‘Living City’ designers reimagine cities of the future

Over the last week I’ve been praising, quibbling with and unpacking a lot of the work of the Cascadia Green Building Council (now under the auspices of the International Living Future Institute). Here’s some more news of note from the very active group:

The Institute (or whatever we’re calling it) has announced the winners of its Living City Design Competition, a $125,000 contest for plans to remake entire cities to Living Building Challenge standards.

Where the building challenge is for actual brick-and-mortar projects, the city competition called for photorealistic visualizations from designers, planners, artists and animators. And it prompted some impressive plans.

Daniel Zielinski and Maximilian Zielinski of the United Kingdom took the $75,000 first-place prize for a reinterpretation of Paris that combined the city’s historical character with a whole lot of vegetation and low-carbon changes.

Second place ($25,000) went to Atelier G40 of Bellingham, Wash., for its entry “City Makes. City Lives.” (Here are photos of all the winning entries.)

Judges had planned to award another $25,000 to the entry that best incorporated historic preservation (the National Trust for Historic Preservation was a partner in the competition). But so many entries accomplished that goal that organizers awarded five $5,000 awards instead (Here’s a full list of winners.)

Cascadia CEO Jason McLennan announced the competition at last year’s Living Future conference. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

"We think it's our job to help people understand where we need to head," McLennan said in a talk in Seattle last week.

He was unveiling the group's new slogan, "Envisioning a Living Future." It seems to get at a key task for the climate movement: showing people what a sustainable future can look like, to alleviate fears of the unknown and to illustrate the quality-of-life benefits that come with auto-independent design.

While it's easy to imagine dystopias, it's a much bigger challenge to envision a future that's dramatically transformed in a positive way.

"We've had several generations of novels and movies training us to think that the future will be full of grim cities," McLennan said in a statement. "Just think of how Los Angeles is portrayed in Blade Runner.  We need to offer a new vision -- not a sci-fi ‘ecotopia,' but an achievable vision of the ecologically sound future we can create if we clearly define the endgame."

The competition winners certainly fit that spirit. They’re worth a look.