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THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Ecovillages and Healing Biotopes: Holistic Approaches to Sustainable

Community Development in Urban Spaces and Rural Hinterlands

MASTER’S THESIS

In partial fulfillment of the

Master in Development Studies (MDev)

by

Michael Karner

(France)

Geneva

2011

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A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

-Aristotle

The late Aldo Leopold remarked long ago that man does not perceive organic behavior in

systems unless he has built them himself. Let us hope it will not be necessary to rebuild the

entire biosphere before we recognize the worth of natural systems.

-Eugene Odum

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 4

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 5

I. Situating Human Settlement Patterns in a Global Context ................................................. 8

1) The Elusive Concept of Sustainable Development ............................................................ 8

2) The Urban Space: Free-Floating or Entrenched in Local Realities? ................................ 11

II. The City and its Natural Environment : Theoretical Approaches ................................... 15

1) The “Natural” City ........................................................................................................... 15

2) The Metabolic City ........................................................................................................... 18

III) “Greenwashing” the City .............................................................................................. 21

1) Commodifying Alternatives: the Example of Ecodistricts ............................................. 21

2) Technological Messianism : the Example of Masdar (Dubai) ......................................... 25

IV. Alternatives for Sustainable Living: the Example of Ecovillages .................................. 27

1) Defining Aspects of the Ecovillage Movement ............................................................... 27

2) Tamera Healing Biotope (Portugal) ................................................................................. 32

2.1. Technology: Beyond the Technocratic Framework ...................................................... 33

2.2. Ecosystem Restoration: Creating Sustainable Regional Economies ............................. 36

3) Limitations of the Ecovillage Model ................................................................................ 40

V) Sustainable Urban Habitats: Imagining the “Ecopolis” ................................................ 42

1) Rising Awareness of Holistic Approaches to the Urban Space ....................................... 42

2) Community Action for Sustainable Urban Lifestyles ...................................................... 44

3) The Ecopolis and the Emergence of Ecological Cultures ................................................ 47

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 50

APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................... 51

APPENDIX 1: Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City ................................................................. 51

APPENDIX 2 : the Permaculture Flower ............................................................................. 52

APPENDIX 3 : The Solar Power Village ............................................................................. 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 55

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ABSTRACT

This paper describes mainstream and alternative approaches to sustainable habitat

development, using the rural ecovillage and the urban ecodistrict as examples. Creating

sustainable living spaces for humanity is an urgent necessity. It is argued that conventional

visions of sustainable development fail to integrate ecological and social (eco-social) criteria

in their appraisals of what sustainability actually is. This is especially clear when one

examines technology-based, economistic approaches to sustainable living. An overview of

theories linking the city and its natural environment illustrates that eco-social criteria are

fundamental to holistic understandings of sustainable habitats and to the relationship

between humanity and nature. Such holistic strategies are already at hand in ecovillages.

This analysis seeks to illustrate the ways in which the latter may be applied at the scales of

cities and entire regions in Northern and Southern settings alike.

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INTRODUCTION

Less than five years ago, a historical threshold was passed by humanity. In 2007,

around half of the world’s population was living in urban areas for the first time in human

history (The Cities Alliance, 2007: 1). This civilizational shift towards a humanity of cities

presents tremendous ecological and social (eco-social) challenges. About 1 billion people,

nearly one third of the world’s urban population, lived in slums or slum-like conditions in

2005. About 25 million people join their ranks every year. These numbers are bound to surge

in the coming decades: recent United Nations projections state that between 2050 and 2100,

the world population is likely to exceed 10 billion inhabitants. Accordingly, the world’s

largest urban areas are sprawling to gargantuan proportions, swallowing up valuable tracts of

urban and rural hinterland. For the time being, cities occupy 2% of the Earth’s total surface,

and consume around three-quarters of all resources used by humanity every year (Blanc,

2009: 234). Given that an ever increasing proportion of humanity will settle in urban

agglomerations, what are the possibilities for large-scale sustainable habitat development

today, if any?

In this paper, we reflect upon the potential applications of current experiments in

sustainable habitat development in urban spaces and regions. An essential aspect of

sustainable habitat development lies in an appraisal of the links that connect urban areas to

their natural environment and rural hinterland. At the same time, the day-to-day conception

and construction of such habitats is an eminently social affair, interpenetrated by economic,

socio-political and cultural considerations. This may explain why sectorial appraisals of such

complex issues fail to achieve a good understanding of what sustainable habitats actually are.

This calls for an interdisciplinary and holistic framework of analysis that draws upon the

natural and social sciences. Basing itself on secondary literature as well as fieldwork1, this

analysis will focus on two specific concepts that are rapidly spreading around the world: the

1 My ecovillage fieldwork consisted of a 15-day stay in Tamera peace research village in the rural Alentejo

region of southern Portugal. I followed the village’s one-week Introduction Course which introduced students to

Tamera’s work in ecology, political activism (peace work), spirituality and human relations. I stayed an

additional week during which I followed this routine as a “trainee” while deepening my understanding of

Tamera through numerous informal interviews. I was also able to visit the well-known Vauban ecodistrict in

Freiburg, Germany. The visit provided me with valuable insights into the ecological build-up and spatial

organization of this well-known ecodistrict.

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(mostly rural) ecovillage and the urban ecodistrict. “Ecovillages” asserts the Global

Ecovillage Network (GEN), “are human-scale settlements, rural or urban, in the North or in

the South that strive to create models for sustainable living. They emerge according to the

characteristics of their own bio-regions and typically embrace four dimensions: the social, the

ecological, the cultural and the spiritual combined into a systemic, holistic approach that

encourages community and personal development” (Dawson, 2004). Ecodistricts are urban

experiments in sustainable habitat development. Seeking inspiration from such models is

essential at a time when the question of sustainable living has attained a degree of urgency

unknown in the history of humankind. Indeed, “business as usual” approaches are not adapted

to holistic appraisals of how humanity is to deal with the imminent “energy descent future”

(Holmgren, 2004). Thus, our analysis also provides a broad critique of mainstream

approaches to sustainable development, coupled with an overview of several alternatives

already at hand. Generally speaking, it seems that grassroots and mainstream tendencies in

sustainable living have much to exchange: “Aujourd’hui, l’esprit de la démarche des

marginaux d’hier est devenu un mode de pensée qui irrigue les orientations de la ville à

venir.” (Butaud, 2009: 6). Perhaps the time has come to allow for a more open dialogue between

the mainstream and the marginal, and between the urban and the rural.

Thus, the main research question that forms the backbone of our analysis is the following:

How can holistic current experiments in sustainable living further our understandings of

sustainable community development, and how may these findings be integrated into urban

development policy?

This analysis is divided into five main parts. We begin with an outline of the contested

concept of “sustainable development”, and describe how conflicting understandings of the

latter crystallize in the field of sustainable habitat development. The following section will

depict theoretical approaches to the relations between the city and its natural environment,

which indicate that urban spaces are necessarily “embedded” in the latter. Following this, we

will apply these findings to the examples of the urban ecodistrict and to the so-called ecocity

of Masdar (Dubai). It will illustrate to which extent both of these examples omit eco-social

considerations and perpetuate flawed understandings of the relation between human

settlements and their environment. This will be contrasted with the ecovillage movement,

which aims at developing sustainable habitats inspired by a holistic approach to the

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relationship between humanity and nature. The final part will discuss the potential

applications of ecovillages’ holistic experiments in sustainable living in the urban space.

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I. SITUATING HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN A GLOBAL

CONTEXT

1) THE ELUSIVE CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The issue of sustainable habitats for humankind currently revolves around the

buzzword of sustainable development, defined as “…development that meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

(WECD, 1987) 2

. Since its inception in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission, the expression

has become increasingly devoid of meaning. Despite the ubiquity of the concept of

“sustainable development” today, global inequalities and environmental degradation have

surged unabated3.

Before the emergence of “sustainable development”, the idea of “eco-development”

emerged at the 1972 Conference of Stockholm. Eco-development failed to gain public

recognition at the time, but emphasized values such as self-reliance, satisfaction of basic

needs, and a form of development that did not rely on limited stocks of fossil fuels (Sachs,

1980). These criteria are still all-important today. However, the Brundtland Commission

enlarged eco-development’s definition by including consumption of finite fossil fuel stocks in

its definition of sustainable development. The concept was thereby boiled down to a form of

ordinary, fossil fuel reliant growth combined with eco-social objectives incompatible with

maintenance of a fossil fuel based economy. Sustainable development paradoxically suggests

a form of development that maintains unlimited, fossil fuel dependent growth as its main

focus, while encouraging this “new” growth to be more ecologically and socially attuned. By

contrast, ecological sustainability emphasizes economic growth that is compatible with

2

Broadly speaking, the mainstream definition of “sustainable development” can be equated to current

understandings of “développement durable” in French. 3 Global inequality is such that the upper quintile of the world’s population owns 86% of global wealth, while

the lower quintile owns 1,3 % (UNDP, 1998). 40% of the global population shares 5% of global revenue, while

the richest 10% share 54% of this revenue. (UNDP quoted in van Griethuysen and Arruda, 2008: 41).

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eco- social criteria4 . It can be defined as “…the existence of the ecological conditions

necessary to support human life at a specified level of well-being through future generations.”

(Lélé, 1991: 609-610). These ecological conditions necessarily imply truly sustainable forms

of economic growth that no longer rely on the depletion of the biosphere’s5 fossil fuel stocks.

Mainstream visions of growth, including the Brundtland Commission’s, depend on

ever increasing inputs of human, natural and financial capital to maintain the global economic

system in place:

…la mondialisation capitaliste s’accompagne de l’essor d’une société hyper-

industrielle (Erkman 1998), moteur de l’expansion mondiale du développement

capitaliste et grande consommatrice de ressources minérales non renouvelables. Cet

essor industriel requiert un renouvellement technologique permanent, à commencer

par des technologies de transport et de communication à l’échelle planétaire,

nécessitant des infrastructures toujours plus conséquentes, consommatrices de

quantités toujours plus importantes de ressources humaines, financières et naturelles.

(van Griethuysen and Arruda, 2008: 39)

In this configuration, technology is essential to the stability and further expansion of a global

network of trade and capital, itself dependent on fossil fuels. Technological innovations are

researched and adopted at a large scale depending on their chances of generating large

incomes. Thus, technology is submitted to economic rationality alone instead of assuming or

eco-social functions as well:

Nous savons depuis longtemps comment améliorer nos performances écologiques à

peu près dans tous les domaines. (…) nous ne les réalisons pas parce que cette

amélioration de la qualité de vie ne correspond pas au critère de la rationalité

économique, qui sélectionne les innovations technologiques et organisationnelles

selon leur impact sur la valeur monétaire de la propriété engagée, et non pas selon

leur impact sur la qualité de vie. (Steppacher, 2006: 11)

4 Such criteria comprise notions of social equity and justice, as well as indicators of the impact of human

populations on their natural environment in terms of waste production, greenhouse gas remissions, biodiversity

preservation, and so on. 5 The Biosphere is “…le système écologique global intégrant tous les êtres vivants et les relations qu’ils tissent

entre eux, avec les éléments chimiques de la lithosphère (les roches), de l’hydrosphère (l’eau) et de l’atmosphère

(l’air), dans un métabolisme global qui transforme sans cesse la surface de la Terre. » (Grinevald, 2002 : 3). This

definition corresponds to the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky’s original approach to the term, which has

been ascribed varied and occasionally erroneous meanings. On the history of the fundamental Biosphere

concept, see Grinevald (1987).

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Such is the fixation on economic rationality that in neoclassical economics, the ecological or

social consequences of any economic process are defined as non-quantifiable “externalities”.

As such, they do not figure in conventional cost-benefit analyses and are rarely taken into

account by economic actors. This shortcoming has led some academics to suggest that the

shift from “empty-world” to “full-world” economics is urgent (Daly quoted in Rees and

Wackernagel, 1996: 224): economics can no longer remain a science freed of any

environmental or social constraints. Until then, such “external” imperatives will remain

secondary concerns for a great majority of the world’s (unaware) population: “This failure of

global markets to transmit signals about resource depletion and environmental degradation

has insulated consumers against the need for developing more self-reliant lifestyles, and

disabled the drive for public policies which might assist these necessary adaptations.”

(Holmgren, 2004: 4-5).

At present, solutions to the all-embracing issue of climate change are of a technocratic

nature, involving technological inputs and the top-down use of market forces (such as carbon

taxes or biofuel subsidies) to alleviate environmental problems. Thus, nature is being

appropriately “managed” in terms of “natural capital” and neo-classical economic policy. This

semiotic shift towards the capitalization of nature is apparent in many mainstream discourses

on the environment. Its degradation and resource exhaustion are seen as management

problems, and not as system breakdowns, thereby becoming a renewed source of dynamism

for capitalism (M. O’Connor, 1994):

…we will enter a world in which capitalism does not merely appropriate nature, then

turn it into commodities…but rather a world in which capital remakes nature and its

products physically and biologically (and politically and ideologically) in its own

image.” (J. O’Connor quoted in Goldman, 2000: 566)

A mainstay of this approach to nature is “technological messianism” or technology seen as the

vector whereby all hurdles to humanity’s further development (in whichever direction) will be

allayed (Steppacher, 2006). Economic rationality applied to technological messianism is

instrumental in defining which strategies are acceptable in terms of sustainable development.

Accordingly, the issue of sustainable habitat development is also framed in terms of this

technocratic and economistic system.

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2) THE URBAN SPACE: FREE-FLOATING OR ENTRENCHED IN LOCAL

REALITIES?

Cities have been the main drivers of economic growth since the beginning of the

thermo-industrial revolution6 in the late 18

th century (Grinevald, 1990). Indeed, today’s cities

are necessarily “mineral”, meaning that their functioning and very existence depends on non-

renewable stocks of fossil fuels. From the thermo-industrial revolution onwards, a fraction of

humanity living in the world’s most industrialized countries fundamentally changed the

biosphere’s biogeochemical cycles (Steppacher, 2006:6). Thus, one may distinguish the

Holocene (the postglacial geological epoch of the past 10 to 12,000 years) from the epoch of

the Anthropocene, beginning with the thermo-industrial revolution and the accompanying

shift from rural to urban civilization. Since then, humans have increasingly become a global

geophysical force, apparent in global warming and climate change (Steffen, Crutzen and

McNeill, 2007).

Cities can be seen as the main drivers of unsustainable growth trends through their

economic role in the global economy. Urban areas account for the majority of global resource

consumption, as well as enormous amounts of waste. Not only has this factor perturbed the

biosphere’s biogeochemical cycles; it has also led to the appearance of hazardous urban

habitats:

By the time this century passes its first quarter, more than a billion and half

people in the world’s cities will face life and health threatening environments unless

we can create a revolution in urban problem solving. (United Nations Conference

Habitat II quoted in CIFAL, 2005:1)

Awareness of this enormous challenge is still lacking, or the latter is simply

misrepresented by the mainstream approaches to development outlined above: “Successful

cities should offer investors security, infrastructure (including water and energy) and

efficiency. It should also put the needs of its citizens at the forefront of its planning activities.

6 The prefix “thermo” describes that fact that from the 18

th century onwards, the transformation of thermal into

mechanical energy became the basis for industrial equipment and processes. The increased use of limited fossil

fuel stocks to fuel the latter signaled the beginning of an anthropic (man-induced) perturbation of the

atmosphere’s thermic equilibrium (Grinevald, 1990).

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A successful city recognizes its natural assets, its citizens and its environments and builds on

there to ensure the best possible returns.” (The Cities Alliance, 2007: 22). This quote

adequately embodies the concept of “global cities”, which sustains that cities are, at present,

engaged in a worldwide race to attract transnational investments rewarding the most

competitive and attractive amongst them. This also explains why this specific report mentions

a city’s investors first, its citizens second and its natural environment last, while applying the

same economist jargon to all three. A city’s environment is treated as an “asset” that may

ensure satisfying “returns” if “efficiently” managed. Only then will it prove “efficient”

enough to “attract” investors and capital. In a nutshell, we observe a curious inversion of logic

in this definition of cities, which seems to that suggest that cities derive their sustenance from

a worldwide network of investors that will, in turn, enable the needs of citizens and

environment to be addressed. Historically, the relationship seems to be quite the opposite.

Globalization is seen as having encouraged the development of global networks of trade and

finance connecting the world’s great metropolitan areas, thereby bypassing the nation-state

and extracting the city from its natural environment and rural hinterland. However, these

peripheral spaces from which “global cities” are supposedly detached are being used more

intensively than ever before in order to fuel the expansion of urban areas in terms of human

and natural capital. As Rees and Wackernagel pointed out, the ecological locations of high-

density human settlements no longer coincide with their geographic locations (Rees and

Wackernagel, 1996). For instance, Tokyo currently requires a biological zone three times

superior to the total land mass of Japan for its consumption needs (Earth Council quoted in

Davis, 2009: 76). In this sense,

Cities necessarily “appropriate” the ecological output and life support functions of

distant regions all over the world through commercial trade and natural

biogeochemical cycles. Perhaps the most important insight from this result is that no

city or urban region can achieve sustainability on its own. (Rees and Wackernagel,

1996: 236)

Consequently, a prerequisite for sustainable cities is sustainable use of the “global

hinterland”. Thus, any study of the city should also delve into the issues of its integration into

the surrounding region, and analyze its worldwide exchanges with other locations on the

planet. In sum, urban landscapes are the main obstacles to, and potential drivers of,

sustainable habitat development. However, the dominance of techno-industrial approaches to

growth hinders the implementation of alternatives to current development trends:

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…dans le cadre de la mondialisation capitaliste et industrielle, l’omniprésence des

critères de la propriété rend le développement des alternatives extrêmement difficile.

Dans le cadre de cette sélection culturelle quasi-permanente, toute tentative de

valoriser des critères alternatifs, comme la qualité de vie, un mode de gestion

coopératif ou l’agriculture biologique, font l’objet de discrimination. (van

Griethuysen and Arruda, 2008: 64)

In order to foster a coherent approach to sustainable development, it is necessary to

“re-embed” economic rationality into human activities by positing a series of eco-social

criteria. Eco-social criteria do not guarantee sustainability or social equity, but form a mode of

social organization that is compatible with these principles (van Griethuysen and Arruda,

2008). Thus, sustainable cities could ultimately be equated to the following definition: “A

sustainable community enables its citizens to meet their needs and to enhance their well-being

without damaging the natural world or endangering the living conditions of other people, now

or in the future.” (Girardet, 2000: 3)

At a theoretical level, creating sustainable communities within the urban space raises

the question of scale. Scale refers to the spatial and temporal level of analysis applied to the

object that one is studying. The discipline of political ecology7 has extended the findings of

human geography in order to address the problematic issue of scale. Two of the first political

ecologists elaborated the “nested set of scales” (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987, pp.65-6). This

method takes a given region as its fundamental unit of analysis. It will appear that this is an

appropriate unit for sustainable habitat development. For instance, Lewis Mumford suggested

forms of “regional planning”, in which the needs of the town and those of the countryside are

planned together. The following set of scales is but one example of an appropriate framework

for sustainable habitat development in a given region:

i) The first scale provides a predominantly physical and technical description of the

region, inspired mainly by the natural sciences. For our purposes, urban ecology,

metabolic analysis and industrial ecology provide good lenses of analysis for this

scale.

ii) A scale that takes into account “settlement histories and the spatial unfolding of

7 “The phrase “political ecology” combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy.

Together, this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also

within classes and groups within society itself.” (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987:p.17)

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political economy” which are important in “explaining the variations of the social

relations of production” within the region. This scale focuses on the historical

heritage of the area. More specifically, it seeks to understand how the organization

of human settlements is indicative of the socio-economic differentiation processes

that underlie them. The socio-economic landscape of the city or of an urban region

can be analysed from this vantage point.

iii) An analysis of “non-place based...networks of economic, social, political

relations”. This supra-regional level of analysis refers to the national, international

and global scales of analysis, which directly or indirectly affect the inhabitants and

natural environment of the region in manifold ways.

As the figures mentioned in the introduction illustrate, sustainable habitat development is

a global issue that directly or indirectly involves the overwhelming majority of humanity. At

the same time, its realization is necessarily defined by local ecological, socio-economic and

cultural factors. Sustainable communities are sustainable precisely because they are attuned to

the natural environment in which they are embedded. Thus, sustainable habitat development

is intimately related to the catchphrase “Think Globally, Act Locally”:

Local character' is thus no mere accidental old-world quaintness, as its mimics

think and say. It is attained only in course of adequate grasp and treatment of the

whole environment, and in active sympathy with the essential and characteristic life

of the place concerned. (Geddes, 1915: 397)

The following section will outline theoretical approaches to the city and its natural

environment, illustrating the fact that a city, however “global”, is necessarily entrenched in

local ecological and social realities.

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II. THE CITY AND ITS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT:

THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Seeing the city and its natural environment as interconnected is essential to the

development of more sustainable settlement patterns. This section provides a brief overview

of theories of the city and its natural environment, which are useful starting points for holistic

understandings of urban, suburban and rural areas seen as an indivisible totality.

1) THE “NATURAL” CITY

Attempts to “green” the “mineral city” have accompanied urban expansion since the

thermo-industrial revolution, in line with increasing awareness of the environmental

degradation and dangerous working conditions that plagued urban spaces. In the 18th

century,

Hygienist doctors sought to eradicate rampant insalubrity in dense city centers by eradicating

the central slums and run-down areas inhabited by worker populations. Thus, the “suburb”

emerged as a means to resettle working class populations while “cleaning” Europe’s industrial

capitals’ city centers, which thereby became attractive for the urban bourgeoisie. One of the

more ambitious attempts to improve the workers’ livelihoods resided in Ebenezer Howard’s

concept of garden cities, which aimed at developing affordable housing in clean environments

for the British working class (Howard, 1902). Workers were intended to find employment in

their place of residence, which also offered culture and entertainments. Garden cities were

designed to be compact, symmetrical within their own borders, with a surrounding “green

belt” of agricultural land ensuring the city’s food sovereignty. Howard argued that in this

way, the positive points of the town and the countryside could be combined into a third

“magnet”, the Garden City (see Appendix 1). The concept influenced British urban policy

significantly, as the New Town Act of 1946 illustrates (Lambert, 2004).

The United States experienced some of the world’s fastest rates of urbanization

throughout the 19th

century. The Chicago School of sociology of the first half of the 20th

century provided valuable analyses of these recent developments. Fundamentally, its theorists

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thought of the city as a social laboratory in which human beings’ attempts to create a world in

their own image crystallized. The school believed in qualitative methodologies that allowed

for a naturalistic and nearly ethnographic exploration of this urban laboratory. Thus, the city

dweller was equated to a human in his/her natural habitat:

For the city and the urban environment represent man’s most consistent and, on the

whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in after his heart’s

desire. But if the city is the world which men created, it is the world in which he is

henceforth condemned to live. (Park quoted in Rudolf, 2008:55)

It is of note that these words were written at a time of rampant urban expansion in the United

States. The kaleidoscopic complexity of the city encouraged a form of awe at the grandeur of

humanity’s ambitions and realizations. However, it often yielded to disorientation induced by

a pronounced sense of loss of identity and contact with the wider human community8. The

Chicago School’s naturalistic focus implied that ecological models and biological metaphors

were appropriate devices for understanding urban social relations (Lutters and Ackerman,

1996). These social systems were compared to ecological systems progressing towards

maturity, or climax states. Different urban zones characterized by specific forms of land use

were considered to be either in symbiotic or competitive relationship to each other. Viewed as

an inseparable whole, land, population and culture were seen as expanding and maturing in

mutual, dynamic interaction:

Si on observe un écosystème, on constate qu’il évolue de façon spontanée et auto-

organisée d’un état juvénile, caractérisé par un surplus de photosynthèse par rapport

à la respiration, vers un état de maturité (climax) où le système trouve un équilibre.

Il arrête de grandir, mais continue à évoluer dans une grande complexité. Le vivant

s’oriente vers la maturité et corrige les proliférations inappropriées par un processus

évolutif permanent. (Steppacher, 2006:8)

From this perspective, current efforts to “green” cities are an integral part of the “maturing” of

urban spaces. However, these elaborate and homogenous models could not capture the near-

infinite complexity of the urban fabric (Lutters and Ackerman, 1996: 4). An aspect that was

lacking in the School’s reflections was the degree to which the city is embedded in its

immediate natural, human and ideational environment. All too often, it was assumed to be a

self-contained and self-sufficient environment functioning in autarky:

8 For instance, the alienating power of the towering modern city was aptly described by John Dos Passos in

Manhattan Transfer, set in 1920s New York. It became a recurrent theme of twentieth century art: the urbanite

human being had condemned himself indeed.

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La perspective privilégiée est celle du microcosme urbain, abstraction faite de la

place de la ville dans un processus plus global, dont l’horizon pourrait être le monde,

la planète, ou encore la modernité. C’est donc bien l’environnement de la ville qui

fait défaut, par conséquent, dans leurs [l’école de Chicago] analyses du phénomène

urbain. (Rudolf in Hamman, 2008: 51)

Additionally, the elaboration of normative theories aimed at improving the urban

space did not concern the Chicago School. Other thinkers of the period were more concerned

with this question, particularly Patrick Geddes, who sought to develop a vision of the “organic

city” (Geddes, 1915). Inspired by Pyotr Kropotkin’s work on forms of cooperation in nature,

Geddes considered that the organic city required mutual aid and cooperation between the

inhabitants and institutions of an urban space. This transpires in Geddes’ conception of

“civics”, the study of urban society’s laws of development. This new urban sociology was not

only to register change (as the Chicago School did), but also to develop tools encouraging

positive evolutions within the urban community. According to Geddes, town planning was

also to concern itself with civics, thereby becoming the affair of the entire city’s community

(Schalk, 2007). More specifically, energy use and the organization of economic production

were to be optimized: how could a “paleotechnical” (or mineral) city, fueled by centralized

coal and steam power infrastructure, become a “neotechnical” one, in which new norms for

hygiene and decentralized production were facilitated by more efficient and small-scale

methods of electricity production and supply (Lambert, 2004) 9

? In many ways, these

concerns are an integral part of the challenges facing sustainable urban development to this

day. For Geddes, “…the true town plan, the only one worth having, is the outcome and flower

of the whole civilization of a community and of an age.” (Geddes quoted in Downton, 2009:

56). Such a holistic, all-embracing conception of urbanism is a far cry from the sectorial

representations of the discipline one observes today. Indeed, Geddes (as well as his disciple

Mumford) developed their overarching theories of urban society before increasing academic

9 In Technics and Civilization (1934) Lewis Mumford, a great disciple of Geddes, considered that technology

should figure in a framework similar to Geddes’ civics. For Mumford, the dominant techno-industrial

civilization of the 20th century was “monotechnic”. In this configuration, technology is used for its own sake. It

eventually develops its own trajectory that may be harmful to humanity and to the Biosphere itself, as we have

seen in Section I. This “megatechnic” system emphasizes constant, limitless expansion of the production and

replacement capacities of standardized technological consumer goods. Mumford believed that a “polytechnic”

configuration (a complex framework of adaptive and diverse technologies) was more adapted to humanity’s

needs. This could encourage the spread of “biotechnics”, or technology inspired by organic systems that would

emphasize qualitative richness through self-regulation and self-correction (Mumford, 1934).

~ 18 ~

specialization led academics to consider such holistic and interdisciplinary approaches as

obsolete:

The advancement of modern scientific disciplines…was a process of

compartmentalization of knowledge and specialization, without serious awareness of

the unity of living Nature as a whole. Organicism and holism were despised by the

scientific establishment. (Grinevald, 1987, 201)

Recently, holistic theories that transcend narrow academic specialization are enjoying

renewed interest from academics and non-academic alike. Indeed, the creation of sustainable

habitats also involves the production of more holistic knowledge that links the sciences and

humanities so as to appraise the multidimensional links between human society and nature.

This is, for example, is the purpose of global ecology, the science of the Biosphere, seen as

the total ecological system of the Earth (Grinevald, 1987). Several disciplines mentioned in

this analysis, notably political ecology and eco-urbanism, share similar concerns.

2) THE METABOLIC CITY

As explained above, the Chicago School did not develop an ecological understanding

of the city. It was only in the following decades that eco-systemic analysis (Hutchinson, 1970;

Lindeman, 1942) and urban-industrial metabolic analysis developed systematic

methodologies for urban ecology. “Metabolic” methods quantify the matter and energy flows

that characterize a given living system (Wolman, 1965). These flows represent a city’s

resource inputs and outputs in terms of production and negative externalities, such as waste or

pollution (Odum, 1969, 1971). For Odum, “metabolic” analysis revealed that the city was a

parasitic ecosystem dependent on other ecosystems, which it progressively deteriorated to

sustain its own growth. Thus, cities are characterized by an urban morphology, in which

metabolic units form the artificial structure of the city, seen as an aggregate of material

components (Da Cunha, 2005). Therefore, one aspect of creating sustainable cities can be

seen as making precise changes in urban morphologies through metabolic analysis. One may

distinguish the parasitic, linear metabolism of cities from a sustainable, circular metabolism:

“A city with linear metabolism takes what it needs from a vast area, with no thought for the

consequences, and throws away the remains. Input is unrelated to output…In a city with a

circular metabolism every output can also be used as an input into the production system...”

(Girardet, 1992: 23). This closed-circuit logic also inspired industrial ecology in which

~ 19 ~

different industrial units are connected in a circular metabolism (Erkman, 1998). The waste or

excess energy produced by one industrial unit can be used in the production process of

another, instead of being disposed of. For instance, Stockholm’s Hammarby Sjøstad

ecodistrict pioneered the idea of “eco-cycle” in public provision services. Energy production,

water provision and waste management are integrated into one system providing heating, air-

conditioning, energy production and wastewater treatment. In this manner, external inputs are

minimized, while waste is recycled for production purposes (Catry et al., 2009). Circular use

of inputs and outputs is also an essential component of ecovillages’ approach to resource

consumption.

A concept that greatly expanded the scope of metabolic approaches to the urban space

was ecological footprint. The idea of ecological footprint is based on the concept of carrying

capacity: “An environment’s carrying capacity is its maximum persistently supportable load.”

(Catton quoted in Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 224). Carrying capacity is seen as central to

understandings of environmental sustainability, since it quantifies the degree to which an

environment can be (safely) exploited by any species or natural process. Human-induced

environmental degradation results from the fact that humans are characterized by a biological

as well as an industrial metabolism. While other species around the world may also be

described as industrious, humanity today stands out as the species which engages and depends

on entropic10

processes for its survival. In thermodynamic terms, cities are “highly-ordered

dissipative structures” (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 237), meaning that they are

characterized by their colossal rates of energy dissipation. Thus, ecological footprint “…is the

total area of productive land and water required continuously to produce all the resources

consumed and to assimilate all the wastes produced by a defined population, wherever on

Earth that land is located.” (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 228-9). If one considers that 80%

of Europe’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2020 (United Nations quoted in

Blanc, 2009: 234), the question of reducing urban spaces’ “ecological deficit” is of the utmost

importance. Indeed, “Global sustainability cannot be (ecological) deficit-financed; simple

physics dictates that not all countries or regions can be net importers of biophysical capacity.”

(Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 235). Global sustainability is also a colossal task: Findhorn

ecovillage (Scotland, 400 inhabitants) has one of the developed worlds’ lowest carbon

10

Economic processes are subject to the laws of thermodynamics. In particular, the Second Law of

Thermodynamics applied to economics implies that “…economic activities (production, consumption,

distribution) require high quality energy-matter resources (low entropy), that are qualitatively degraded in the

economic transformation process.” (Steppacher and Van Griethuysen, 2008: 31). Therefore, low-quality energy-

matter waste and dissipated energy-matter (low entropy) are inevitable consequences of any economic process.

See Georgescu-Roegen (1976 ,1979) for applications of the Second Law to economics.

~ 20 ~

footprints. Its ecological footprint is 60% of the British average, while Findhorn inhabitants

consume 40% less resources than the overall British population. Despite this, were the

world’s entire population to have the same carbon footprint as the Scottish ecovillage, it

would still require 1.8 planets, compared to Britain’s 3 planets (Dawson, 2010).

All in all, it is apparent that many tools exist for appraising the multi-dimensional

ecological and social attributes of a city. Many theoretical attempts have also contributed to

achieving holistic understandings of the latter. However, this rich theoretical background has

not been absorbed by most of the actors involved in day-to-day urban planning and

governance. The following section will illustrate how the complexities inherent to any space

are “greenwashed” in a simplistic effort to improve the green image of a city while

maintaining “business as usual approaches” through technological and financial inputs.

~ 21 ~

III. “GREENWASHING” THE CITY

To date, the most concrete attempts at “greening” the built space of the city are

“ecodistricts” (or “ecoquarters”). In essence, these ecodistricts could be the urban answer to

ecovillages in the countryside. Ecodistricts have gone from a marginal, localized status to

embody the ambitions of many a city seeking to “greenwash” its image. Since their

mainstream acceptance as an effective means for achieving urban sustainability, the concept

has been significantly simplified and diluted. The following section will illustrate the

enduring eco-social potential of ecodistricts, and how economic rationality alone is unable to

provide a good understanding of their potential. Following this, the example of the so-called

“zero-carbon” desert city of Masdar (Dubai) will provide an extreme case of a capital- and

technology-intensive project that forgoes holistic understandings of the urban space.

1) COMMODIFYING ALTERNATIVES: THE EXAMPLE OF ECODISTRICTS 11

Ecodistricts emerged as a distinct concept in the 1980s. At the time, several proto-

districts appeared, the most famous one being the Quartier Vauban in Freiburg, Germany.

These prototypes were community-initiated attempts to create collective and ecological urban

living spaces for a group of motivated individuals. In Freiburg, middle-class citizens decided

to transform an abandoned army barracks dating from the Second World War into a new type

of living space. Today, the Quartier Vauban is located 2,5 km from Freiburg’s center, and

offers different types of housing for around 5,000 residents from a range of socio-economic

backgrounds. Businesses are also on-site, located in mixed-use buildings that combine offices

and housing areas. All buildings are built using ecological, isolating materials; energy is

produced in a co-generation unit as well as solar panels located on nearly every building of

the district. Water run-off is improved by “green fingers” that run through the district’s built

space, as well as waterways. Such green fingers allow for “soft mobility” (pedestrian and

cycling infrastructure) as well as natural recreational spaces. Most importantly, they

contribute to air and water auto-purification cycles, while increasing local biodiversity and

11

The term “commodification” finds its origins in Marxist political theory. It describes the process by which an

object devoid of an economic value is assigned a monetary value. Once assigned an economic value, this

marketable object may become the subject of economic rationality, which may replace its other eco-social

properties and applications. This is the case of ecodistricts.

~ 22 ~

reducing risks of flooding through their water absorption capacities. The Freiburg tramway

passes through the area, which also benefits from very developed bicycle infrastructure. Cars

may only drive on main routes at a maximum speed of 30 km/h, and 10 km/h on certain

secondary routes. Around 50% of residents possess a car, parked in one of the district’s two

solar garages, located on the outskirts of the district. Many inhabitants have organized into co-

habitat structures, in which several families decide to manage and live in a common property

comprising private and communal spaces (usually an apartment building or a large house).

Ecological resident cooperatives have also formed in order to design and build their own

residential buildings. The city council attributes housing depending on the applicants’ social

background, in order to encourage social mixity. And yet, Quartier Vauban is mostly

inhabited by middle and upper middle class individuals: a mere 25% of the population can be

described as lower-middle class. Nonetheless, this is not a bad proportion compared to other

more exclusive ecodistricts that have appeared in the past years. (Emelianoff, 2004)

The early 1990s saw the creation of a number of isolated showcase-ecodistricts

endowed with a pronounced educational and demonstrative function. At the time, they were

not yet seen as potential building blocks for the cities of the future. Only in the mid-1990s did

the concept begin to gain currency as an important component for sustainable urban

development. The issue of making city habitats more environmentally-friendly was

progressively taken up by actors in the public and private sectors, increasingly aware of the

necessity to include environmental objectives in any urban planning and development effort.

Since then, the ecodistrict concept has become so ubiquitous that in 2007, the French

government’s Grenelle de l’Environnement, a high-level governmental summit on

environmental issues, recommended « … la construction d’un écoquartier avant 2012 dans

toutes les communes qui ont des projets de développement dans l’habitat significatifs. »

(Souami, 2009: 9). The spread of this perspective to a wide range of mainstream urban actors

and policies is certainly a positive sign, which hints at rising levels of environmental

awareness amongst public institutions and servants12

. However, the success of the ecodistrict

has led to its simplification and commodification. In the 1980s, bottom-up participation was

12

In September 2010, I interviewed the head of the Planning and Sustainable Development section of the

Euroméditerannée urban restoration project in Marseille, the largest of its kind in Europe. The Second Phase of

this public-private partnership will also involve the application of ecological building principles in new, green

areas of Marseille. This encounter alerted me to the high levels of awareness of a high-ranking civil servant in

France in terms of sustainable urban development.

~ 23 ~

essential to the success of the Quartier Vauban: the neighborhood prides itself on its inclusive,

bottom-up methods to this day. Indeed, ecodistricts are not only intended to be sustainable

urban spaces, but also collective ones in which shared gardens, open spaces and a wide range

of community activities allow residents to create a vivid and dynamic urban community

together. When one walks through the Quartier Vauban, it becomes clear that immaterial

elements of political and ecological culture reflect the “eco-friendly” built space of Vauban.

This immaterial aspect is not addressed by most ecodistrict projects today. Urban planners

and developers prefer to focus on the latter’s environmental aspects, while foregoing the more

problematic and time-consuming social aspects that actually form the community “glue” of a

cohesive ecodistrict. In this conception, ecodistricts are simply another vector of

environmental modernization, in which technology and capital are seen as the fundamental

inputs to any environmental development process:

Les approches par les technologies demeurent marquées par les modèles de

développement et de progrès des années 1950-1960 : le changement y est conçu

comme une rupture technique dont la mise en œuvre permet des progrès rapides de

performances et de confort. Ainsi, les améliorations dans la ville, de l’habitat et ses

usages se font dans ce modèle, par des sauts qualitatifs importants, successifs et non

continus. (Souami, 2007: 11)

At present, “technical kit” ecodistrict have come to replace holistic projects akin to the

Quartier Vauban. Consequently, the transformational impact and accessibility of the

ecodistrict has been reduced. Many current projects are used as communication tools, or as

means to render undeveloped or ailing parts of an urban area more attractive for market

players and private developers (Souami, 2009). They are usually new, state of the art

constructions, which have little in common with the rehabilitation of pre-existing built spaces

such as Vauban. When one considers that the total infrastructure stock of France and most of

Europe increases by only 1% per year (Souami, 2007), it becomes obvious that newly-built

ecodistricts cannot make a large-scale contribution to the development of sustainable cities.

As vectors of urban regeneration and information dissemination, they can be more effective if

created in pre-existing infrastructures. Ecodistricts can also revitalize abandoned industrial or

brownfield sites, thereby contributing to the densification of cities threatened by urban sprawl.

But according to economic rationality, this is not an attractive option, despite its positive eco-

social effects. Indeed, creating ecodistricts in extant infrastructure is not about designing and

selling a green product to buyers. It is a social affair, in which participatory processes

~ 24 ~

amongst different actors lead to the emergence of the ecodistrict, and to the resulting

application of appropriate environmental technologies. Nonetheless, devising ways for pre-

existing neighborhoods to organize more sustainably is essential, especially in the rapidly

expanding cities of many Southern areas, in which expensive ecodistricts will remain a luxury

for the wealthy. By 2000, about two-fifths of Africa’s and Asia’s populations and three-

fourths of Latin America’s populations were concentrated in urban areas (United Nations

quoted in Satterthwaite, 2003: 73).

In sum, ecodistricts can either function as “environmental showcases” or seriously

address sustainability issues at the scale of a single city district. They cannot, however,

replace a holistic vision for sustainability at the scale of an entire city. Achieving a green

ideal-type in terms of sustainable housing does not address the wider environmental issues at

hand in the rest of any urban space, save in terms of insular exemplarity. Similarly, creating

car-free zones in a tiny sector of a city does not significantly reduce its total automobile

arsenal. It concentrates cars in other parts of the city if appropriate public transport and “soft

mobility” infrastructure outside the ecodistrict’s boundaries are not at hand13

. But the most

significant problem surrounding the issue of insularity is of a social nature: implanting

exclusive green areas creates yet another invisible barrier between those who can afford such

luxuries, and those who cannot.: « L’écoquartier fonde un entre-soi qui procède parfois d’une

logique insulaire reproduisant, à l’échelle de la ville, l’effet NIMBY [Not In My Backyard],

par lequel les externalités négatives sont rejetées loin de ceux qui les produisent. » (Bonard

and Matthey, 2010: 3). If misappropriated, ecodistricts can become another short route

towards gentrification, thereby further accentuating inequalities and divides within the urban

social fabric. Due to their high market value, they may increase property prices and ultimately

become the object of rampant real estate speculation. Indeed, such capital- and technology-

intensive living space can ultimately lead to forms of “green exceptionalism”. In this case,

access is limited to an exclusive public of middle- and upper-class residents who have chosen

to live an “eco-friendly” lifestyle, far from the dreary realities of the ordinary city. This use of

ecodistricts does not encourage intermingling between different socio-economic and ethnic

groups. It may do the very opposite, as is already the case in South Africa’s largest cities. In

Johannesburg, private promoters have included green technology in securitized “green” gated

communities for wealthy white populations. Similarly, the much-discussed eco-city of

13

By contrast to this piecemeal approach to transport, the creation of public transport networks at the scale of

entire urban regions is a more holistic approach. Karlsruhe (Germany) has been running such a high-speed

tramway network with success for many years.

~ 25 ~

Dongtan (China) has never seen the light of day. At present, it is likely to become a

“greenwashed” suburb for Shanghai’s elites, built in the middle of a natural reserve (Obringer,

2009). All in all:

Il semble légitime de s’interroger sur le profil social de ces nouveaux ensembles "à

haute qualité de vie" et de se demander si les efforts réalisés pour obtenir

initialement une mixité sociale, grâce à un ratio de logements sociaux, suffiront à

endiguer les processus probables de ségrégation (…) Les quartiers fermés construits

par des promoteurs privés, qui exploitent le double argumentaire de la sécurité et de

la qualité environnementale, constituent une menace plus sérieuse en matière de

ségrégation écologique et sociale. (Emelianoff, 2004: 29)

Given the small amount of ecodistricts that currently exist, these fears may seem

overblown. But if one considers ecodistricts as the first timid step that cities take towards

becoming sustainable, these efforts best not be misdirected. The insularity of high-end

ecodistricts can ultimately become the insularity of exclusive, “green” cities, separated from

their ordinary polluting counterparts by a barrier of capital and technology. The following

example will show that this scenario is already in the making.

2) TECHNOLOGICAL MESSIANISM : THE EXAMPLE OF MASDAR (DUBAI)

The city-project of Masdar is one of the most impressive examples of the trends

affecting conventional approaches to sustainable urbanism. Located in the desert on the

outskirts of Abu Dhabi (Dubai) Masdar is to become “the world’s first zero-carbon city”. Its

total population is planned to reach 90,000 inhabitants. The venture’s architectural partners

have apparently blended ancient construction techniques and high-tech design: Masdar is

inspired by old Arab settlements of 16th

century such as Shibam (Yemen) or Aleppo (Syria).

The city will be raised on a 23-foot-high base in order to benefit from desert breezes, a form

of natural temperature regulation. Wind towers will funnel air down to the narrow streets,

built at an angle to the sun’s east-west trajectory in order to increase airflow through the city.

The company predicts that through such techniques, Masdar may feel as much as 70°

Fahrenheit cooler than the actual air temperature, thereby halving the city’s electricity

consumption. All streets on the surface will be pedestrian, while driverless electric cars will

circulate underground; combustion-engine vehicles will be banned from the city. 90% of the

power is expected to be solar energy produced in a 54-acre photovoltaic field located on the

~ 26 ~

outskirts of Masdar. The rest will be drawn from a waste incineration plant (a technique

which emits less carbon than waste landfills), also located on the periphery.

The dream of a sustainable city built with funds from the international petroleum

business shows to what extent sustainable urbanism is perceived as a showroom and potential

market for technology- and capital-intensive developments. In essence, Masdar is yet another

attempt to “parachute” green ideal-types onto alien ecosystems. It is unclear how the city’s

population will produce food, if at all. In this case, it will have to import all of its food and

water from distant locations, a highly unsustainable practice itself. Furthermore, it is likely

that becoming a resident of Masdar will remain an expensive privilege indeed. Therefore, the

educational virtues of the concept seem limited, since it is reserved to a tiny, wealthy

percentage of the world’s population. Of course, Masdar may be treated as an “experiment” in

sustainable living, but experiments must be reproducible and affordable if they are to fulfill

their demonstrative purpose. Thankfully, some parts of mainstream media recognize the flaws

inherent in the Masdar mirage: “What Masdar really represents…is the crystallization of

another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves

and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance.”

(The New York Times, September 25th

, 2010). Indeed, these “formless ghettos” are often

more exposed to environmental hazards (whether man-made or natural) than insulated

residential areas for wealthier populations. Far from being a vector of technological

messianism, sustainable urbanism engages with the day-to-day, often uncomfortable realities

of ordinary cities, be they “developed” mid-sized ones like Freiburg or composed of

sprawling ghettoes interspersed with high-end gated communities and business districts.

The commodification of the ecodistrict concept and the example of Masdar illustrate

how fragmentary approaches to sustainable habitat development fail to address several

essential aspects of sustainability. Economic rationality and technology are important aspects

of this goal, but must be coupled with eco-social considerations in order to ensure holistic

understandings of what sustainable living actually means, in all of its human and natural

dimensions. The following section will explore the ecovillage movement, which is currently

seeking to develop and apply a holistic ethic for sustainable living around the world.

~ 27 ~

IV. ALTERNATIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING: THE EXAMPLE

OF ECOVILLAGES

At present, we will explore several experiments in sustainable habitat development

that are currently mushrooming around the world. Far from being isolated initiatives, these

alternatives share a common set of aims that lie in stark contrast to the conventional

approaches illustrated in Sections I and III. Of course, many ecovillages are recent; the oldest

amongst them date from the 1960s. This makes hindsight difficult, and precludes any

definitive assessment of their ultimate success or failure. For ecovillages are not end-states,

nor are they ideal types. They are ongoing experiments in holistic sustainability that engage

with eco-social challenges the world currently faces: “Ecovillages are not isolated enclaves of

escapists; rather, they are dynamic nodes of the information society.” (Litfin, 2007: 7). Therefore,

some strategies for urban sustainability are perhaps being addressed by people who have

consciously decided to “step out” of conventional wisdom in order to initiate socio-cultural

transformative change.

My fieldwork in Tamera was supplemented with an appraisal of the available literature

pertaining to ecovillages. Given the recent emergence of the ecovillage movement, little

literature exists, and is often the work of individuals directly affiliated to ecovillages in one

way or another. Relatively few analyses of ecovillages have been produced by academic

circles. At best, they appear in socio-anthropological discussions of alternative community

living. Comprehensive studies on the topic are nearly inexistent, but awareness of the concept

is spreading in line with the rapid development of the movement itself. Therefore, most of the

accessible literature directly concerned with ecovillages has been taken into account in this

study.

1) DEFINING ASPECTS OF THE ECOVILLAGE MOVEMENT

The first ecovillages appeared in the 1960s and 1970s without ever using this term to

describe themselves. This is the case of Findhorn Community (Scotland, 1962), Auroville

(India, 1968), and the Farm (Tennessee, USA (1971). The ecovillage movement only truly

appeared in the 1990s, with the emergence of a transnational network of ecovillages engaged

~ 28 ~

in experiments in sustainable living and education. The main pillar of this network is the

Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), founded at the 1996 World Habitat Conference in

Istanbul. This NGO currently serves as a global nexus for ecovillages by running an internet

database of ecovillages around the world. GEN also organizes seminars and training

workshops relating to all the themes connected to ecovillages: “The mission of the GEN is to

help the worldwide transformation toward sustainability, by supporting ecovillages, joining

with like-minded partners, and expanding education and demonstration programs in

sustainable living” (Dawson, 2010). At present, GEN is divided into several regional

sections14

, and has consultative NGO status at the United Nations. UNITAR (United Nations

Institute for Training and Research) and GEN are cooperating to develop Findhorn village’s

ecovillage design course. Around 400 ecovillages are currently listed in GEN’s directory,

while some estimates consider that around 15,000 communities around the world could

qualify as ecovillages. What strikes one is the immense diversity present in the movement. Is

it even possible to speak of a movement when some ecovillages are open to the public while

others are very small communities seeking to attain some form of isolated self-sufficiency?

Admittedly, some communities present specific properties that cannot be transposed

elsewhere. But in order to extend the ecovillage concept to other settings, it is necessary to

distinguish those criteria which may apply to other forms of habitat. According to Jonathan

Dawson, one of the initiators of GEN, ecovillages are a microcosmic manifestation of what

sustainable living units could resemble in the future: « …un principe essentiel dans notre

définition des écovillages et des communautés durables est qu’ils soient conçus de telle sorte

qu’une société pleinement fonctionnelle pourrait être principalement composées de telles

unités. » (Dawson, 2010: 31). This transpires in the five central aspects of ecovillages that are

generalizable to other rural or urban settings. Ecovillages:

1) Organize around the idea primacy of community in terms of socio-political organization.

While many definitions of “community” exist, the one most reflective of the ecovillage ethic

was produced by the American farmer and poet Wendell Berry:

If we speak of a healthy community we cannot be speaking of a community that is

only human. We are talking about a neighborhood of humans plus the place itself: its

14

ENA (Ecovillage Network of the Americas), GENOA (Oceania and Asia), GEN Europe (including the

Middle-East), GEN Africa, and NEXT GEN (an educational division concerned with children and young

peoples’ education).

~ 29 ~

soil, its water, its air and all the families and tribes of the non-human creatures that

belong to it ... if this community is healthy, it is likely to be sustainable, largely self-

sufficient and free of tyranny. This means that it is they and not the central

government that must control the land, the forests, the rivers and the seas, from

which specific communities derive their sustenance. (Berry quoted in Goldsmith,

2006: 50)

2) Are citizen-led, grassroots initiatives characterized by properties inherent to ecovillages

themselves: decentralized, non-hierarchical, participatory and, above all, place-specific and

entrenched in local realities. Ecovillages invest extant infrastructure (such as the restored

mountain ecovillage of Torri Superiore, Italy) or engage in the construction of an ecological,

community-enhancing built space using ecological construction techniques (such as the

Italian Damanhur federation of 5 villages, which totals 1,000 inhabitants). The largest

ecovillage is the “spiral city” of Auroville (Pondicherry, India), which counts several

thousand inhabitants and plays an important role in regional sustainability policy.

3) Seek to regain control of resource-production consumed within the community, in terms

of energy, raw materials and food consumption. In this sense, ecovillages adopt social and

solidary economic practices, defined as hybrid economic forms (monetary and non-

monetary). These are voluntarily elaborated by individuals who thereby seek to reinforce

social cohesion, democratic practices and to satisfy true needs rather than make profits

(D’Amours in Silvestro, 2005). For instance, Siebenlinden (Germany) is seeking to become

self-sufficient, and produces 75% of its own food for its inhabitants, while the rest is

purchased from nearby organic farms. It has built one of the largest straw-bale houses in

Europe, and is militating for land legislation to recognize straw-bale houses and other

ecological construction techniques as valid, mainstream techniques. According to a study by

the University of Kassel15

, Siebenlinden emits 28% of the German national average for

greenhouse gases, while 10% and 6% of this amount is due to heating and construction,

respectively (Dawson, 2010).

4) Share a large set of common values relative to ecology, spirituality and human relations

(cf. the “Permaculture Flower” in Appendix 2, which is a fairly good overview of the

practices and values adhered to in ecovillages). In this sense, they are indeed intentional

15

The University of Kassel has run pioneering program in straw-bale and ecological/organic construction for

several decades. Straw-bale is a cheap and simple method of construction that has very high isolating properties.

~ 30 ~

communities that crystallize around a specific purpose. For the American ecologist Aldo

Leopold, an ethic has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to

develop modes of co-operation (Leopold, 1949). Thus, ecovillages are not simply locations in

which new ways of “green living” are tested. They are also settings in which a group of

individuals organizes around a community ethic focusing on human-nature relationships and

sustainable living. Parallel to this aspect, the inevitable conflicts that arise in any community

are played out and resolved around this very ethic, using a plurality of conflict resolution

techniques. In this sense, ecovillagers practice a form of what Anthony Giddens coined “life

politics”16

(Giddens, 1991). Such forms of political “lifestyle action” are accompanied by

normative discourses encouraging transformative cultural change linking the self to the world

at large in an ongoing “glocal” (global-local) dialectic.

5) Are research centers that engage in educational and demonstrative activities, both within

the community and the wider public. Education is one of the main goals of most ecovillages,

and one of their main sources of income. Most of them run courses on a wide variety of

subjects, such as ecovillage design, permaculture ecological construction and conflict

resolution. For instance, Ithaca (New York) ecovillage is running an exchange program with

the University of Ithaca’s Department of Environmental Studies. Findhorn (Scotland) runs a

series of programs in cooperation with UNITAR, as well as courses that have been attended

by public bodies and private enterprise alike. One of the objectives of Tamera peace research

village is to develop an institute for Holzer Permaculture (see below).

Ecovillages also call for, and indeed embody, an end to the” human exemptionalism

paradigm” (Catton and Dunlap, 1978), which holds that humanity and nature are

ontologically distinct categories. Within this paradigm, humans can extract themselves from

their original “natural state” in order to rise above certain natural phenomena. Taken to its

logical conclusion, it suggests that the human is entitled and indeed expected to dominate

nature. As Lynn White argues, this belief finds its roots in the founding myths of Judeo-

Christianity and Islam: “Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia’s

religions (except, perhaps, Zoroastrianism), not only established a dualism of man and nature

16

Giddens defined life politics as “a politics of self-actualisation in a reflexively ordered environment, where

that reflexivity links self and body to systems of global scope. (...) Life politics concerns political issues which

flow from processes of self-actualisation in post-traditional contexts, where globalising influences intrude deeply

into the reflexive project of the self, and conversely where processes of self-realisation influence global

strategies.” (Giddens, 1991)

~ 31 ~

but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.” (White,

1974: 4). This human/nature divide is apparent, for instance, in the creation of natural parks

that place the human outside of their boundaries. This form of “conservation” only widens the

rift between swathes of pristine wilderness and anthropomorphic cultural landscapes: “The

“wilderness area” mentality invariably advocates the deep-freezing of an ecology, whether

San Gimignano or the High Sierra, as it was before the first kleenex was dropped.” (White,

1974: 2). By contrast, ecovillages encourage their members and all of mankind to appraise the

world in a holistic manner. In this view, nature and human society are inseparable and, in

essence, mutually constitutive. This has relatively little to do with the myth of the “noble

savage” or utopias of life in complete harmony with nature, since:

Unless human beings are differentiated from other organic and inorganic forms of

being, they can be made no more liable for the effects of their occupancy of the

ecosystem than can any other species, and it would make no more sense to call upon

them to desist from destroying nature than to call upon cats to stop killing birds.

(Soper quoted in Carolan, 2005:395)

Rather than embodying “back to nature” ideals, the ethic embodied by ecovillagers has more

to do with the idea of voluntary natural stewardship. How can the human become an active

healing component of the natural environment, in order to heal the damage done by past

generations? Voluntary natural stewardship has much in common with James Lovelock’s

Gaia theory. Gaia is :

…une unité complexe, comprenant la biosphère terrestre, l’atmosphère, les océans

et les sols; l’ensemble constituant un système de rétroaction ou système

cybernétique qui vise à créer le milieu physique et chimique optimal pour la vie sur

cette planète. (Goldsmith, 2002: 120)

In Lovelock’s vision, Earth is a self-regulating and self-healing system, to which humans

could potentially contribute through the new science of geophysiology (Lovelock, 1979).

Ecovillages, amongst others, attempt to be catalysts of these healing processes: “the

ecological aspects of community life are balanced when...people live in synchrony and

harmony within the ecological system of which they are a part...[and] human life-styles

regenerate, rather than diminish the integrity of the environment (CSA quoted in Litfin, 2007:

6). “Harmony” does not imply that humans have succeeded in attaining a utopian relation

with nature devoid of any impacts or negative forms of extraction. Indeed, any economic

~ 32 ~

process is entropic (see Section II). However, many of these processes may be modified so

as to minimize their eco-social impacts. Thus, human settlements can actually become

“healing biotopes”. These are attempts at sustainable living that positively contribute to

ecosystem regeneration in a given bioregion, while working to spread these activities through

information dissemination and education. At present, we will analyze Tamera Healing

Biotope in order to achieve a broader understanding of sustainable habitat experiments

conduced in ecovillages. This example will also illustrate how the latter may be applied at the

scale of a city or of an entire region

2) TAMERA HEALING BIOTOPE (PORTUGAL)

Tamera is a 134 hectare settlement of around 170 inhabitants in the rural Alentejo

region of Southern Portugal. It was created in 1995 by a group of Germans who sought to

create a space in which they could engage in “peace research”. Portugal presented more

tolerant land legislation and lower land prices than Germany and came, through a series of

encouraging signs, to be the appropriate destination for the group. At present, Tamera

encompasses many different aspects in its work. Its overall approach advocates the creation of

“acupunctural” points around the world that serve as central nodes for information and

research transmission. These acupunctural points have been coined “healing biotopes” by

Tamera. Their overall aim is to blend ecological restoration, political peace-work and conflict

resolution in human relations so as to “heal” ever-expanding areas around the healing biotope

through education and information dissemination. As such, healing biotopes are intended to

be models and laboratories for sustainable living and culture. Tamera is not a classical

ecovillage as such: some of its activities go beyond the scope of our definition. However, it is

currently researching many areas falling under the latter, particularly in the fields of

technology and ecology. But the daily functioning of the community derives from its research

into what a human community actually is. This warrants enquiries in the areas of human

relations and spirituality which provide the very backbone of Tamera’s vision. Without

wanting to minimize their importance, I will not further discuss these aspects in this analysis,

as they go beyond the purposes of this study. We will restrain ourselves to the more prosaic

aspects of Tamera’s work in terms of solar energy production, water landscape management,

permaculture, and ecosystem restoration.

~ 33 ~

2.1. TECHNOLOGY: BEYOND THE TECHNOCRATIC FRAMEWORK

The development, testing and implementation of technologies is a defining feature of

ecovillages. Some experiments are resolutely “low-tech”, striving to develop cheap, cost-

effective technologies that can be easily mastered and transferred to other settings. These

technologies are ecologically friendly in their use of resources, often using second-hand or

recycled materials. Other technologies have more in common with the “high tech” solutions

adopted by mainstream actors. Nonetheless, the freedom of action enjoyed in ecovillages

encourages extensive testing of the latter, as well as attempts to truly organize human

settlements around them. By contrast, many “green” technologies acknowledged by

mainstream discourses still consider them as somewhat risky, exotic and secondary

alternatives to the dominant “megatechnic” configuration in place. In the “developed” world

public subsidies have overwhelmingly encouraged the widespread development of high-tech,

resource-intensive and expensive “clean” technologies controlled by a handful of large energy

companies. Such strategies further cement the techno-industrial global configuration

described in Section I. In essence, these solutions are not chosen for their technological value,

but for their economic potential in terms of financial returns. A good example is biofuel,

which enjoys huge political and financial support from governments around the world. It

provides a new source of dynamism for the ailing global car industry, while forests and

agricultural land are disappearing in many Southern countries, yielding to fields destined to

biofuel production. Economic rationality dictates that biofuel is a technology with potentially

enormous returns for the car industry and large industrial agriculture complexes. But from an

eco-social viewpoint, the livelihoods of millions, the food sovereignty of entire nations and

large swathes of natural habitats (and carbon sinks) are being threatened by this “green”

technology17

. We must ask ourselves if the most powerful, high-tech systems are actually the

most efficient in their overall effects on fossil fuel dependency. Once again, economic

rationality is but a fragment of a given system’s overall rationality. A prime condition of the

latter is that a “clean” technology must be adapted to its local context of use, as well as

affordable and intelligible to its actual users. Agro-business biofuel is produced in Southern

settings (with negative eco-social consequences) and indexed on the international

commodities market as an environmentally-friendly product.

17

See The Biofuel Delusion for an in-depth critique of the biofuel agro-business (Giampetro and Mayumi, 2009).

~ 34 ~

For Fritz Schumacher18

and the Intermediate Technology Development Group,

intermediate technologies (small-scale, affordable and decentralized) are essential to the

evolution of more human-scale and community-based societies (Dawson, 2010): “La

démocratie de participation suppose une technique de faible consommation énergétique et,

réciproquement, seule une volonté de décentralisation peut créer les conditions d’une

technique rationnelle.” (Illich quoted in Lambert, 2004: 180). Such decentralized models

transcending expert-driven discourses and policies were also encouraged by the Club of

Rome’s Limits to Growth report in the 1970s (Meadows et al., 1972).

The Solar Village of Tamera is precisely one of these “free-lab” testing points. It was

developed and built by the German inventor Jürgen Kleinwächter and his team, as depicted in

Appendix 3. Portugal has the most sunshine in Europe, but ranks second on the European

continent for oil dependency. Thus, it is an ideal location for testing new approaches to clean

energy production. The Solar Power Village is an open-source complex of low-cost, low-tech

elements running on solar power alone. Put briefly, it allows electricity and heat production,

enabling the village’s different components to pump water, cook, grind grains, disinfect water

or other substances, grow non-native plant species and cool certain areas. In the summer of

2011, 50 members of Tamera will live in the Solar Village, trying to fulfill all of their energy

requirements from this source. The potential applications of the concept are manifold, and

illustrate how decentralized installations adapted to their local context of use can be applied at

a regional scale:

The Solar-Power Village” can be implemented as a cooperative, where the user as

member pays for the services rendered – heat, water, electricity. The cooperative

possesses the installation and is responsible for maintenance and funding the

venture. Jobs are created in the region, the buying power of the local community is

increased and a low-cost energy supply provided. The cooperative structure could be

enlarged by further economic activities such as food production and distribution, so

that a decentralized and independent development based on self-help is supported.

(Kleinwächter, 2004:7)

In settings where sunshine is ubiquitous and nearly perennial, solar cooking technology

provides a valuable alternative to conventional cooking methods involving the use of

firewood, and the resulting deforestation that occurs. The village’s solar water pumps may

also drastically reduce energy consumption. For instance, nearly 50% of India’s national

18

See (Schumacher, 1973).

~ 35 ~

energy production is used for pumping water in rural areas (Kleinwächter in Dregger, 2008:

60): a large proportion of this energy could be saved by implementing Solar Power Village

principles.

The Solar Village concept is a systematic attempt to introduce simple renewable

technologies and sustainable forms of resource-use in Southern village settings. The networks

that could generalize such ideas are already at hand. For instance, the Sarvodaya network of

Sri Lanka connects over 15,000 Sri Lankan villages (encompassing 11 million residents) in an

effort to develop an overarching model for village self-governance, development and conflict

resolution based on Buddhist and Gandhian principles. The Ladakh Ecological Development

Group is also engaged in environmental technology transfer in the region of Ladakh (India),

and collaborates with the regional government on a wide range of projects. GEN has several

branches active in the South, namely the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA), GEN

Oceania and Asia (GENOA) and recently, GEN Africa. The ecovillages of Mbam and Faouné

(Senegal) are already engaged in threatened mangrove ecosystem restoration along the entire

Senegalese coast. This has not gone unnoticed by the Senegalese government, which created

the Ministry for Ecovillages, Retention Lakes and Pisciculture in 2008, along with the ANEV

(Agence Nationale des Ecovillages), which is closely cooperating with GEN along the

following lines:

The Global Ecovillages Network (GEN) approach to African development rests on

the recognition that villagers are treasured teachers rather than less developed

project beneficiaries. The ecovillage paradigm transforms the remoteness and lack of

modern infrastructure of African village life from “the development problem” to an

important piece of “the answer.” It alters the power relationships in North - South

exchanges and attracts partners to share in and learn from the timeless cultural riches

of rural Africa. This holistic approach to development enhances village culture,

community and spirituality, while introducing sustainable livelihoods and benefits of

modern technology. (GEN and ECOYOFF, 2006:1)

To date, ANEV is conducting pilot projects in three ecovillages, and aims to encompass

around 14,000 villages into its activities:

Each of Senegal’s 14,000 rural villages could claim to be an ecovillage in the sense

that these villagers consume less energy and natural resources, live in more natural

habitats and participate in a closer relationships with nature and with each other than

urban and industrialized populations. Nevertheless, ecological consciousness is a

~ 36 ~

new concept to rural villagers, and many out of extreme need are depleting rather

than protecting their threatened environments. Therefore, the education and

sensitization process to prepare villages for membership must be broad based. (GEN

and ECOYOFF, 2006:4)

Ecovillages have particular value in rural Southern settings, which present more tightly-knit

social structures, and draw most of their subsistence from surrounding ecosystems. As such,

they are more attuned to the possibilities and constraints immanent in their environment.

Traditional knowledge pertaining to agriculture and land-use is also better preserved than in

“developed” countries. However, rural exodus is slowly draining younger generations from

rural areas in most of the world’s developing countries, while large-scale monocultures are

replacing smaller forms of traditional agriculture. Therefore, alternatives must also be

developed in such areas. One such alternative lies in the creation of sustainable regional

economies through ecosystem restoration, a valuable strategy in Northern/Southern and

urban/rural settings alike.

2.2. ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: CREATING SUSTAINABLE REGIONAL

ECONOMIES

Ecosystem restoration aims at revitalizing a given ecosystem’s natural cycle through

the activities of human populations in the system. It can be declined in two independent steps

that, once combined, provide a holistic strategy for Lewis Mumford’s idea of regional

planning (see Section I).

STEP 1: Permaculture and water landscapes

The first component of ecosystem restoration as applied by Tamera is permaculture.

The term was created by the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s. It

describes:

Consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patters and relationships found in

nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fiber and energy for provision of local

needs. People, their buildings and the way they organize themselves are central to

permaculture. (Holmgren, 2004: 1)

~ 37 ~

In this sense, permaculture is not only about sustainable agricultural techniques: it also aims at

providing stepping-stones for the emergence of sustainable cultures19

. Since its inception in

the 1970s, it has flowered into many different locally-defined variants. Holmgren and

Molisson’s vision of permaculture can best be observed in Crystal Waters Permaculture

Village in Australia, which effectively puts permaculture into practice at the level of an entire

community. This ecovillage is an important vector of permaculture education throughout the

world, and was awarded the 1996 World Habitat Award for its efforts.

One of the main permaculture tendencies to have emerged in the past few decades is

Holzer permaculture, named after the Tyrolean mountain farmer Sepp Holzer. The rising

fame of this method not only derive from the fact Holzer creator manages to grow organic

citrus at 1,400 meters altitude in the Austrian Alps. He has also developed more large-scale

and extensive methods for landscape management, which does not refrain from occasionally

using machine tools (such as bulldozers) to lay the foundations of an ecosystem restoration

project. In Tamera, permaculture and the village’s thriving gardens would be a shadow of

what they currently are without Holzer’s suggestion to develop a water landscape. In 2007, he

visited the site, observing that Tamera had an abundance of rainfall (equivalent to yearly

rainfall in Berlin) in the winter followed by severe aridity in the summer. Due to the absence

of humus on the site in and the surrounding hills, this rainfall was simply drained from the

area and did not seep into the soil, leading to the slow disappearance of the region’s forests.

Holzer suggested the creation of an “edible permaculture landscape” in Tamera, for humans

and fauna alike. Edible landscapes provide food for humans and for natural predators of pests

that may damage the gardens. The first step of the process began with the digging of a

network of water retention basins (15 upon completion of the landscape)20

:

Water retention basins are the most important measure to heal sick trees, to

regenerate ailing landscapes, and to prevent desertification. The earth must soak

itself up with water. Following this, freshwater sources will flow once again and

biotopes will become abundant…This country’s [Portugal] drought is not a natural

catastrophe. It is the consequence of wrong management, wrong methods of water

use, deforestation, over-grazing and monocultures, which all induce progressive

desertification. (Holzer in Dregger, 2008: 29-30, my translation).

19

The “permaculture flower” can be found in Appendix 2. It presents the same inter-linkage of ecology with

other domains as Tamera, and provides a glimpse of what elements could figure in “sustainable culture”.

20See www.tamera.org/fileadmin/user_upload/files/SPV.../SV_Ecology_en.pdf for satellite images of the water

landscape.

~ 38 ~

Such basins are not the centralized reservoir lakes used in traditional water management.

These decentralized networks of customized lakes follow the water flows of a zone’s

topography. They are built in the deepest recesses of an area towards which water naturally

flows (such as a valley or a depression in the ground). They are devoid of sharp angles, and

may not be completely circular: this induces stagnation by impeding water movement

dynamics. The lakes do not contain any form of water-tight isolation, since water is supposed

to seep from the lake into the surrounding earth21

. Since 2007, Tamera has been building these

lakes which filled up in two years, despite many members’ original skepticism. At present,

they are surrounded by lush permaculture gardens which provide around 30%-40% of the

community’s food consumption, a proportion that is bound to grow in the coming years. The

ecology team is now seeking to heal the area’s dwindling forests, while using them for

agroforestry. Pigs are used as “natural plows” in order to uproot undergrowth, in line with

Holzer’s permaculture (this corresponds to montado culture, a traditional Portuguese method

involving the use of pigs in forests for agricultural purposes).

In addition, Tamera has planted around 10,000 trees in the entire site. Other

ecovillages are also involved in tree-planting and ecosystem restoration. In Scotland,

Findhorn’s Trees for Life project has planted 500,000 trees and protected 150,000 of them

from deer over-grazing, one of the main obstacles to forest self-regeneration. Auroville

(India) has planted two million trees. A good example of the potential of such seemingly

small reforestation measures is Las Gaviotas village, located in an arid, war-torn zone of

Columbia. 19,800 hectares of Caribbean tropical pine were planted in soil widely considered

to be too dry and acidic for cultivation22

. The trees now form a dense forest, rainfall has

increased by 10% in the region, and Las Gaviotas is now a net supplier of drinkable water

(Dawson, 2010). The pines’ resin is used as natural biofuel used for energy production in the

village, an alternative to the agro-business biofuel previously mentioned. The shade provided

by the pines has allowed tropical fauna to reappear in this once tropical region (Las Gaviotas,

2009). Following natural ecosystem restoration through the creation of water landscapes and

adoption of organic system permaculture techniques, many new socio-economic opportunities

may appear, leading to the potential creation of sustainable economic networks at the scale of

entire regions.

21

Similar water retention systems are being developed by Sepp Holzer on a large private property in the equally

arid Estremadura region of Spain. 22

The forest could not have been planted without a specific type of fungi, which entertain a symbiotic

relationship with the Caribbean tropical pine and allow this wood species to grow in dry areas (Las Gaviotas,

2009).

~ 39 ~

STEP 2: Sustainable Regional Economies

Tamera’s water landscape is the foundation of the community’s aim to develop a

sustainable regional economy in Alentejo. Beside its own organic produce, Tamera’s

remaining food supplies are purchased from nearby farms. What cannot be obtained from

these sources is produced in other regions of Portugal. Alentejo farmers have found a secure

market in Tamera offering fixed demand and prices, by contrast to the floating indexes of the

international food commodities market. Several farms have already adopted organic

production methods in order to produce food for Tamera. It is further hoped that some farmers

will decide to integrate the water landscape concept into their farms in the coming years. In

this case, Tamera’s advisory role will have been precious in expanding the process of

ecosystem restoration at hand in the village. For the predicted desertification of the Iberian

peninsula has nothing inevitable, Tamera’s members believe, provided that water resources

are managed in an informed and sustainable manner. This positive outlook is a welcome relief

from more pessimistic predictions concerning the “water crisis” in Portugal and Spain. During

the village’s open day, I experienced the impact of this powerful image of water abundance

on a large group of Portuguese visitors. They were not being told that their country was debt-

ridden, bankrupt, and dependent on international funding for its survival. Instead, Bernd

Müller, Tamera’s water specialist, painted a realistic picture of natural abundance and food

self-sufficiency for Portugal. This had nothing to do with utopian ideas or false promises, for

this abundance in nature is in becoming in Tamera’s water landscape itself. Such efforts to

revitalize the regional economy in every sense also provide a welcome form of cooperation

for the Alentejo region, one of Portugal’s most remote and poorest. This overwhelmingly

agricultural region has been strongly impacted by rural exodus. As the youth leaves for the

cities, Alentejo’s farms are condemned to stand empty once the older generations have died

out, along with their traditional agricultural knowledge.

Overall, Tamera is well-regarded in the region, as the testimonies of several local

authorities illustrate. The President of Odemira commune, Alentejo states that: “…since it

began its continuous efforts, Tamera has shed light on a path for the revitalization of

structurally fragile regions such as Alentejo. Southern Europe, currently threatened by

desertification and rural exodus, needs these kinds of alternatives.” (Guerrero quoted in

Dregger, 2010: 5, my translation). Small-scale efforts such as Tamera’s may be seen as

minute steps towards the creation of the “regional economies” depicted in Section I. They

provide valuable strategies for rural eco-social revitalization and stimulation of rural

~ 40 ~

economies. These rural strategies are also an integral part of re-establishing sustainable urban-

rural linkages:

“To reduce their dependence on external flows, urban regions and whole countries

may choose to develop explicit policies to invest in rehabilitating their own natural

capital stocks…This would increase regional independence, thus creating a hedge

against rising international demand, global ecological changes, and potentially

reduced productivity elsewhere.” (Rees and Wackernagel, 1996: 241).

Indeed, permaculture, water landscapes and ecosystem restoration may all be applied in urban

settings, provided the political will to allow for such alternatives is at hand. Thus, the

ecovillage movement is directly involved in what Downton called “universal regionalism” at

a community-scale level23

. In this configuration, entire regions comprising urban and rural

spaces organize internally so as to create sustainable resource production and use cycles.

Coupled with urban agriculture, sustainable regional economies can be imagined in most of

the world’s areas. Some authors consider that “…self-reliance, in the sense of an urban area

producing half or more of its nutritional requirements, is possible in all but the harshest

climates.” (Smith and Nasr, 1999: 227). Such scenarios cannot be the work of grassroots

citizens’ initiatives alone: they imply the large-scale reconfiguration of urban governance and

land-use practices, which ecovillages currently have no power to change.

3) LIMITATIONS OF THE ECOVILLAGE MODEL

Ecovillages are works in progress that encounter inevitable contradictions with the

ideal-type they seek to attain. The contradictions between the theory and practice of any

ecovillage highlight the difficulties involved in creating sustainable habitats. Indeed, there is

no ideal-type for sustainable habitats, just as there is no end-state or ideal-type to be found in

any ecosystem, or nature itself. This precludes the possibility of any “model” ecovillage

emerging in a material sense: the built environment and resource-use of every community is

23

Numerous urban “bioregional” initiatives already exist. For instance, France’s AMAP (Association pour le

Maintien d’une Agriculture Paysanne) directly echoes ecovillages’ efforts to develop sustainable regional

economies. In this configuration, farmers no longer produce bulk quantities that are sold on the international

commodity market, but have a list of local (usually urban) customers to whom they sell a given amount of

seasonal produce every one or two weeks. Many AMAP farmers have also endorsed organic agricultural

methods. Such is the success of the model that demand far outstrips the capacities of AMAP farmers, thereby

providing a secure market opportunity for others. The Réseau Cocagne is an AMAP that employs jobless or

struggling adults, a practice called “bio-insertion”.

~ 41 ~

also defined by local conditions. Applying the solutions developed by ecovillages in different

contexts requires a great deal of creativity and experimentation, for these communities have

never aspired to having all of the answers. For all their achievements, eco-villages also face

important challenges (Dawson, 2010). Many ecovillages struggle to gather the resources and

funds necessary to the fulfillment of their holistic vision. Therefore, contradictions exist:

Tamera is also connected to the Portuguese electric supply grid, and uses natural gas for some

of its energy requirements. The creation of “organic regional economies” is also necessarily

fragmentary, since many of the products consumed in ecovillages are not available through

such channels. Furthermore, industrial economies of scale provide a market against which

tiny regional economies cannot possibly compete.

Rather than discrediting ecovillages, this fact simply illustrates the extent to which

even the most radical alternatives to develop sustainable lifestyles remain entrenched in the

techno-industrial configuration depicted in Section I. Furthermore, ecovillagers make a

conscious choice to live on the margins of society. The ecovillage ethic, however pluralistic

and holistic, may be unattractive to other parts of society that do not share the same concerns.

Thus, ecovillages are just starting to gain recognition amongst mainstream actors, but as

interesting “experiments” that do not possess the scope and large-scale solutions needed to

implement change at the level of an entire city, region, or country. Increased dialogue

between mainstream and alternative actors is necessary to modify these views, by showing

how the ideas applied in ecovillages can materialize in a myriad of ways in different

locations. Indeed, the ecovillage movement is developing a consistent ecological culture that

can find many applications and sources of inspiration in the immaterial and material urban

space.

~ 42 ~

V) SUSTAINABLE URBAN HABITATS: IMAGINING THE

“ECOPOLIS”

The following section will seek to appraise the possible points of interaction between

the marginal experiments of ecovillages and urban policy and development today. It appears

that positive signs of rising ecological awareness are already at hand amongst policy makers

and urban theorists alike. This yields new opportunities for “Public-Civil-Private

Partnerships” (PCPPs) aimed at encouraging holistic approaches to sustainable urban

development.

1) RISING AWARENESS OF HOLISTIC APPROACHES TO THE URBAN

SPACE

Despite the problematic trends depicted above, the last two decades have witnessed an

important shift in perceptions of urban governance and planning. The most prominent sign of

this shift in mainstream perceptions is the Aalborg Charter24

, signed in 1994 by 67 European

urban areas and regions (Aalborg, 2004). Its predecessor, the 1942 Athens Manifesto, had

very different aims. This anonymous manifesto of modern urbanism suggested that cities be

organized around distinct, functional areas (residential, commercial, industrial and leisure)

through zoning. This rationalization of city planning sought to create an international, unique

style for urbanism and architecture, producing standardized solutions for urban spaces

regardless of environment and history. Here, urban material reality was equated to the totality

of the city. By contrast, the Aalborg Charter recognizes the importance of locality in its

material and immaterial dimensions in order to foster local sustainable development. Indeed,

“locality” is an essential aspect of the urban fabric. Primarily, this term refers to the material

reality (or the built space) of the city and natural environment in which it is entrenched.

Locality also designates the immaterial space of the city, which pertains to human relations

and representations. The ongoing dialectic between the material and immaterial aspects of a

city form the arena in which any reflection on how to render a city more sustainable should be

embedded. This means that ecology in the city is not simply a matter of management and

24

Available at www.ec.europa.eu/environment/urban/pdf/aalborg_charter.pdf.

~ 43 ~

technology. It is first and foremost a social matter that calls for innovative ways of political

interaction and community-building in urban contexts distinguished by their own unique

“biographies”:

Si un modèle urbain émerge…sa particularité est de se décliner avec une grande

diversité d’une ville à une autre…Chaque ville a une biographie en propre, un

caractère. Un projet bien compris de ville durable ne peut que prendre appui sur ces

spécificités, sur le sens de l’urbanité porté par les habitants, dans une optique de

réappropriation de la ville. Ce chantier-là n’a pas encore été ouvert, et fait partie des

nombreux impensés politiques qui caractérisent le champ de la ville durable.

(Emelianoff, 2004 : 34)

In this sense, « …l’écologie n’est plus l’affaire des sciences de la nature, mais une affaire

publique au sens où elle engage des collectifs qui doivent s’entendre sur un monde

commun. » (Rudolf, 2008:63). Ecology has emerged as a field in which science and politics

are mutually constitutive and intermingled (Latour, 1999). This is apparent in the Aalborg

Charter, which hints at rising levels of awareness amongst urban governance circles. The

document also acknowledges fundamental concepts such as urban-rural linkages, ecosystemic

analysis and the inseparability of social, economic and environmental aspects. Local

government is seen as an appropriate vector through which to instigate public sustainable

development programs, in cooperation with the civil and private sectors:

In carrying out our responsibilities of local government and management, we are

increasingly subject to the combined pressures of economic globalization and

technological development. We are confronted with fundamental economic change

as well as with man-made and natural threats to our communities and resources…

We face daunting challenges: creating employment in a knowledge-based economy,

combating poverty and social exclusion, securing effective protection for our

environment, reducing our ecological footprint, responding to demographic changes

and managing cultural diversity, as well as averting conflict and sustaining peace in

formerly war-torn communities. (Aalborg +10, 2004)

Most importantly, the Charter considers that cities are essential to global sustainability efforts,

particularly in the “developed” world. At present, more than 2500 local and regional

governments have become signatories of the document, applying it with various degrees of

determination and success.

~ 44 ~

Rising awareness of holistic approaches to the urban space in the public sector is also

apparent in certain parts of academia. Section II illustrated the significant contrast between

the naturalistic sociology of the Chicago school and the quantitative concerns of the urban

ecologists. Urban ecologists often overlooked the socio-political dimensions of the city, while

these were the prime focus of the Chicago School. While some discussed the

anthropomorphic nature of the city, others focused on its quantitative dimension. These

various analytical lenses emphasized different aspects of the city that must, at present, be

understood as a whole. This is the stage at which we find ourselves today: many of the

strategies necessary to the large-scale implementation of sustainability objectives in the urban

space already exist. One struggles, however, to pull them into a coherent framework capable

of transforming theory into policy. Eco-urbanism is but one of the recent tendencies that seek

to establish such a concrete urban sustainability agenda:

L’éco-urbanisme pose de manière centrale les questions de dialogue entre les acteurs

de la ville, de leur participation à l’organisation spatiale de leurs activités et à la

gestion des ressources naturelles dans une perspective d’amélioration de la qualité

urbaine….La notion de projet est au cœur de cet urbanisme participatif, stratégique,

ancré dans une éthique de la responsabilité, fondé sur des nouvelles modalités de

gouvernance des agglomérations urbaines. (da Cunha, 2005: 176)

Eco-urbanism emphasizes participatory processes and adaptive co-management in the day-to-

day application of urbanism. Of course, “participation” does not imply an increase in social

equity and justice, but it is a necessary precondition for the manifestation of these ideals

(Lélé, 1991). The long-term participation of urban citizens may be ensured through adaptive

co-management, which designates the sharing of resource management responsibilities and

authority between the users of given ecosystems and public bodies. This strategy can be

particularly valuable in achieving forms of cooperation between local institutions and

organized grassroots initiatives.

2) COMMUNITY ACTION FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN LIFESTYLES

Alongside the radical theoretical shift from the Athens Manifesto to Aalborg,

alternative urban lifestyles are also gaining visibility in urban areas. Several examples of

urban ecovillages exist. The use of « urban » and « village » in the same expression may

appear as a contradiction in terms. And yet, an urban ecovillage may be a cluster of homes, an

~ 45 ~

existing block of houses or apartment buildings, a co-housing development, or a complete

existing neighborhood. The main difference with their rural counterparts is that these

settlements are usually more constrained in their land-use options, but have more exchanges

with the wider urban community. As such, they are particularly valuable as spaces for

education and dialogue. Nonetheless, it is clear that such a unit can not be applied at a large-

scale in urban spaces, in which high levels of mobility, multiculturalism and social

inequalities make it difficult to distinguish the homogenous and like-minded groups that one

finds in ecovillages. The United States in particular have seen the appearance of urban

ecovillages in cities that are currently in decline. Thus, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Los

Angeles all flaunt their own urban ecovillage projects. (Sizemore, 2004: 20). Cities effectively

offer multiple possibilities for experimentation in sustainable living that cannot be applied in

rural settings. Urban ecovillages can “…utilize existing housing, infrastructure, transit, local

institutions, existing local job opportunities in the community, and a wealth of potential

materials to be recycled (Cordivae quoted in Sizemore, 2004: 20). One of the most developed

urban ecovillages is Ecovila in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Several dozen families are currently

experimenting with reproducible forms of urban permaculture on a 2,6 hectare property. Solar

energy, natural ventilation, green roofs, ecological construction (using bamboo, adobe, or

clay) and natural water purification systems are all presented to the wider public, in order to

foster environmental education and knowledge transfer. The essence of urban ecovillages can

further be expanded by spreading the five defining characteristics of ecovillages listed in

Section III to a wide variety of extant urban habitats and residential areas. The process of

information, transmission and gradual change induced by ecovillage research centers can

increase the “urban sustainability multiplier” by Rees (Rees 1995): addressing a single issue

in a city may stimulate change in many related factors, due to the linkages that characterize

complex urban systems.

The Transition Town Network (TTN) is a good example of the potential of small-scale

initiatives in catalyzing widespread change (Brangwyn and Hopkins, 2008). This community-

based initiative began in the British Isles in 2007. Two groups of citizens (in Kinsdale, Ireland

and Totnes, England) decided to develop a “Transition Plan”. This document put forth a series

of goals by which the local community could adapt to the effects of climate change and peak

oil25

. TTN is collaborating with GEN on a wide range of issues, and will also participate in

25

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the

rate of production enters terminal decline. See the 1956 “Hubbert Curve” for a graphic representation of peak oil.

Estimations of this peak vary from several years ago to 2020 for the most optimistic.

~ 46 ~

GEN’s 2011 sustainable living conference, held in Tamera. Here, we observe grassroots

networks from urban and rural spaces working together to address related issues through

similar visions of community action. The TTN network now includes hundreds of localities in

the Isles (in small villages or large cities such as Bristol and certain areas of London), and has

made some forays into continental Europe and New Zealand. The ultimate aim of a Transition

Community is to establish an “Energy Descent Action Plan”, which takes place in several

phases. The first one involves building a local resource picture that involves gathering

community data for each working group (arable land, transport options, health provision,

renewable energy sources, textile manufacturing capability, building materials, and so on).

The idea is to create a picture of what the community may look like in 15 to 20 years, as it

self-organizes and develops increased resiliency. A resilient system “…is forgiving of

external shocks….Resilience shifts attention from purely growth and efficiency to needed

recovery and flexibility.” (IPCC quoted in Brangwyn and Hopkins, 2008: 14). The resilience

indicators suggested by the Transition Network are wide-ranging in their concerns and effects.

They assess to which extent the community is capable of fulfilling its own basic needs

independently of fossil-fuel consumption. This comprises food and energy production,

inventories of renewable building materials and waste production (including potential

compost production), and indexes of the commuting distances of residents to their workplace.

Resiliency also increases with the amount of businesses that are locally owned, and to what

extent local currency circulates in proportion to total money in circulation (Brangwyn and

Hopkins, 2008). Many British Local Councils have started to cooperate with their local

Transition Networks in a form of community-based, public-civil partnership. Local

government bodies are encouraged to develop their own “Local Community Plan and

Partnership Strategy” explaining how initiatives such as the Transition Network relate to their

own community development projects. In this sense, knowledge, local sustainability and

public services are being jointly co-produced by civil and state actors (Mitlin, 2008).

The idea of co-production can be closely related to that of “pattern language”,

developed by Christopher Alexander in the 1970s, which introduced a new aspect into town

planning:

…celui de la participation des citoyens, auxquels il [Alexander] attribuait la capacité

de parler un « pattern language », un langage urbanistique issu de leur quotidien et

de leurs aspirations. (Lambert, 2004: 207).

~ 47 ~

Pattern language has little to do with expert-driven discourses on urban planning that

materialize in a top-down fashion. Rather, it emphasizes experiences of locality within a given

urban space, and a familiarity with the immaterial aspects of the latter. Pattern language may

define the framework within which citizens assess the potential of their urban environment to

become more sustainable, in conjunction with all-encompassing policies induced by urban

governance bodies. An increased sense of locality could be encouraged by more flexible real

estate legislation facilitating co-habitation, which directly involves citizens in the design and

day-to-day running of their living space. With more flexible legislation, co-habitations, living

cooperatives or urban agricultural plots could also invest idle tracts of urban land: “An

important legal principle here is that of usufruct, which is essentially that any citizen can use

land which is idle as long as the utility of the land to the owner is not diminished.” (Smith and

Nasr, 1999: 228). The building industry also has an important role to play in this process.

More flexible firms willing to co-design settlements with future inhabitants (as in some

ecodistricts) are necessary to allow for sustainable habitats to spread in urban spaces. Firms’

expertise could, in turn, be enriched by other technologies (local biological wastewater

treatment, green roofs, compost toilets, and so on) brought to their awareness by the future

inhabitants. In sum, all the elements are present for such knowledge-transfer and co-design

processes to become a mainstay of urban development. The greatest obstacle is a shift in

mentalities in line with the “ecological culture”, to which we now turn.

3) THE ECOPOLIS AND THE EMERGENCE OF ECOLOGICAL CULTURES

One of the most recent theories of the city encompassing its material and immaterial

aspects is Paul Downton’s “ecopolis”. This approach seeks to devise strategies for the city to

extract itself from its parasitic, extractive role and to become a vector of ecosystem restoration

instead of degradation:

Cities need to be consciously designed and understood as living systems embedded

in the processes of the biosphere and as key regulators of the global ecology.

(Downton, 2009: 23)

By contrast, an “ecocity” merely takes account of its position within the Biosphere, attuning

itself to its natural environment. For the time being, such an “ecologically healthy city” does

~ 48 ~

not exist (Register quoted in Downton, 2009:20)26

. This is a desirable step in itself, which

may lead to a city to become an ecopolis, a sort of urban “healing biotope”. Etymologically,

“eco” derives from the Greek oikos, designating the household unit. In this sense, the particle

refers to the ecological purpose and economic “household” of an ecopolis community:

…the landscape is not just a supply depot but is also the oikos --the home-- in which

we must live. Until recently mankind has…taken for granted the gas-exchange,

water-purification, nutrient-cycling, and other protective functions of self-

maintaining ecosystems (…). Now, of course, it is painfully evident that such

balances are being affected, often detrimentally. The “one problem, one solution

approach”…must be replaced by some form of ecosystem analysis that considers

man as a part of, not apart from, the environment. (Odum, 1969: 9-10)

“Polis” has designated the self-governing city since the days of Ancient Athens. Applied to

our contemporary context, the term refers to ideas of local governance that encompass the

notions of community and self-determination in the city. Indeed, self-determination is seen as

essential to a potential ecopolis: it is what enables the polis to take account of and attune itself

to its local eco-social realities. The ecopolis also cultivates close ties to its rural hinterland in

the form of “regional universalism” (see Section IV). In sum, the elaborate ecopolis theory is

an all-embracing attempt at reconciling aspects of the urban space which have been divided

into different sectors and specializations. At present, fusing all of these strands of urban

policy into a holistic agenda is above all a matter of culture. As such, the ecopolis is a

manifestation of a developed ecological culture, and one of its most important catalysts:

The ability to transmit in symbolic forms and human patterns a representative part of

a culture is the great mark of the city: this is the condition for encouraging the fullest

expression of human capacities and potentialities (Mumford quoted in Downton,

2009:25)

Furthermore, Downton echoes Geddes’ concept of civics in considering that communication

and decision-making structures based on mutual aid are needed in the urban space. They

recognize inter-dependency within the polis, as well as direct democracy, thereby shortening

26

Paul Downton is one of the main designers of the Adelaide Central Business District Ecocity project,

Australia. This 2,4 hectare mixed-use ecodistrict project is implanted in the business center of the city. It

contains around 400 low-income and high-end houses, and presents most of the green technologies used in urban

spaces today. Strong emphasis is placed on urban-rural links and the development of an ecological culture

around the project. It has purchased 42 ha of degraded agricultural land (equal to the residents’ approximate

ecological footprint), which it is now restoring. The project also runs a “barefoot architecture program” that

directly implicates future residents in the design and ecological framework of their future housing (Downton,

2009).

~ 49 ~

channels of communication, improving information flow and relating decision-making to

place (Downton, 2009). In addition to the political organization of the ecopolis, its spatial

organization is based on the complexity inherent to fractal organic systems: “An urban fractal

is a network that contains the essential characteristics of the larger network of the city. Each

fractal will possess nodes…and patterns of connectivity that define its structure and

organization, and it will exhibit characteristics of a community associated with living

processes.” (Downton, 2009:27). Thus, an urban neighborhood that contains all of the

arrangements one finds in the city at large (plaza, housing, shops, government, offices,

schools, places of worship, natural spaces, and so on) is a fractal of this city. By extension, the

ecological characteristics of urban ecovillages or ecodistricts could also serve as urban fractal

models for the entire city in which they are located. The study of urban fractals as organizing

principles for complex urban spaces is one of the main objects of study of New

Architecture27

, which seeks to escape the rigid dogmas imposed by the modernist architecture

of the Athens Manifesto era.

All in all, it is apparent that many points of interaction exist between the marginal

experiments conducted in ecovillages and mainstream approaches to sustainable habitat

development. As we have seen, local governance and urbanism structures are becoming more

receptive to holistic approaches to the urban space that take into account eco-social factors,

alongside economic rationality. Building upon these rising levels of awareness will render the

material as well as the immaterial space of the city more attuned to its natural environment

and the “pattern language” of its citizens. As a result, public-private partnerships are

insufficient for instigating the co-management and collaborative planning structures necessary

to the rapid spread of sustainable habitats in “mineral cities”. What is needed are Public-

Civic-Private partnerships that submit urban development to holistic and long-term visions of

sustainable urban policies that reconcile economic rationality and eco-social criteria.

27

See “Ecology and the Fractal Mind in the New Architecture: a Conversation” (Padrón and Salingaros, 2000).

~ 50 ~

CONCLUSION

This analysis has sought to illustrate the challenges and potential inroads for

sustainable habitat development today. On the one hand, dominant visions of the latter

emphasize technology and capital-intensive inputs in order to “green” the current global

economic system in place. This approach omits eco-social considerations, and is incapable of

conceiving of forms of growth and development that do not rely on fossil fuels. On the other

hand, approaches that integrate eco-social considerations provide more holistic assessments of

the relationships between humanity, its habitat and the Biosphere. They are immanent in the

academic theories of the Chicago School of Sociology, of Geddes’ vision of civics, and urban

ecology. These views provide effective starting points for envisioning more sustainable

habitat patterns in the world’s urban areas. However, the examples of the ecodistrict and of

Masdar have shown to what extent dominant approaches to sustainable development simplify

the complexities inherent to sustainable habitat development, generating negative side-effects

and further cementing the artificial divide between humanity and nature. By contrast,

ecovillages present holistic understandings and applications of sustainable living coupled with

voluntary natural stewardship. This ethic materializes in the built space of ecovillages, as well

as in their educational and transformational purpose. These holistic approaches are beginning

to transpire in urban circles of governance and architecture, as the Aalborg Charter and the

Ecopolis theory illustrate. All in all, many potential points of interaction can be imagined

between the marginal experiments of rural ecovillages and the day-to-day greening of the

urban space. This may led to the renewed embedding of urban areas within their bioregions

and rural hinterlands, which would be a valuable step to creating sustainable cities. If taken,

this evolutionary path would herald the widespread acceptance of a holistic and

transformative ecological culture that has managed to overcome the “human exemptionalism”

paradigm in town and countryside alike.

~ 51 ~

APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1: EBENEZER HOWARD’S GARDEN CITY

(Source: Howard, 1902)

Figure 1: This picture represents E. Howard’s three magnets along with their distinguishing

characteristics. For Howard, the “town-country” magnet corresponded to the Garden City, the

preferred destination of “the People”.

~ 52 ~

APPENDIX 2: THE PERMACULTURE FLOWER

Figure 2: The Permaculture Flower aptly illustrates the different components of sustainable

community development as imagined by the permaculture approach. It is also indicative of

many of the values and practices adhered to in ecovillages.

~ 53 ~

APPENDIX 3 : THE SOLAR POWER VILLAGE

(Source: Kleinwächter, 2004)

Figure 3: An artistic view of the Solar Power Village concept

i) The greenhouse is covered by a fluorpolymer foil (the only “high-tech” element in the

building) that lets in the entire spectrum of solar radiation, including UV rays. The UV rays

inhibit the presence of certain pests within the greenhouse, thus reducing pesticide use while

enhancing plant development. Fresnel optical lenses mounted on the outside direct solar

radiation onto insulated pipes filled with vegetable oil, thereby preventing overheating in the

greenhouse while extracting reusable heat. This process heats up the vegetable oil running

through the pipes, which is stocked in a hot-oil storage tank.

ii) The hot-oil storage tank stores the vegetable oil up to temperatures of 220 ° C. A 2,000

liter tank stores about 75 kWh (kilowatt per hour) of usable heat. This corresponds to 500 kg

of wood burned in most (inefficient) fireplaces. This amount of energy can meet the needs of

~ 54 ~

500 people for cooking, pumping water and generating electricity for 2 to 3 days. The oil can

also be heated with biomass when there is no sunshine. The hot oil can also be used for

cooking in the solar kitchen.

iii) The mid-temperature Stirling engine converts thermal energy into mechanical energy,

starting at temperatures of 150 °C. Provided with 50 kWh of thermal energy, it produces 1

kWh of mechanical energy for up to 10 hours. Thus, it can generate electricity for lighting,

milling grain or pumping water, for instance. This electricity can also be used for cooking in

the solar kitchen.

iv) The “Sunpulse” pump is a low-temperature Stirling engine designed to pump water. It is

directly powered by solar radiation, and can pump up to 4 cubic meters of water per hour at a

depth of 10 meters. Combined with a hydraulic ram, it can pump to depths of up to 60 meters.

It is a cheap and cost-effective alternative to fossil-fuel or electricity water pumps currently

used in many Southern settings and development projects.

The Solar Power Village may use a series of smaller solar ovens for cooking. Basic solar

desiccation devices can be used to dry seeds, grain and fruits. A Scheffler mirror can also be

used for cooking purposes. This is a simple parabola composed of recycled mirrors, oriented

in such a way that it reflects sunlight onto a horizontal mirror. In turn, this mirror reflects this

concentrated ray of light onto the bottom of a black pot, which can be used for cooking at

temperatures reaching 200 degrees.

~ 55 ~

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