The Ecotopia 2121 project looks at the urban futures of 100 cities around the world. This month we forecast the future of Yiyang, China. Yiyang is a city of five million people on the shores of the great lake of Dongting. Postcards of the city are resplendent with lovely, romantic scenes of this famous lake and its feeder rivers. In the mid-twenty-first century, though, it is quite possible that, like the rest of China, Yiyang will experience environmental chaos that could ki

The urban eco-future of Havana, Cuba

Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is a landlocked city in the Ararat plain of the Caucasus. Though located in a broad valley, Yerevan is one of Eurasia’s highest-altitude capitals -- and it has great views of various hills and mountains. The air is not always alpine fresh, though. The smoke from Yerevan’s belching chimneys, rusty exhaust pipes, and numerous dump fires often mixes with heavy, wet fog to regularly choke the city with a smog so thick and rancid it can be tasted o

The Ecotopia 2121 Project details the futures of 100 real world cities across the globe as though they've somehow overcome all environmental challenges and become super-ecofriendly. This month, we highlight the future of Bristol, England. Bristol claims to have been a significant city of the Industrial Revolution. It was the birthplace of the famous engineer Isambard Brunel; builder of grand 19th century bridges, canals, and railways in Britain and across the world. Bristol n

Duvai's future to overcome climate change and sea-level rise

The Ecotopia 2121 project sets out to explore the futures of 100 cities worldwide, as inspired by the concept of 'Utopia'. Utopia is a centuries old concept, of course. The English statesman Thomas More coined the term in the early 16th Century to refer to a fantastic idyllic island in a book he also titled 'Utopia'. To design a utopian land often means to be at once imaginative and optimistic but also critical and subversive. Thomas More set up this enduring pattern when he