Ecocity thematic chronology: organizations and policies

• Sierra Club founded in 1892 by John Muir. Frederick Law Olmsted was on the board of directors of Sierra Club.
• Regional Planning Association of America formed in 1923. Clarence Stein, Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford, Alexander Bing, and Henry Wright were the essential backbone of RPAA. RPAA promoted the idea of wilderness areas advanced earlier by John Muir and George Perkins Marsh.
• Green belt policy was pioneered in the U.K. in the 1930s.
• The New Deal of 1933 and 1934-1936
• In December 1983, amidst growing concern over declining ecological trends and the seeming incompatibility of economic and environmental perspectives, the UN Secretary-General responded to a UN General Assembly resolution by appointing Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway as Chair of an independent World Commission on Environment and Development.
• In April 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development released its report,Our Common Future. The Commission's embrace of sustainable development as an underlying principle gave political credibility to a concept many others had worked on over the previous decade. The Commission defined sustainable development as meeting "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, New York).
• OECD's Environmental Policies for Cities in the 1990s (OECD, 1990).
• Agenda 21 emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the 'Earth Summit' held in 1992 in Brazil) as a sustainable development action plan for the 21st century (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (1993). The Local Agenda 21 Initiative: ICLEI Guidelines for Local and National Local Agenda 21 Campaigns. ICLEI, Toronto).