Eco-cities - Eco-City Criteria

Eco-City Criteria

There are currently no set criteria for what is considered an “eco-city,” although several sets of criteria have been suggested, encompassing the economic, social, and environmental qualities an eco-city should satisfy. The ideal “eco-city” has been described as a city that fulfills the following requirements:

• Operates on a self-contained economy, resources needed are found locally
• Has completely carbon-neutral and renewable energy production
• Has a well-planned city layout and public transportation system that makes the priority methods of transportation as follows possible: walking first, then cycling, and then public transportation.
• Resource conservation—maximizing efficiency of water and energy resources, constructing a waste management system that can recycle waste and reuse it, creating a zero-waste system
• Restores environmentally damaged urban areas
• Ensures decent and affordable housing for all socio-economic and ethnic groups and improve jobs opportunities for disadvantaged groups, such as women, minorities, and the disabled
• Supports local agriculture and produce
• Promotes voluntary simplicity in lifestyle choices, decreasing material consumption, and increasing awareness of environmental and sustainability issues

In addition to these initial requirements, the city design must be able to grow and evolve as the population grows and the needs of the population change. This is especially important when taking into consideration infrastructure designs, such as for water systems, power lines, etc. These must be built in such a way that they are easy to modernize (as opposed to the dominant current strategy of placing them underground, and therefore making them highly inaccessible).

Each individual eco-city development has also set its own requirements to ensure their city is environmentally sustainable; these criteria range from zero-waste and zero-carbon emissions, such as in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city project and the Abu Dhabi Masdar City project, to simple urban revitalization and green roof garden projects in Malmo, Sweden.