401 International Conference on Sustainable Built Environment (ICSBE-2010) Kandy, 13-14 December 2010 ECOLOGICAL PARADIGMS IN PLANNING THE LIVEABLE CITY Prof. Harsha Munasinghe Department of Architecture, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. 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 politically- centred, 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. Keywords: Eco-city, ecological-footprint, cultural-planning, carrying-capacity, Sri Lanka INTRODUCTION Sustainability is currently the most pressing, complex, and challenging agenda faced by the city. Expanding urban population across the globe has turned the focus of sustainability from being simple concerns such as global warming or depletion of non-renewable energy into a wider issue of environment, ecology and people. Idea of sustainable development launched by the World Summit on Environment and Development of 1983, 28 and the Earth Summit of 1992, redefined ecological- sustainability as a key word in city planning. Eco-city and Green Architecture have come to play a vital role in designing new habitat of the urban society as a result. 29 Cities are living containers designed to promote good life. Liveability is the most man-oriented scale to measure the quality of life in the city. Ecological sustainability improves the liveability of the city for linking man and his society with the environment. Our attempts shall aim at evolving the correct balance between the nature where the city is located and human action that impinge on the city. 30 The linking of good city life with ecology gave birth to the idea of Eco-city defined with nature, its resources and their continuity in pristine form without sacrificing the will and strength of an evolving urban life. In the context of promoting nature as a bio-centric entity that controls itself, the Eco-city has become a life-territory, a place defined by its own life forms, topography and biota, rather than by any human activities. This tendency to make Eco-city over dependent on the carrying capacity of land hampers the evolutionary process of the human habitat. The concept of carrying capacity, having defined from usability of land in agriculture, places undue emphasis with materialistic values of 28 . Our Common Future (1987) World Commission on Environment and Development, London: Oxford Press 29 . These concepts intend to create habitats with minimum environmental impact: minimized requirement of input resources and controlled waste out. Richard Register coined the term Eco city in his book, Eco-city Berkley: Building Cities for Healthy Futures, published in 1987. 30 . One shall not confuse the idea of Eco-city as bringing the elements of countryside to the city. Lefebvre (1996:87) notes the differences, “the countryside, both practical reality and representation, will carry images of nature, of being, of the innate. The city will carry images of effort, of will, or subjectivity, of contemplation, without these representations becoming disjointed from real activities”.