eco-city design

walkable centres

shared space or separation

density

efficient buildings

public transport

why the trolleybus

road layout

car-lite districts

freight

variations

sustainable farming

resiliency

quality of life

more

Sustainable Farming

Since transporting our foodstuffs thousands of miles is both a waste of energy and a source of pollution, as much as possible should be grown locally in the countryside surrounding the eco-city.

More importantly, local farming makes our towns and cities resilient.  When climate change starts devastating crops, countries will feed themselves first and only export food if they have any left over.  And as fuel prices rise, so too will the costs of transporting food over long distances.  In the future we won't be able to rely on imported food like we do now.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

 - Chinese proverb

And we should be moving away from large scale agribusiness.  By planting crop mixtures, rotating and combining crops and livestock, smaller, more diverse farms produce more output per acre than enormous fields dedicated to a single crop.

Rooftop gardens can also be used for food production, from simple container gardening, through green roofs, to hydroponics where plant roots are suspended in a liquid growing medium instead of soil.

Biodiversity

But not all of the countryside surrounding the eco-city should be used for farming.

By building eco-cities at higher densities, and by making more efficient use of farmland, we can leave more of the surrounding countryside as wilderness.

As well as farming and recreation, some of the countryside surrounding eco-cities should be left as natural habitat

And we should be encouraging wildlife into the cities themselves.  Plants and trees should be everywhere, in courtyards, streets and on rooftops.  Eco-cities should be green cities.

Biomass

Producing energy from farm waste, rubbish and sewage makes a good deal of sense.

Using precious farmland or devastating natural eco-systems to grow crops for biofuel makes no sense at all.

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