Defining Ecotopia

Two concepts of Ecotopia have been reviewed: Callenbach believes that a “stable state” is ecologically essential for all living beings, including humans. In addition, the feeling of living in and sharing “home place” provides essential security for people and their community. At the end of this section, we would like to define “ecotopia” as follows: “Ecotopia is a place where human beings try to live harmo­niously within their existing ecosystem.”

Callenbach has written about “urban ecology” in Ecology: A Pocket Guide and closes the article as follows:

Modern eco-cities based on these strategies will offer comfortable human habitats. They have more variety of entertainments, more lively streets, and more delightful accidental encounters. They will also offer “green cracks” in the urban concrete where some wild species can coexist with us as visible companions reminding us that even in the hearts of cities we are still part of the vast ecological web of planetary life (Callenbach 2008).

The next section, as an example of the possibility of an Ecotopia style living in large cities, we examine a citizen movement to preserve a small municipal park from urban redevelopment in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo.

Updated: October 2, 2015 — 11:16 am