What is Green Urbanism? Holistic Principles to Transform Cities for Sustainability

1.1 Different schools of thought: From green city to green building Over the last thirty-five years or so, an international debate on eco-city theory has emerged and has developed as a relevant research field concerning the future of urbanism and the city itself. During that time, a number of architectural schools of thought have been implemented worldwide. One such school is Technical Utopianism (a technological idealism that relied on the quick `techno-fix’, as expressed, for instance, in the work of Archigram). Other early writing on green urbanism was available from Ebenezer Howard, whose 1902 book was entitled `Garden City of Tomorrow’, and whose political and social agenda has recently made a comeback. Much later, in 1969, Reyner Banham pioneered the idea that technology, human needs and environmental concerns should be considered an integral part of architecture. Probably no historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering and services on the design of buildings. (Howard, 1902; Banham, 1969) Some other early significant writing on green urbanism has come from Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs – although they didn’t call it green urbanism. From `Silent Spring’ (by Rachel Carson, 1962), to Victor Olgyay’s `Design with Climate’ (1963), to Reyner Banham’s `Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment’ (1969), to Ian McHarg’s `Design with Nature’ (1969), to the pivotal publications by authors re-connecting urbanism with the climatic condition (such as Koenigsberger, Drew and Fry, or Szokolay, in publications in the 1970s and 80s), to the remarkable `Brundtland Report’ (Brundtland, 1987); the important contributions from Robert and Brenda Vale (`Green Architecture: Design for an Energyconscious Future’, 1991), and the `Solar City Charter’ (Herzog et al, 1995/2007), the field of sustainable city theories and climate-responsive urbanism has constantly been expanded. An important contribution came from Guenther Moewes with his book `Weder Huetten noch Palaeste’ (1995), which is a programmatic manifesto for designing and constructing