Re: ecovillage and sustainability

Hi Rob,
There are more characteristics than just population that contribute to the
unsustainability of "city-scale." If you have time, please see my paper:
"Sustainable Cities - An Oxymoron?" at www.villagedesign.org.
'Ideal' population size comes in at 5000 for Kirkpatrick Sale in the
highly-researched "Human Scale;" Christopher Alexander suggests 7000 in "A
Pattern Language;" and Lewis Mumford is right in between these as well -
this size being the upper range for "village-scale." Bill Mollison in the
last chapter of the Designer's Manual says 500 is an ideal number to work
with (lower range for "village-scale") and that these groupings can then
be aggregrated into larger collectives. The Mondragon collectives,
incidentally, tend to self-organize at around 5000.
These are the parameters to work with. Large population centers, in this
scheme, would be aggregates of self-contained ecovillages of up to 5000,
which in turn would be aggregates of "hamlet-scale" economic/clan units of
up to 500, which would be composed of "enclave-scale" family units of @
50.  
Then we'd have some organic settlement patterning......
This is exactly how the Classic Maya organized their settlements.
"City-scale" is way beyond "human-scale." How could it ever be
sustainable??



<[email protected]> writes:
>>  By the way,
>> "sustainable city" is an oxymoron.
>
>Chris,
>
>Where woudl you draw the line on population of an "ecocity"?
>
>Rob
>
>PS  Sorry if this has already been covered.  I haven't been following this
>thread.
>
>
>
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