Cities must change.
The city has become the natural habitat for the majority of mankind, and has an environmental efficiency not found in any other form of human settlement.
At the same time, there is a growing trend for establishing eco-villages. Although their intentions are noble, they are usually situated so far from the city they are an implausible living alternative for our increasingly urbanised society.
The project investigates whether the human animals’ most inhabited and eco-efficent “natural world” can be injected with a new layer that borrows from the environmental aspirations of the eco-village and provides an alternative way of urban living .
What if the founders of an eco-village didn’t abandon the city, but instead embraced it; explored it as a site for settlement?
Bergen Eco Settlement
The project uses Bergen, Norway as a case study.
Bergen council wants Bergen to be "Norway’s greenest city”, and by 2020 intends to reduce the city’s CO2 emissions by 30%. The council want to introduce “fossil-fuel-free zones” in parts of the city centre, and by 2030 wants a higher-density “fossil-fuel-free centre”; to retro-fit “green roofs” to existing buildings; and to establish “green jobs” throughout the city.
Bergen Eco Settlement helps achieve these ambitions, whilst strengthening the city's existing communities.
It comprises a new living alternative in Bergen, a network of communities throughout the core of the city that reuses Bergen's many post-industrial / post-oil buildings as a resource. These large-scale buildings become a place to grow local and sustainable foods. The communities live in or around these hubs, growing key aquaponic foods for themselves and the city, and also harvest food from many of Bergen's other resources.
A new network of trails connects these communities to food-growing resources, whilst also intersecting with existing city functions. The new web of movement disregards polluted main roads and more likely winds through local neighbourhoods and areas of natural beauty. It provides a healthier, more social and car-free alternative to navigating the city.
The project includes a case study in Sandsli, a suburban area to the south of Bergen, where the new eco-settlement becomes a community social hub in boring suburbia.
Ten Principles of Sustainable Community
Eco-villages adhere to many points outlined in the Ten Principles of Sustainable Community. The ten principles have been used as a guide for decision making throughout the project.
- Zero carbon
- Zero waste
- Sustainable transport
- Sustainable material
- Local and sustainable food
- Sustainable water
- Land use and wildlife
- Culture and community
- Equity and economics
- Health and happiness
“We live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead”
-William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature)
