The Emergence of Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia in Ecovillages

Abstract

Utopias are imaginary depictions written in order to establish the ideal order that criticizes the deficiencies of current administration and society and is influenced by various periodic events and thoughts. In the 20th century, due to rapid urbanization and population growth, the environmental problems have been brought to a global scale and the irreversible destruction of nature has made ecological design a subject of utopias in the future. The concept of ecotopia was first used by Ernest Callenbach in his work "Ecotopia" published in 1975. The ecological design criteria in this work have formed the basis of ecotopia designs. While literary ecological utopias written in the 20th century can be defined as ecotopia by conforming to the design criteria of ecotopia, architectural ecological utopias designed in the 20th and 21st century cannot be defined as ecological although they have ecological characteristics or are completely ecological. Therefore, the research asked "Today's real ecotopia ecovillages are sturdy?" In the study, firstly, the design criteria of the concept of ecotopia were obtained by discourse analysis method on Ernest Callenabach's "Ekotopia", the past literary utopia works and their intertextual contexts were extracted, and then the design criteria of 6 selected ecovillages were reflected. When the current place of the concept of ecotopia and the findings of the study are examined, it has been observed that it is no longer imaginary design and has an applicable quality, and it is revealed that ecotopias come to life with ecovillage examples.