Urbanism and Ecological Rationality

The chapter explores the relation between “urbanism”, the practice of urban and territorial design, and “ecological rationality” - a form of rationality that has deeply permeated the urbanistic discourse over the past decades. The aim of this text is to reveal, by deconstructing some design hypotheses, discourses and representations, the role and consequences of “ecological rationality” for the shaping of an original body of knowledge regarding cities and territories. Such an analysis is especially important because cities and urban regions are radically changing today, even in the European context, and ecological rationality introduces fundamental concepts and tools to interpret and design them. Three main themes, accompanied by case studies, will help identify issues, scales, types of urban organization and hypothesis. From zoning to systems illustrates the emergence of ecological rationality in an urbanistic systemic approach. Territorialism: inside a new form of megacity contains three hypothesis connected by the renewed importance of the territorial scale and form to understand the contemporary city. The last theme, The porous city, a project for the “after Kyoto metropolis”, emphasizes porosity, as concept and metaphor, as a tool to reconceive natural and social relations into the space of the metropolis.