Draft version: 2015-05-25 Working paper: The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods Around the World Meg Holden 1, * Charling Li 2 and Ana Molina 3 1 Dr. Meg Holden, Associate Professor, Urban Studies and Geography, Simon Fraser University, 2 nd floor, 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3, CANADA 2 Charling Li, P.Eng., Candidate, Master in Urban Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2 nd floor, 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3, CANADA 3 Ana Molina, Candidate, Master of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, 3 rd floor, 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver BC, V6B 5K3, CANADA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: mholden@sfu.ca; Tel.: +1-778-782-7888 External Editor: Received: / Accepted: / Published: Abstract: Neighbourhood scale sustainability and ecourban districts are appearing in cities around the world. They are promoted as part of urban sustainability plans and strategies within formal government, advanced by private developers driven by profit and niche marketing motivations, and advocated for and by citizens groups as part of sustainability, climate change, and affordable housing action strategies. In modern times, efforts to construct sustainable alternative neighbourhood scale developments date to isolated voluntary initiatives in 1970s Europe and the United States. Since about 2006, they have increased rapidly in popularity. They now go by many names: ecodistricts, écoquartiers, eco-cities, zero/low-carbon/carbon-positive cities, ecopolises, ecobarrios, One Planet Communities and solar cities. They have become frames – sometimes the dominant frame – used to justify and orient the construction of new pieces of city in a growing range of countries worldwide. This review documents our work to catalogue and classify such ecourban developments worldwide. Despite numerous standardization efforts, the field of ecourban neighbourhood planning and practice lacks a consistent cross-cultural understanding of what constitutes meaningful ecourbanism in specific economic, political, ecological, social and design-based terms. At the same time, ecourban neighbourhood projects also respond to strictly local challenges and opportunities and express themselves in fragmented ways in different local contexts. This article presents an original typology of seven extreme types of ecourbanism, each advanced