ETown Concept

The ETown Vision - City as a Lab

ETown is a visionary city of tomorrow. It is a thoughtful response to the grand challenge of substituting information and human knowledge for energy and matter. With looming peak oil, growing environmental concerns, and a rapidly urbanizing world, the conception, creation, and operation of ETown would epitomize transition to a new era of clean energy and sustainable development.

ETown Integrates Six E Concepts: Energy, Environment, Electronic, Experimental, Educational, and Ecological

ETown in a Nutshell

The CONCEPTION of ETown recognizes the interdependence of development, energy, and environment. It envisions an energy sufficient, environmentally responsible, creative economy-based new town by integrating six inter-related aspects of community life and economic enterprise:

Energy: A living demonstration test bed for transition to a sustainable energy system – considering both energy inputs and energy infrastructure.

Environment: A laboratory to study energy and environmental challenges – in a search for a balance between the built environment and its natural context.

Electronic: Smart use of Information & Communications Technologies to integrate smart growth, smart community, smart building, and smart appliance concepts.

Experimental: A city as a laboratory dedicated to “living experimentation” of sustainable development.

Education: A setting for Lifelong learning for all ages. A research Nexus for design, engineering, and social sciences. A case for educating the public about sustainable development.

Ecology: A city to – Live, Work, Learn, and Play – in harmony with nature – incorporating green design concepts in physical organization to create an exemplary sustainable urban and regional development pattern

It’s CREATION (financing, construction, and development) uses a model similar to those used in establishing science parks and smart communities as an attractive profitable real estate development. A unique private, public, and academia partnership will be formed in which academia lends its credence and brain power of its faculty from various disciplines; private sector high tech firms get a stage to launch advanced transportation, communication, and utilities network and infrastructure; producers and distributors of building materials, appliances, and furnishing find a highly publicized environment to show case their products and services.

And it’s OPERATION works as city-lab where its residents are like-minded researchers and professionals sharing the same ideals, abiding a covenant of learned community, and willing to be a part of an experiment to demonstrate a pattern of live, work, play, and learn in a flagship exemplary sustainable city of tomorrow.

ETown could become the silicon valley of energy. It can serve as a nucleus for a cluster of creative start ups working on innovative energy solutions. The early exploration and extraction of oil in this region about 150 years ago transformed the world. With ETown the region can build on its energy heritage and pioneer a new era of post carbon clean energy. At a time that the federal government, with ARPA-e type initiatives, heavily is investing in innovations in clean energy as a way of securing a competitive edge in the global economy, ETown may provide a winning and bold concept for the region and the state to seek federal funds, become a key player in the national energy scene, and attract the world’s attention.