A sustainable city , or eco-city is a city designed with consideration of environmental impact , inhabited by people dedicated to minimization of required inputs of energy, water and food, and waste output of heat, air pollution - CO 2 , methane , and water pollution. Richard Register first coined the term "ecocity" in his 1987 book, Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future . [ 1 ] Other leading figures who envisioned the sustainable city are architect Paul F Downton , who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, and authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann , [ 2 ] who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities. There remains no completely agreed upon definition for what a sustainable city should be or completely agreed upon paradigm for what components should be included.
Transition Towns (also known as transition network or transition movement ) is a grassroots network of communities that are working to build resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability. [ 1 ] Transition Towns is a brand for these environmental and social movements “founded (in part) upon the principles of permaculture ”, based originally on Bill Mollison ’s seminal Permaculture, a Designers Manual published in 1988. [ 2 ] The Transition Towns brand of permaculture uses David Holmgren’s 2003 book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability . [ 3 ] These techniques were included in a student project overseen by permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland. The term transition town was coined by Louise Rooney [ 4 ] and Catherine Dunne.
Permaculture is a branch of ecological design , ecological engineering , and environmental design which develops sustainable architecture and self-maintained horticultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The core tenets of permaculture are: [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Take care of the earth : Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply. This is the first principle, because without a healthy earth, humans cannot flourish. Take care of the people : Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence.
Degrowth (in French: décroissance , [ 1 ] in Spanish: decrecimiento , in Italian: decrescita ) is a political, economic, and social movement based on ecological economics and anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption—the contraction of economies—as overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring and a decrease in well-being. [ 2 ] Rather, 'degrowthists' aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community. [ 3 ] [ edit ] Background The movement arose from concerns over the perceived consequences of the productivism associated with industrialist societies (whether capitalist or socialist ):
