Design for Ecological Democracy

Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in theprocess of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities,destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design forEcological Democracy, Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines newprinciples for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and ournatural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples--drawnfrom forty years of design and planning practice--showing how we can design cities that areecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure.Hester argues that it isonly by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in designwill take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining ourinterconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on threefundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, andimpelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclavesand to function as informed democracies. A simple bench at a centrally located post office, forexample, provides an opportunity for connection and shared experience. Cities must be ecologicallyresilient rather than ecologically imperiled, adaptable to the surrounding ecology rather thandependent on technological fixes. Resilient form turns increased urban density, for example, into anadvantage. And cities should impel us by joy rather than compel us by fear; good cities enrich usrather than limit us. Design for Ecological Democracy is essential reading for designers, planners,environmentalists, community activists, and anyone else who wants to improve a localcommunity.

C.J.W.-L. Wee teaches literature and cultural theory at the Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, Singapore. He was formerly a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast AsianStudies, Singapore, and is the author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of BeingModern (Lexington Books, 2003), and the editor of Local Cultures and the"New Asia": The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia (Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, 2002).