What Does Neighborhood Theory Mean for Ecourbanism? Introduction to the Themed Issue on ‘Ecourbanism Worldwide’

Abstract

A growing chorus of planners and designers heralds the neighborhood as the best scale at which to pursue a shift toward low-carbon, “green” living alternatives to the status quo Western lifestyle. Within this, attention to ecourban developments, as a set of planning, design, social and technological arrangements for living better within resource limits, has increased; ecourban neighborhood scale developments, as well as the certification frameworks seeking to imbue them with legitimacy, can be found in different countries worldwide. They hold potential lessons for one another across environmental, design and engineering perspectives while also serving as catalysts and demonstration projects of planning, policy and design for sustainability in their local contexts. They offer new opportunities for learning about living well. This is not to say that the rolling out of ecourban neighborhoods in different contexts around the world does not engender tensions. Models, frameworks and practices of ecourbanism may carry divergent interpretations of sustainability and hence advance, to varying degrees, different priorities. These divergences can be seen, for example, across livability, environmental, social and economic priorities. Similar tensions also occur on the issue of scale, with ecourban developments taking form as urban redevelopment megaprojects, technological innovation demonstration projects, smaller-scale alternative lifestyle projects, and other scales in between. This special issue of Articulo - Journal of Urban Research advances the exploration of current trends in ecourban neighborhood-scale developments, including the tensions that they raise. This introduction to the special issue provides a summary of the literature on ecourbanism and the importance of the ‘neighborhood scale’, a synopsis of the Ecourbanism Worldwide project, and provides a brief introduction to the scholarly work included in this special issue.