Ecocities Chapter 2 "The City in Evolution"

Chapter 2 of Ecocities is as the title suggests about the volution of teh modern city throughout time. The author begins at the very begining of the established civilized city, or most acurately a group of people coexisting in one space. In the begining of this chapter he emphasises the fact that so many authors we have read do, everything within the universe is interconnected. He even goes as far as to divise a new term for this connection that he calls miniplexion, in short this means that nothing exists separate from the universe. I think that this is the most important statement within the topic of sustainability, but the broad method in which he chose to primarily address this connection made me wonder where the chapter was going to go and how he was going to tie it back to the evolution of the sustainable or not sustaianable city.

As the chapter progresses he begins to touch upon more modern topics but still he continues to approach these topics in somewhat round about ways. In the section titled the urban comet he begins to introduce very important sustainability issues such as global warming and the heat island effect although he introduces these topics as somehwat stories not facts as i believe would be more effective. He continues with his story about the islands, once again i believe that he touches upon very important sustainability ideas but he does it in a very unapproachable way. Very few people who read this probibly have daily interaction with an island nor do they study the ecology of islands. I believe a much more effective way of conveying his points would be to relate his observations about the island dynamic back to something that most people relate to such as a small city or just normal everyday life a bit more than he already did at the end of the section.

The section that i most enjoyed and that i feel touched on what i was looking for out of this chapter was the city as an organism i loved the very visual way in which he showed his point by actually disecting the parts of a city as if they were an organism. It really makes one think that if i was to mess up a part of my own body what that does to my organism so if we are to mess up a part of teh cities organism what would it do to that? The final two sections regarding practice and lessons were much more approachable as well. I can definitely see why he started off so broad but it was very hard for me to understand and get into i think with the topic of a sustainable city you must give people relatable topics initially or else you will loose their attention, or at least mine.