Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities

Picture a beautiful, green neighborhood where most of your needs could be met by walking, rolling, or accessing transit. There is a diversity of housing types with abundant affordable and middle-income options. Schools, services, and pedestrianized streets make the neighborhood family friendly. As cities turn brownfields into green fields and look to maximize public investment in transit and infrastructure, ecodistricts are the answer. Eliason shows that this type of affordable, climate-adaptive living option is possible anywhere.

In Building for People, architect and ecodistrict planner Michael Eliason makes the case for low-carbon ecodistricts and presents tools for developing these residential and mixed-use quarters or neighborhoods. Drawing from his experience working in Europe and North America, he shows the potential for new climate-adaptive ecodistricts that directly and equitably address our housing shortages while simultaneously planning for climate change. Eliason explains that to create highly livable places with a low carbon impact, ecodistricts must incorporate ample social housing for a good economic and social mix of residents, invest in open space, create infrastructure that can adapt to a changing climate, and offer car-free or car-light realms. He also looks at the how public health, livability, climate adaptation, and quality of life are interconnected.

Full-color photos and illustrations show what is possible in ecodistricts around the world, drawing heavily from examples in German cities.

Building for People shows professionals involved in regulating, planning, or designing our communities that high-quality, low-carbon living is within reach.


Author: Michael Eliason
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 12/12/2024
Pages: 244
Binding Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781642833133

About the Author
Michael Eliason is an architect and founder of Larch Lab--part architecture and urbanism studio, part "think and do" tank focusing on research and policy, decarbonized low-energy buildings, and climate adaptive urbanism. Michael is also a writer, and an award-winning architect specializing in mass timber, social housing, baugruppen (urban cohousing), and ecodistricts. His career has been dedicated to advancing innovation and broadening the discourse on sustainable development, passivhaus, non-market housing, and decarbonized construction. He serves on the board of Seattle's new Passivhaus Social Housing Developer PDA. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and became a Passivhaus consultant in 2010. His professional experience includes work in both the Pacific Northwest, and Germany. He has been a guest critic and lecturer at several institutions and has presented internationally.