Worldchanging Architects, Planners, Artists and Animators: The International Living Building Institute, in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has announced a new design competition: Living City. They invite you to

create a new global vision: a breathtaking, compelling model for the future of civilization. Unleash the power of your imagination to envision a city capable of thriving through the centuries – one that will heal the land and prove that the human species can in fact live, in the words of E. O. Wilson, as ‘part and parcel with creation’.

The competition is framed as a response to our current, prevalent dystopian models of the future, and is a chance to create a positive, ecologically grounded vision of the future that will help shape our collective consciousness. These are the general guidelines:

Our Living City Design Competition is an act of optimism, grounded in our belief that we already have the technical tools and collective wisdom we need to achieve true sustainability. But before we can bring our cities into balance with the ecosystems they inhabit, we must understand what that balance would look like. This is where you come in.

Each Living City Design Competition team will envision a city that meets all of the Imperatives of the Living Building Challenge (Version 2.0), including its specific requirements for density, shading, urban agriculture, transportation, energy and water use. The end result must be rooted in solid ecological and architectural principles and explicitly aligned with the Living Building Challenge 2.0.

Submissions are due on February 1, 2011. The full criteria for submissions will be available June 15, 2010. Click here to download a PDF of the competition brief, which includes information on entry fees and prizes. Contact Joanna Gangi with inquiries.

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Worldchanging Filmmakers, Artists, Students, and Water Enthusiasts: Our friends at Ecotrust are now accepting submissions for the Stories From Our Watersheds contest. The competition invites filmmakers from the Pacific Northwest region (Oregon, Washington, Idaho) of the United States to produce low-cost, 10 minutes-or-less digital films that capture the benefits of community-based watershed and habitat restoration.

Filmmakers are encouraged to focus their creativity on making a film that recognizes and reinforces the nature-human relationships that form the fabric of communities. The film is not meant to be a political statement. It may result in that, but that cannot be its sole purpose. Films that focus on expressing a feeling about a place – a sense of place, a mood – will be given special consideration. Films must look at how watershed restoration influences and affects human life in ways including: local job creation, community-building, and hands-on learning opportunities.

The contest is managed by Ecotrust on behalf of the Whole Watershed Restoration Initiative (WWRI), a collaborative effort between Ecotrust, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and others.

$3,500 is up for grabs for filmmakers in two categories: 21-and-over, and 20-and under. The deadline for submissions is July 19, 2010. For more information see the contest website.

(For more on Ecotrust from Worldchanging see Resource: Watershed Locator; Resource: P&P; and Creating a Community Supported Fishery.)

Image of man in Cedar River Watershed courtesy of Flickr photographer Soggydan Dan Bennett under the Creative Commons License.

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