If we look toward ecology and evolution we see that the tendency toward complexity, toward environments and situations involving great diversity, are precisely those environments and situations that cause individuals and species to survive, grow and diversify. The implication of all this is that cities built with the mixed use notion are on the right track. The organization has planted and harvested local fruit trees and gardens, pushed through energy and construction codes, played a role in restoring local creeks and shoreline, built solar greenhouses, conducted ecocity workshops, classes and conferences. Urban Ecology takes direct action of many sorts from testimony before city and state lawmakers to public advocacy to street art and theater. Urban Ecology also keeps the conceptual ideas growing through publication of papers, posters and newsletters that scatter thinly about the world, with members and correspondents on all continents.
Nothing stands alone.
Though Urban Ecology is attempting to bring the details of some urban living together in a coherent, healthy whole, particular aspects of the concept are being developed in many other places. Ian McHarg's Design with Nature, Paolo Soleri's Arcology, the City in the Image of Man, and E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful contribute key ideas to the basic ecocity concept. Obscure books like the one written by the author of this article, Another Beginning and Kenneth Schneider's Autokind vs. Mankind and The Community Space Frame go even more directly to the prescription for ecological cities. The bioregional context for these cities is developed in Peter Berg's work with the Planet Drum Foundation of San Francisco. And the Greens of Europe provide a political structure that might one day recognize and empower the ecocity idea.