Ecological villages as sustainable settlement models

Environmental problems reach to the threatening dimensions. This has led to the development of sustainable perspectives to protect the ecological system balances. It has become important to research the settlements with small ecological footprint, which maintains and develops the environment with considering ecological, social and economic sustainability as a whole, does not damage to natural resources, keeps a more energy-efficient waste management by using acclimated, renewable natural resources.Ecological footprint, is defined as the amount of resources required to balancing the effects of human activities on the natural environment. It provides a measure of the effect of buildings, products or cities on the ecology.As an alternative solution to the cities, three different settlements have been evaluated according to ecological footprint as sustainable settlement model. Through viewing from the outcomes that ecological villages can be accepted as successful models for sustainable life forms, it has been aimed to keep a guide feature by examining the criteria that forms ecological villages and details of layout and settlement.As a result, a synthesis has been developed based on the ecological layout of settlements in different scales. Output of this research is a list of ecological settlement criteria and a design guide for ecological villages which may guide designers to transform existing settlements or develop new ones with a systemathic approach.