ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: THE NATURE OF THE CITY
Ecological Urbanism asks, what are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism?
In answer, this book is neither definitive impossible when a subject is still in motion nor encyclopaedic equally impossible when so much has been written on almost every aspect of these essays. Instead, it seeks to rebalance the ecological narrative and its embryonic modes of practice with the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice. It examines the implications for cities and the designers of cities now we are required to again address their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and it explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the twenty-first century. Above all, it argues that sooner rather than later, urbanism needs to become environmentally literate, and environmental design needs to become culturally literate.
Susannah Hagan is Professor of Architecture and Head of Research in the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art, UK. Trained at Columbia University and the Architectural Association, her academic work addresses the cultural implications of ecological architecture and urban design. She is also Director of R_E_D (Research into Environment and Design), a multi-disciplinary environmental research consultancy.
ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: THE NATURE OF THE CITY
Susannah Hagan
First published 2015
by Routledge
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2015 Susannah Hagan
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hagan, Susannah.
Ecological urbanism : the nature of the city / Susannah Hagan.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Urban ecology (Sociology) I. Title.
HT241.H34 2014
307.76--dc23
2014006023
ISBN: (hbk) 978-0-415-50667-0
ISBN: (pbk) 978-0-415-50668-7
ISBN: (ebk) 978-1-315-76148-0
Typeset in Sabon 10pt
Typeset in Bembo by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham,
Norfolk NR21 8NN
For Mark, Nilla, Silvio, Julia and Swen
CONTENTS
My thanks to East Architects, in particular to Dann Jessen, for giving me the opportunity to put theory into practice, and to Angela Spencer, who managed to gather information for this book and produce her son Oliver at the same time.
What are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism? In answer, this book is neither definitive impossible when a subject is still in motion nor encyclopaedic equally impossible when so much has been written on almost every aspect of these essays. Instead, it seeks to rebalance the ecological narrative and its embryonic modes of practice with the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice. It examines the implications for cities and the designers of cities now we are required to again address their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and it explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the twenty-first century.
The book is the last in a series of three that I have written that place the environmental at the centre of their discussion. The first, Taking Shape (2001), examined the relationship between nature and culture as it was evolving in architectural theory and practice. The second, Digitalia (2008), examined the extraordinary effect the digital is having on both the conception and practice of design both avant-garde architectural design and avant-garde environmental design. This one looks at the urban rather than the architectural scale, and a future in which the metabolic and the cultural must be equally understood and valued. For simplicitys sake the term architect is used throughout, but includes urban designer, which betrays the Anglo Saxon origins of this book, but spares it some clumsiness.
With each succeeding book, the discussion has become less and less theoretical, and perhaps more and more exasperated, as the volatility of both climate and urbanisation increase rapidly, and our responses to them evolve glacially, especially, it seems, within architecture. The social sciences still dominate urban discourse so that this volatility is considered almost solely in terms of governance even by architects. The architectural profession still doesnt know enough to know it doesnt know enough to respond in terms of design. And architectural education is still failing to address urban resilience with enough seriousness or expertise. Ecological Urbanism and this book, however, are predicated on the assumption that all is not lost. One cant champion design and assume otherwise. Though in a minority, there are practitioners, teachers, students and thinkers within architecture taking a clear-eyed long view, and more importantly finding ways to act on it. This book is dedicated to them.
New strategies are required. Contemporary urbanism needs procedures and concepts capable of holding together coherence and discontinuity in productive new mixtures. It needs to engage the real complexity of the contemporary city, as the technologies, politics, social life, and economic engines of urbanism continue to change. It needs to be aware of the very real environmental crises of our time, and to pay close attention to change and adaptation, recognising all the dynamic intricacies of the natural and social ecologies at work in the city.
(Stan Allen 1997)
Are new strategies really required? Nothing comes of nothing, and Ecological Urbanism most certainly didnt spring fully formed from an architects forehead. Some of its DNA comes from other disciplines, and much of it comes from architectural concepts and practices that are now over a hundred years old, and in some instances, many centuries old. On the other hand to be properly effective, Ecological Urbanism has need of innovative conceptual models, design methods, professional alliances, environmental technologies and a much greater degree of articulation. But what is it? Most people have never heard of the term, and by no means all those who do it use it. At its most basic, it names a design practice that is already underway and culturally under-examined, just as environmental architecture was underway and under-examined before it in the 1990s. It has to be called something, in part to distinguish it from the vast and noisy discourse on the sustainable city, in part to distinguish it from the conventional practice of urban design. The term Ecological Urbanism has begun to serve that purpose, mouthful though it is.
