Industrial+Ecology+meets+Urban+Ecology+-+How+are+cities+made?


 * Industrial Ecology meets Urban Ecology**

How are cities made?

For this topic the discussion was centered on 3 basic questions about cities.

The first one was: think about a city that you like and think about specific aspects of it that you like about it.

This discussion was a very interesting one because with all of our different backgrounds we seem to all want the same things. Characteristics such as no traffic jams, international atmosphere, cleanness, history, culture, liberal thinking, and access to nature were part of some of the topics discussed. After a long discussion we came to another question: Do we want to live in the city or in a rural area, maybe a combination of both? The “result” of this discussion is shown in the following figure.



The next question for the class is to think about what you “take” from the urban life that helps you be “comfortable”. This section of the discussion brought to our attention the other things that we want from a city that we mostly take for granted. While some aspects are more important than others within our group, we noticed that different groups might have different priorities (e.g. education).

Our short list was:
 * Water to drink
 * Hot water to shower
 * Cooling and Heating
 * Sewer systems
 * Communication networks
 * Food / 24 hours supermarkets
 * Healthcare
 * Social Services
 * Education

The final question for the discussion was the purpose of the city/urban settlement. We discussed ancient and new city developments and we came up with a list of the following purposes:
 * Cities starting industries
 * Nodes of connectivity
 * Worship – spiritual
 * Efficiency – comparison with social insects (bees, ants)
 * “Leisure time”
 * Perception of luxury
 * “Home” resource consumption
 * Power – hierarchy

And after having the 3 questions answered the discussion was lead towards the misalignment between the purpose of the cities and what we want from them (ideal city). Without mayor answers, the questions remains open.

Are the current cities the right tracks toward sustainability? Should we modify our cities or build new ones? And many more that were unspoken in class...