Some days ago I had the opportunity to listen to speech on ecocities by Richard Register. He spoke on the ground floor of The Commons, in Brooklyn, where Dreamriver Press has its offices.

Mr. Register has been a strong supporter for the development of ecocities. He has studied this topic for almost 40 year now, and is considered by many one of the founders of the ecocity movement (he was the first to coin the term “ecocity”). His stop in New York City was his last on his way home to California, after being a guest speaker in many countries around the globe.

Some of Mr. Register’s designs, shown during the slide-show presentation, were fascinating. Cities were covered in vegetation: green balconies, green rooftops, and trees planted on every street. These cities are designed for people and not for cars. Means of transportation included bicycles, electric trams and elevators.

Ecocities are not that large in size. However, several ecocities can coexist in close proximity to each other, with farmland and natural landscapes dividing them, looking almost like islands in an ocean. In some ways this model reminded me of older villages which all share a geographic region but which are not clustered into one big village (or city).

It was an enlightening presentation. It made me ponder about the future of human settlements on the planet. For a long time now I’ve been a strong supporter of ecovillages and believed that they presented a future sustainable model for our world. But perhaps ecovillages and ecocities can coexist harmoniously in a not too distant future.

Interesting ideas on transitioning to local economic models. Find out more by visiting Transition Culture.

Greening our cities is a major part of the Transition Towns movement. This can present a challenge for many urban centers, which for the most part are covered in concrete and asphalt. I would often dream of ways in which all the asphalt could be removed from streets, or parking lots. And so, I was happy to hear that there is an organization which goal is exactly this. It is called depave.

As mentioned on their web site, depave was created to inspire, and “promote the removal of unnecessary concrete and asphalt from urban areas”. For the moment the organization, is local to Portland, Oregon, USA. However, it signifies a growing trend, shared by many transition towns/communities. On their web site, pictures can be seen of the depaving process, such as those of an urban Chicago back-parking lot.

Depaving is by no means an easy task. It could be quite time consuming, but I’m sure it is a satisfying process! Different methods might be needed depending on whether you are depaving asphalt or concrete. As a general rule the soil under the concrete remains healthy, whereas it is advisable to have the soil under asphalt checked for toxicity. A complete manual on how to depave can also be found on depave.org.

It was interesting to read an article in the NY Times today about how cities in California and Oregon are beginning to prepare for a rise of electric cars. In fact San Francisco will soon have regulations requiring new buildings to include necessary car chargers.

Car manufacturers are expected to introduce mass-market electric cars within 2010, and there is much speculation about how these cars will be received. Putting aside the performance of these cars, issues such as those dealing with home charging stations need to be worked out.

From an environmental perspective, it is interesting to look at the current amount of energy needed to charge an electric car. The article quotes a utility expert that says a single car could potentially consume three times as much electricity as an average San Francisco home. One can imagine the amount of electricity that will be needed if hundreds of thousands of cars make their appearance on the streets. Despite the fact that the energy these cars use does not come from oil, they will put pressure on the electric grid which in turn will need to produce more power – hopefully in an environmental-friendly way.

Reading about Transition Towns today, I wondered how these eco-friendly towns would accept electric cars. I’m guessing they would embrace them, but perhaps with some reservation, as they will question all energy needed to produce, use and recycle/dispose the new electric cars.

This past Friday I attended an event organized by Evolver where an ex-financial trader, Alex Gordon-Brander, made an interesting proposition: the use of a new currency, a form of paper money, which would be backed by energy. The value of this money would be measured in joules, which is a measure of energy.

The idea behind his proposal is that the value of joules-money is directly linked to the energy spent. Historically paper money has been a token, a promissory note, backed by gold or silver, or other precious metals. It would be interesting to envision how energy backed money would work. However, I wonder whether such a currency would in any way develop a dependency or even encourage an increase in the current production of energy worldwide.

This is an incredible example of how we can change even desert land conditions. Geoff Lawton implements permaculture principles in The Dead Sea Valley of Jordan. After you watch this video, you can watch Greening the Desert Revisited, to see how things have evolved since the initial land design management.

Yesterday I attended an interesting lecture by Andrew Faust.  The lecture focused on a brief ecological history of the Americas and the World.  It painted a grim picture of humanity’s impact on the ecosystems of our planet over the last 10,000 years.

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At this time the global summit on the environment in Copenhagen is in its last hours. A consensus is yet to be reached, and delicates are frantically trying to reach an agreement. I’m optimistic that some agreement (however preliminary) will be agreed upon.

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In recent years there seems to be a growing interest in eco-communities also known as ecovillages. The numbers of such communities have been increasing over the last decade. The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) acts as a link, representing many of the world’s eco-communities.

This past summer I had the opportunity to visit two such communities in Italy: Villa Pignano and the community at Bagnaia. Both are located in the beautiful province of Tuscany. Each had its own distinct character and way of functioning, a diversity that generally characterizes ecovillages.

Scenery around Villa Pignano

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Yesterday I went to see an interesting documentary called The Money Fix. The first part of the movie reminded me a lot of another documentary, Zeitgeist. The films focus was money. What is money, how it is created, what is debt and how the concept of scarcity dominates our modern socio-economic models.

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