Richard Register's "Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature"

"Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature" by Richard Register

AS WE BUILD SO SHALL WE LIVE Chapter

Richard Register has been an environmental activist for a long time—being ecologically aware is his nature. Upon reading the first chapter, “As we build, so shall we live,” already I am beginning to feel compassion towards the environmental acitivists, like him, during the phase in which he calls “The Second Urbanization of America.” During the third millennium, as the introduction of more highways, parking spaces, bridges, car infrastructures catapulted and destroying our civilization – there were people like Richard Register, who were trying to refrain from a self-destructing environment. They realized how integral it was to live in “ecocities” that complemented nature, and not go against it. While the US government and large corporations were ignoring our environment, there were visionaries who were trying to preserve our future, and they were ignored. I feel for their fight. (Cheesy much?)

People that I’ve spoken to about the book mention that the book can be a little bit dry. I too found myself almost lost in the midst of a paragraph. Register has ideas and thoughts with a magnitude of substance that should be applied in our urban planning and become a guide for re-developing our civilization. Relaying those ideas however, should also be able to apply to connecting to humans, as we are the ones who will be benefiting from his vision.


Questions:
1. What is the difference between a “constructed-marsh waste system ”(p.28) and Living Machines?


Highlights:

"Redesigning and Building Whole Cities on Ecological Principles"

“Building a nonviolent city that respects other life forms and celebrates human creativity and diversity is consistent with solving those problems.”

“The edifice edifies”

“Children in today’s typical-car dominated cities learn that cars are valued so highly that it is worth risking human life and enduring high costs and serious pollution to make way for them. They also learn that people don’t care much for public life or nature. “

“At the European Eco-Logical Architecture Congress in Stockholm and Helsinki in Aug. 1992, there was discussion on designing ‘ecological building.’ These buildings features renewable energy systems, built-in recycling, non-toxic building materials, interior greenhous planting and rooftop gardens.”

“If Ecology is not about the individual organism in its community of other living thins, what is it about? If ecological buildings are not about their relationship to other structures, public open spaces, and the life of the whole community, what are they about?... ‘The parking lot. That’s where you go to connect with it.”


“I concluded that it was time to re-unify the dis-integrated city and bring the eco- and social- strains back together again in a New Synthesis Architecture. In this philosophy, the building is primarily conceived as a part of, not apart from, the rest of the larger built community, and positively related to the community of natural environments and life forms.”



Planning West Oakland, CA with eco-visionaries & Richard Register (to my left), author of "Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature"at the West Coast Green Design Charette, Environment