Eco City Wünsdorf was created in a process based on the major challenges of our time. Ekhart Hahn recognized the substantial connections between these challenges: Flight, climate change and settlement policy are inextricably intertwined and two sides of the same coin. The reasons for flight are already predominantly caused by climate change – directly or indirectly. And climate change cannot be solved without reorganizing our cities and settlements.
With the claim to be a model for the repopulation of war- and climate-damaged crisis regions, Eco City Wünsdorf is also a project that creates the perspective of making a new start in one’s former homeland with new knowledge and sustainable technologies. In this way, it contributes directly to combating the causes of flight.
Excursus: The current situation in many countries of the global South:
People migrate to cities in many emerging and developing countries because they hope to improve their situation there. But this path often turns out to be a false hope. As a result, problem neighborhoods (slums, favelas, townships) are springing up all over the world, and cities are sprawling uncontrollably and chaotically into megacities.
Despite these conditions, the current framework conditions still do not allow people to go back to the countryside. There are few prospects for many of these internal migrants to finance themselves or their families by moving to the countryside, although often a strong emotional bond to the village remains.
Eco City International sees itself as an approach to break this vicious circle. If people were to return to the countryside with a perspective, because there they can make the soil fertile again with the help of cycle-oriented systems, the situation in the global megacities would also ease. There would also be fewer reasons for people to take the painful and dangerous route to the industrialized countries.