Epilogue: sustainability, ‘Sejahtera’ and the South East Asian continuum

• Main Author: Abdul Razak, Dzulkifli
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English; English
• Published: Palgrave Macmillan 2023
• Subjects: HT241 Urban ecology. Sustainable urban development
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/104482/1/104482_Epilogue_%20Sustainability%2C%20%E2%80%98Sejahtera%E2%80%99%20and%20the%20South%20East%20Asian%20Continuum%20_%20SpringerLink_TS%20Prof%20Abdul%20Razak.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/104482/7/104482_Epilogue%20sustainability%2C%20%E2%80%98Sejahtera%E2%80%99%20and%20the%20South%20East%20Asian%20continuum_SCOPUS.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/104482/; https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-19-1637-3_19#Fig1

Eco-urbanism, derived from a term that denotes a rising movement or the ideation of ecological urbanism, is a new approach to cities. Mostafavi and Doherty (2016), of the Harvard School of Design, treat eco-urbanism as a critical theory and design praxis that can propel the twenty-first century onwards based on the premise that "… an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities.” In her ‘Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City’, Hagan (2014) highlighted a similar role, defined by a convergence of ‘culture’ and ʼnature’, to reconstitute a new urbanism, particularly the need to depart from the technological focus of the 1990s and the present day. In a movement towards redefining urban design and architectural praxis in a diachronic partnership with the natural world, the role of cultural inflections, sociocultural ethos and bioclimatic mimicry is crucial. In an era of climate change, urbanisation and ecology must be melded with culture in order to reinstate the role of ecology and site-specific design within the city. Hagan (2014) reiterates that the ecological narrative and its ‘embryonic modes of practice’ must be fused with ‘the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice’. This combined ethos of the melding of art and science has implications for cities and will impact their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and Hagan explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the twenty-first century