June 21 marks the start of the DIALOG sponsored 2014 Symbiotic Cities International Design Ideas Competition “Urban Transformations: Designing the Symbiotic City”. Open to planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and ecologists, the competition challenges participants to transform existing cities into more resilient, climate adaptive, regenerative, symbiotic cities.

“Over the next 25 years, cities, and the ecosystems they are an integral part of face enormous challenges,” says DIALOG principal Craig Applegath. “The combined and interacting forces of climate change, fossil fuel depletion, deforestation, collapsing fisheries, and exponential human population growth will create unprecedented challenges for humanity, and our planet. The SymbioticCities International Design Ideas Competition is intended to generate critical thinking and discussion around these critical issues.”

Using some combination of diagrams, sketches, 2D and 3D drawings, and accompanied by an explanatory narrative, participants are asked to explore and develop planning and design concepts for transforming the city that they live in into a regenerative symbiotic city adapted to a climate-changing environment. Design concepts should explore key environmental problems associated to the city and transform ecologically destructive urban systems into regenerative, symbiotic systems.

To attract as broad a range of ideas as possible, we invite you to approach your entry as an urban planning project, an urban design project, an architecture, landscape architecture or engineering project  - or any combination of these you think will best allow you to put forward your ideas most effectively. Most importantly, we are looking for you to generate smart, innovative, creative and inspiring ideas that will help move our cites and our species toward a regenerative symbiotic relationship with the ecosystems they are embedded in.

For example, you might wish to explore how to better reduce the per capita environmental footprint of urban habitation by increasing density in a manner that is not only environmentally regenerative, but increases the overall livability of the community and city of which it is a part. Or, you might explore how to create a local urban food supply that is both highly productive and environmentally regenerative. And beyond the urban centre, you might be interested in exploring how to transform the vast suburban expanses that now surround our contemporary cities from the ecological deserts they are now, into the biodiverse ecological oases they could be. There are many possible explorations you could make, but the judges will be most interested in entries that show a good understanding of how cities can be more integrated with their local and regional ecosystems, how cities can be more adapted to a environment stressed by climate change; and how you develop innovative and creative strategies for realizing that integration.

In developing your planning and design concepts you will want to refer to the SymbioticCities.net Transformations and the associated reference material outlined in this website. As part of the narrative you will be writing to explain your planning and design concept(s), we would like you to refer to the types of transformations that your proposed design concepts will employ to move your city towards a regenerative symbiotic relationship with your city’s local and regional ecosystems.

One of the most important of these nine transformations is the development of ecosystem infrastructure that will facilitate regenerating ecosystems and the ecosystem services they produce. For the purposes of this competition, we would like you to assume that in the future, natural capital and the eco-system services it produces are recognized and valued by society, both economically and politically. As part of developing your submission narrative, you should include an explanation of the eco-system infrastructure incorporated into your project entry, and the associated ecosystem services produced, and why these would be valuable to the neighborhood or city.

This is an open competition for ideas about planning, design and policy interventions that address two or more Transformations that we see as integral to our transition towards Symbiotic Cities. Submitted ideas must be based in the city the participant lives in, and should directly address at least two of the following questions: 

1. How do your ideas move the city towards a zero-carbon economy?
2. How do your ideas increase the ecosystems infrastructure?
3. How do your ideas increase the mixed-use density of your city?
4. How do your ideas provide for regenerative building fabric?
5. How do your ideas increase the capacity of your city to produce its own sustainable food supply?
6. How do your ideas increase the capacity of your city to provide for infinite water recycling?
7. How do your ideas increase material and resource recycling?
8. How do your ideas increase the capacity of your city to provide for zero-carbon mobility?
9. What economic and political conditions will be required to implement your project?
10. How do your ideas increase the capacity of your city to stabilize its population size?

Competition Prize!

The planning and design firm DIALOG is generously sponsoring a $1,000 CAN prize for our jury's selection of the best planning and design idea, and there will also be an additional book prizes for honourable mentions.

Competition Jury

The following jury of distinguished planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, and engineers has been brought together to review and select a winning competition entry:

1. Craig Applegath, Co-moderator of SymbioticCities.net and Architect and Principal at DIALOG, Toronto, Canada 
2. Rahul Mehrotra, Director of Planning and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston Massachusetts 
3. Scott Torrance, Landscape Architect at Scott Torrance Landscape Architect
4. Vanessa Timmer, Executive Director and Co-founder at One Earth
5. Stefan Schurig, Climate Energy Director at the World Future Council 
6. Justin Ritchie, Co-Director of Extraenvironmentalist.com and PhD Candidate, UBC Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability
7. Jeff Schnurr, Executive Director at Community Forests International
8. Josh Taylor, Program Coordinator at Catalyst Community Development Society

How to Participate

1. Competition Rules and Requirements 

2. Registration for the competition

3. Here Is a link to the competition blog entries section

For more information,please visit website

> via symbioticcities.net