An ecocity protects and enhances the collective well-being of life on earth.

An ecocity respects and promotes ecological function and the diversity of non-human life, while at the same time supporting our own physical and emotional health and fostering our highest collective creativity.  The ecocity model recognizes and celebrates the reality that humans and non-human nature are inextricably linked, but also that respecting certain boundaries between the two are necessary to maximize the health of both.

Ecocities are most fundamentally defined by highly-organized and deliberate, high-density, pedestrian-focused development, in contrast to the haphazard, undifferentiated, car-driven and car-driving horizontal growth characterizing most of today’s cities. In our increasingly complex and crowded world, ballooning population, production and consumption and their built manifestations have outsized impacts and unintended consequences. But there has also been a corresponding increase in our awareness of these impacts on environment and society, and our understanding of how to predict, measure and prevent them. Clearly, then, we can no longer justify unrestrained, ad-hoc urban development, except to blame it on habit and human nature.

For now, aligning awareness with the right priorities is mostly up to those of us without significant power or resources, but who grasp that the largest creations of our species require nothing short of a remodel.