This project aims to compare the economic, social and cultural models of eco-city development in four international settings (China, the Gulf, India, and Europe). It will

• reconstruct the flow of imaginaries, ideas, designs, and technologies and how they settle down in particular eco-urban configurations.
• analyse how these imaginaries construct new material and social urban worlds and ways of dwelling in the city.
• understand how knowledge economies generate new transnational networks, new flows of investment and ideas that inform and link eco city developments in emerging economies with architecture, construction and planning corporations.
• understand the significance of eco-cities for European models of urban change.
• assess opportunities for international trade with the ‘rising powers’.