The purpose of developing the Califia Sketchbook Design Competition is to express to a wide variety of people what life will be like in Califia, a proposed next generation eco-city. People from around the world are invited to enter a conceptual sketch conveying their view of "slices-of-life" within Califia, revealing smarter ways of building, powering, and maintaining the urban fabric. We believe that allowing for more direct public involvement in the design of future living spaces is the first step in a successful eco-city project. A design competition is an elegant way to allow for such public involvement.

We ask entrants to explore in their conceptual sketches solutions to the following problems:

• overemphasis on the individual and its negative impact within communities: isolation and higher consumption
  
• quality of life being determined solely by certain economic factors
• false assumption of infinite resources : water, food, energy, raw materials
• dissociation from the natural environmental and subsequent abuse of the land

Entries will show how people, space and technologies/implements can be organized to solve such problems in a whole-systems, interconnected manner.

More information is coming soon.