Eco-Villages and Urbanism

A concept that offers exciting new options for sustainable urban renewal in U.S. cities.

Eco-villages are planned communities that are built to be socially, economically and ecologically sustainable and are in part a response to our current unsustainable economic and environmental systems.

While it seems they have always been more popular in rural settings, cities may be catching on to their benefits and their possible use as a tool to reclaim and reorganize urban space. From city gardening to solar energy and co-housing Eco-villages incorporate many different aspects of sustainability, which can be applied to the house, the street and the neighborhood as a whole, to help cities move in an environmentally friendly direction.

What Eco-villages try to accomplish for their community, New Urbanists try to accomplish for the urban landscape as a whole, which makes them a fresh and exciting new prospect for urban renewal. Therefore its not suprising that urban Eco-villages have been sprouting up in many U.S. cities. Philidelphia, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe to name a few, all have successful urban-Ecovillages.

The Global Eco-village Network has quite a bit of information, with a global directory, a resource guide and calender of events.

Here are a few articles which discuss some of the benefits of eco-villges:

How co-housing can radically reduce your carbon footprint

How Eco-villages can grow sustainable local economies

Eco-villages solution for the coming energy famine