The Ecological City

The Ecological City explores one simple but urgent question:
How can cities move beyond decorative sustainability and begin functioning as living ecological systems?
 
For too long, ecology has been added to cities as image: green facades, planted towers, landscape renderings and symbolic sustainability. But a city does not become ecological because it looks green. It becomes ecological when living systems begin to organize how the city works.
 
Drawing on more than two decades of professional experience across Europe and Southeast Asia, Francesco Procacci examines the relationships between soil, water, shade, vegetation, mobility, proximity, urban form and everyday public life.
 
The book argues that ecological urbanism is not a style, a technology or a decorative layer. It is a different way of reading and reorganizing the city: from hidden infrastructures beneath the ground to the role of canopy and thermal comfort, from asphalt-dominated streets to ecological neighborhoods, from tropical cities to the post-industrial urban condition.
 
The Ecological City is written for urban designers, planners, architects, landscape architects, students and city thinkers interested in moving beyond green imagery toward ecological urban structure.
 
Inside the book
Soil as urban infrastructure
Water as urban structure
Urban nature beyond decoration
Shade and thermal comfort
Mobility beyond asphalt dominance
Proximity and the ecological neighborhood
Urban form, density and ecology
Tropical cities as ecological lessons
A manifesto for moving from decoration to structure