Ecocity World Summit 2013 is convening this September 25-27 in Nantes, France, and preparations are ramping up. We hope to see many of our members and network partners there. Nantes Metropole has generously extended the early bird rates to August 20.
It is our hope that this edition of the conference series coalesces around the powerful linking of city form and function with climate change solutions. Specifically, with the deep realization that we can and must dramatically shift development toward ecologically healthy pedestrian centered patterns, rather than scattered land and energy intensive automobile dependence. The policy tools and incentives structures to accomplish the shift toward culturally and economically vital ecocities are available but they need widespread political and financial support.
Another key milestone we hope to meet at Ecocity 10 is a common understanding that the ecocity provides a structure for solving many problems at once. Energy and land conserving ecocities make room for agriculture, healthy stocks of natural capital and wild nature. They create the context whereby foot and bicycle access is made easy by design, while at the same time solving local and global pollution problems all the way up to the scale of climate change.
Probably the most desirable ripple effect from the above insights would be for ecocity development – both new city development and remodeling of existing cities over the coming decades – to be increasingly paired with natural sequestration of carbon into the soil by restoring and revitalizing grasslands, forests, peat lands, shallow seas and lakes.