Posted on August 9, 2012 | 2 CommentsDetroit Works, the long-term planning vision for the long-rusting Motor City, embraces the urban farming, permaculture, and ecological urbanism movements seen in cities across the United States, to chart the way to more a prosperous and sustainable future. -
Singapore: Gardens By The Bay Sprout Supertrees and Horticultural Conservatories
Posted on July 25, 2012 | No CommentsGigantic steel, concrete and wire trees rise from manicured serpentine gardens, human-blessed symmetry reaching skyward. At the bay’s edge, two sustainably-designed domes invite visitors to explore world biomes and horticultural paradises. A public amusement park, ecological urbanism designed to invite the populace to rediscover the earth, a visit to Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay evokes a green wonderland, human-designed, artistically crafted, growing "wild" and sort-of-natural. -
Toll Lanes as Congestion Management: Mobility for the Wealthy Few
Posted on July 4, 2012 | No CommentsConverting freeway lanes to tollways in the name of congestion management, without viable transit alternatives, will only reduce mobility for the majority in exchange for wealthy drivers getting to work on time. -
Hello Urbanism: Southern California Sprawl Grows Up
Posted on April 18, 2012 | 2 CommentsSouthern California's new Sustainable Communities Strategy plan posits that as a region, we have to grow up, not out. That doesn't mean Hong Kong skyscrapers, but more apartments near light-rail stations and vibrant mixed-use areas like the ones in downtown Pasadena. -
Ecological Urbanism: A City Green Re-Imagination – By Jack Eidt
Posted on April 17, 2012 | 4 CommentsWe must view the fragility of the planet, the disaster of our resource addiction, the warming of the earth's atmosphere as an immune response to our daily environmental mis-stepping, a call for a re-conceptualization of our cities. We must demand a retrofitting of our urban environments to live together more efficiently, giving credence to community, allowing space for the open wild in us and them. -
Detroit’s Sprawling Legacy: How to Overcome the Automobile? – By Jack Eidt
Posted on March 18, 2012 | 2 CommentsDetroit must overcome its sprawling landscape and its prime benefactor: the automobile, to revive the economy and become an environmentally sustainable 21st Century city. -
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Urban Approaches to Zero Waste
Posted on March 15, 2012 | 16 CommentsCities in the US have begun moving toward zero waste by diverting up to 90% of discarded materials from landfills, conserving and recovering them as resources. -
Smart Growth: San Diego’s Approach to Sustainable Communities
Posted on March 10, 2012 | 4 CommentsWith "ambitious but achievable" transportation and land use proposals left off the table, California's first climate protection mandated Sustainable Communities Strategy aimed high but did not quite achieve setting the San Diego region on a long-term course toward sustainability.
