Sustainable urban forms: eco-neighbourhoods in Europe

Far from specifying any form, the term “eco-neighbourhood” is designed to symbolically embrace a set of invariants seen both in high-efficiency building designs and environmental resource cycle management infrastructures, within a particularly wide range of settlement morphologies and resulting types of architecture. This paper first pinpoints the common features of some pioneering econeighbourhoods across Europe, and then concentrates on the degree to which disciplinary advances in environmental resource management have been accompanied by the same attention to spatial configuration. Through a critical reading of certain “sustainable urban forms” designed to combine material facts with formal and relational aspects, which are more difficult to measure, this paper then strives to create a dialogue between the different strands of knowledge involved in urban planning, as they are called upon to search for a balance between population, resources and environment.