Eco-city Development: Planning a Sustainable Community

"Unlike biological communities, cities constitute a kind of artificial ecosystem dominated by human activities, sustained by natural life-support systems, and vitalized by ecological processes. The concept was introduced by Ma and Wang a Social-Economic-Natural Complex Ecosystem (SENCE) (4). The natural subsystem of the eco-city consists of the 5 traditional Chinese elements: metal (minerals), wood (living organisms), water, fire (energy), and soil (nutrients and land). Its economic subsystem includes the components of production, consumption, reduction, transportation, and regulation; while its social subsystem includes technology, institutions, and culture. Urban sustainability can only be ensured by human ecological understanding of the complex interactions between environmental, economic, political, and social/cultural factors and with careful planning and management based on ecological principles.
An eco-city is an ecologically healthy city. It is a healthy human ecological process leading to sustainable development within the carrying capacity of local ecosystems through changes in the production mode, consumption behavior and decision instruments based on ecological economics and systems engineering (5). Cities should be ecologically designed to enhance the health and quality of life of their inhabitants and to maintain the ecosystems on which they depend. This requires careful ecological planning and management and participation of citizens and stakeholders in the planning and management processes.
Eco-city development is a whole systems approach integrating administration, ecologically efficient industry, people's needs and aspirations, harmonious culture, and landscapes where nature, agriculture, and the built environment are functionally integrated." to find out more...

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