Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja

Each year, the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the CCNY travels to a city that is experiencing a revelatory

form of stress. In January of 2006 the destination

was Nueva Loja in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. At the

time, a population of around 100,000 was expanding

exponentially. Nueva Loja was the fastest growing municipality

in the country due to the oil boom. The city's projected rate of growth would pass 150,000 at just the moment the oil ran out. And so, they decided to investigate how Nueva Loja might move beyond oil to an economy and urban pattern embracing renewed harmony with the natural environment and dedicated to creating an intensely humane and supportive place for its inhabitants. Projects are utopian in looking to a time of harmony and prosperity but intensely practical in growing from the particulars of people and place, in utilizing simple, historic, and local technologies.