Sustainable City Regions: Mega-Projects in Balance with the Earth’s Carrying Capacity

Abstract

The issue of sustainability is becoming the basis of a massive global project for the transformation of the existing human-made environment to operate within the capacities of the natural environment. Such a project requires the balancing of resource and energy use at every scale from the scale of the individual dwelling to the scale of the globe. Imbalances in a sustainable system can persist at a given scale only when the accountability for that imbalance is negotiated with some agency at the next larger scale. The master scale for adjusting these numerous balances is the town-region, where the major balance-seeking activities required to practice sustainability will be carried out. This paper presents a design for a town-region that is well suited for the carrying out of such a balance-seeking process. The project is an entry in a competition to design a new administrative town for South Korea. This entry presents a new urban form, a MegaForm, the Sustainable Town-as-a-Hill. The Town-as-a-Hill is uniquely designed to support both the technical processes of sustainability as well as provide an urban environment that supports and is supported by strong civil society processes. The project’s processes are grounded in a principle called the Sustainable Area Budget (SAB). The SAB is an equitable, land-based budget from which, on a net basis, all the town-region’s energy and resource needs are to be met. An ongoing, participatory, multiple alternative scenario-building design process engages citizen stakeholders to negotiate how they will afford to live in an equitable, regenerative relationship with nature – that is, within the carrying capacity of their Sustainable Area Budget.