M. Architecture, Year 4 Semester 1

White Bay Eco-city 2050

White Bay Eco City was designed as part of the Open Studio at the University of Sydney, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. The project was a collaboration between twenty senior students and Dr. Rafael Pizarro, the faculty's lecturer in sustainable urban planning. The brief was simple: design a carbon neutral city for 15,000 residents. While the project's aim was to speculate about how cities would change response to global warming, the brief also recognised that such prime foreshore land is extremely valuable and that a certain density of development was inevitable.

As an equal collaboration between twenty students, the project also models a new mode of urban design practice. Collective decisions were the result of spirited discussion and consensus. Working together meant that the project could be resolved and presented in a fairly comprehensive way even after only two and a half months work. A public presentation incorporated drawings, statistics, a 2.5 x1.7 metre model, and a 15 minute film on “A Day in the Life of the Eco City.” A proposal such as this brings much needed specificity to the debate over cities and climate change, a debate in which design students -- as tomorrow's practitioners -- will play an important part. Students are well positioned to speculate freely about the future of cities. White Bay Eco City is the kind of “plausible speculation” which will be required in coming years if the world's cities are to meet the challenge of global warming.