Since 1992, and building upon a consistent body of work by our founder going back nearly forty years, Ecocity Builders has been dedicated to reshaping cities for the long-term health of human and natural systems. In years past, Ecocity Builders was often called "before its time" and "visionary." But time has now caught up to our core ideas. Requests for our services have accelerated both locally and internationally.

On the local front, working with celebrated urbanist Walter Hood of Hood Design, Ecocity Builders led the public process for the Strawberry Creek Plaza on Center Street project in Berkeley all the way to an endorsement from the City Council in March 2010. This was a major victory for the plaza, which will create the first pedestrian street oasis in the heart of downtown Berkeley, featuring a portion of Strawberry Creek and deep green design elements, including underground storm water cisterns and pervious pavers. This project will likely turn out to be one of the greenest streets in North America, and we're hoping to certify it under the Living Building Challenge's "Living Landscape" typology.

This is one of the pieces of the ecocity that we strive to build - demonstrations that become examples and inspirations, like our earlier creek daylighting, slow street, live roof, and urban fruit orchard projects.

In West Oakland, we continue to partner with the Black Dot Artists and Village Bottoms Neighborhood Association to implement the Village Bottoms Cultural District plan, developed under a grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The neighborhood vision falls under a broader concept, Oakland's Urban Villages, launched several years ago. We used GIS mapping and worked with the University of California, Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning to develop an evolving ecocity map for Oakland. The pilot project will show how Oakland could be transformed into a number of culturally and architecturally unique "urban villages" of various sizes, linked to a vibrant downtown core through a network of greenways and transit routes, and enhanced by growing green spaces between centers, for community gardens, parks, open spaces and habitat corridors. Collaborators and supporters for the Village Bottoms Cultural District in 2009-2010 included West Coast Green, Kaiser Permanante, Architecture for Humanity, Free Design Clinic, and Will Allen and his organization Growing Power for the Village Bottoms Farms project.

Our consulting work grew in 2009-2010. A major commission was a design charrette and report for the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver's premier trade school has embarked on an ambitious plan to ramp down its campus' footprint to a "one-planet" supportive measure. Our job was to help them think through a complete redesign of the campus into an ecocity environment supportive of the one planet goal, with an emphasis on the northern third of the campus as a beginning pilot project or "ecocity fractal."

We travel a lot to get the word out about the ecocity approach. Last year around this time we were headed to Istanbul, Turkey, for the 8th International Ecocity Conference, the longest running conference series on the subject of ecocities, started in 1990. The Istanbul conference brought long-time ecocity practitioners together with fresh new talent from around the world to discuss, debate and share projects and best practices. A special emphasis was on ecocity applications in Turkey and the Mediterranean region. Novatek, a technology concept business patterned after the labs of Thomas Edison, hired us to co-consult with them in Huaibei, China to think through the problems of a city sinking into its old coal mines.

We are also partnering with Novatek and a seasoned team of experts in the United States and Nepal to craft an entry to the Living City Design Competition. In addition to the Kathmandu team, we have on board Walter Hood, Josiah Cain, Geoff Holton, Kelley Lemon, Shivang Patwa, Richard Register, Kirstin Miller, Elise Harris and Abinash Pradham. Stay tuned to see what we come up with! 

Spreading these ideas around the world within a clear and measurable format inspired the launch of the International Ecocity Framework & Standards (IEFS) project, with start up funding from the Helen and William Mazer Foundation. This project is attracting considerable attention and interest from prominent sustainability practitioners from around the world. We expect the IES to develop into a major educational forum and possibly a highly influential body over the next year, leading up to our first public vetting of the work at the 9th International Ecocity Conference in August 2011, Montreal, Canada.
 

Our President, Richard Register, represented our work around the world, including three talks in South Korea, with one at Changwon where he is a member of their International Advisory Council. He also spoke at the Second International De-growth Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on ecocity economics and returned by way of talks in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Ithaca New York, plus another in North Adams, Massachusetts. Also this year he represented us in Detroit, Kathmandu Nepal, and on a second trip to Korea for the Future of Cities Summit hosted by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability. Over the year he was interviewed for three movies, including one on the life and work of Paolo Soleri.

For such a small organization, the amount of work we manage to accomplish always amazes our supporters and associates. We attribute much of our success to the power of the ideas and to the considerable personal commitment to the work on the part of our staff, members, interns and associates.

The other part we attribute to all of you - our financial supporters, sponsors and members. Thank you so much for your kindness and support for our work. Please see our related article on our major plans and projects upcoming in 2001. We'd be honored to have your continued support in 2011.

 
Sincerely,


Kirstin Miller for Ecocity Builders

Ecocity Builders
339 15th Street, Suite 208
Oakland CA 94612 USA
www.ecocitybuilders.org

Keeper of the International Ecocity Conference Series

Ecocity Builders is a non-profit organization dedicated to reshaping cities, towns and villages for long-term health of human and natural systems.