Ecological paradigms in planning the liveable city

Abstract

Sustainability is currently the most pressing, complex, and challenging agenda faced by the city. The focus of sustainability has turned on to wider issues of environment, ecology and people. Eco-city as a concept has played a vital role in designing new habitats in the city. In the context of promoting nature as bio-centric entity that controls itself, the eco-city has become a life-territory, a place defined by its life forms, topography and biota, rather than by human activities. As a result the concept of eco-city is over-dependent on the carrying capacity of land, thus paralyzing the growth of the city and its social evolution. We intend to test the strength of the evolved city culture as a reliable tool in shaping strengthening the liveability of the city. In Sri Lanka, cities have been built as political cum religious polis since antiquity and they pretty much yet remain politicallycentred, fragmented and nature-represented. Although, the Sri Lankan city is full of trees, it is not green as a living space because the illegible city form is distancing from society. Our research, through a literature review and a field study carried out in the city of Panadura, intends to test new paradigms that make the city a strengthened living container. We find that the socio-culturally defined ecological footprint is a useful tool in reinforcing city’s liveability.