From Eco-topia to Eco-polis: A Needful Path to Real Reform

2010-12-20
Güneri Söğüt, Gizem Deniz
The 21st century is witnessing a growing awareness on ecological problems related to/caused by our urban settings. This brings about a plethora of new utopian ideals envisioning alternative futures for these settings, picturing ecologically sustainable urban environments. Yet, we know that absolutist urban utopias which depict cities as ‘closed wholes’ proved either unrealizable or unsuccessful in the past centuries as they only gave very limited clues about how to get from the existing conditions of the cities to those imagined futures. Moreover, today, most of our cities are not being produced through totalitarian plans, but rather in fragments (being more pragmatic and practical) through strategic urban interventions. Therefore, projective thinking yielding alternatives for better urban futures in form of experimental urban projects in the midscale (rather than macro-scale urban utopias) within these fragments deserves to receive a corresponding backing for research. Thus, within the scope of this paper, the potential role of the fields of architecture and urban design as means of getting from here to there will be elucidated.
1st International Graduate Research Symposium on the Built Environment (16 - 18 Haziran 2010)

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Citation Formats
G. D. Güneri Söğüt, “From Eco-topia to Eco-polis: A Needful Path to Real Reform,” Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 2010, vol. 1, p. 185, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/74459.