SS1661
Concepts
For
Ecological,
Social
&
Economical
Sustainability
For
Urban
Implementation
Re-Orienting the Economic and Social
Systems of our Cities towards Ecological Awareness
“Our cities are our greatest creation, at once our most
frightening potential nemesis and our most awe-inspiring opportunity.”
OVERVIEW
This briefing paper introduces and explains the
principles and concepts behind the Patterns For Urban Implementation as
submitted for the International Sustainable Cities Competition. While the concepts have been developed in the
context of our home city they are arguably held to be universally applicable to
all urban contexts. Ecological
principles at least translate well across all human contexts and while cultural
mores no doubt impinge on any place’s methods of action the basic concepts
should retain their validity.
Defining Sustainability
Implementing sustainability requires examining
the fundamental principles upon which our society is founded.
The concept of sustainability is the most
complex, interwoven and intractable problem ever to face humanity. The experiences of the past two centuries
have shown us clearly that the planet upon which we live is limited. It has also shown us that humanity has the
potential to outstrip those limitations with potentially disastrous
consequences for both the planet and for humans.
If humanity, and indeed the planet, is to have a
long term future, that is thousands, not tens, of years, then a series of
principles to guide human behaviour towards sustainability will have to be
found and followed.
Sustainability is not a matter of compromise or
political maneuvering, there is a real planet, with real limitations that will
not alter according to how people or political movements want it to be or even
to how it is perceived. It is an
absolute issue, it is non-anthrocentric by nature, regardless of how many slick
definitions by development lobbyists or rapid side-stepping by bureaucracies
the problems remain completely intractable and must be faced.
To begin a realistic search for answers, three
principles of sustainability are evident.
Principle
One In
order to be sustainable any activity must consume only those resources that may
be regenerated ad-infinitum. Any activity
which is a nett consumer of non-regenerable resources, is not sustainable.
Principle
Two In
order to be sustainable any activity must have no nett detrimental impact to
the ecosystems around it. Any activity
which degrades the environment beyond its ability to regenerate itself, is not
sustainable.
&
Principal
Three In order
to be successful, any sustainable action of humanity must respond to the nature
of humanity’s intrinsic physiological and psychological make up and must be
acceptable to the consensus of humanity.
There are no solutions to over-consumption, only
avoiding the over-consumption in the first place; there are no solutions to
intractable toxic waste except to avoid creating it; there are no solutions to
the make up of the human species except recognising, understanding and
responding to it.
The widespread use of the term Sustainable
Development to cover the anthrocentric issues of employment, human rights and
politics is an ongoing abstrusion of a critical situation. Ecological global sustainability has nothing
to do with economics or social constraints.
An ecosystem is the corporeal state of interacting biological entities
and physical environments. Ecological
sustainability refers to the necessary and discrete conditions required for the
maintenance of ecosystems. If the human
condition is to be considered a valid isolated ecosystem, regardless of its
links to, and effects on, other ecosystems, or if is seen as being of
overriding importance to other natural ecosystems, then the entire debate
becomes irrelevant. What must be
achieved is a sustainable human society, which requires independent resolution
of ecological, social and economic sustainability agendas within the overall
context of an successful interaction of all three.
It seems that against all its stated principles
and the meaning of the term, the concept of sustainability is seen to be
limited to a time horizon, often a ridiculously close horizon. For true sustainability the time horizon
should be infinite, or at least related to the life of this planet. So far sustainability has not even been dealt
with in terms of genetically recognisable eras. The current time horizons are
set by the assumption that things must be good by election time, or what is
achievable within a single government’s term, or at best a person’s career
phase. A perverted notion of
responsibility exists in our large bureaucracies, a NIMTOF (not in my term of
office). The alteration of our systems
of governance (both elected and career systems) to respond to sustainable time
horizons will be required.
In current literature, government policy and
economic philosophy: short term is seen as up to a year; medium term is one to
three years and; long term usually only five years but may at a stretch reach
to a decade or two. This cannot continue
if we are to achieve sustainability.
Short term must be shorter, from day to day, to allow rapid reaction to
crises. Long term must be a matter of
millennia and medium term should relate to the consequences of current
activities, say the time taken for local ecosystems to reach mature stable
state measured most likely in decades.
In line with the above principles, the
overwhelmingly complex and interwoven problem of environmental sustainability
can be broken down into manageable chunks and dealt with realistically. Each of the issues of ecological, social and
economic sustainability can be discussed separately with regards to each
observed factor and then mutually compatible strategies for the implementation
of potential solutions for all three aspects can be elaborated.
Ecological
Sustainability
Ecological sustainability may only be encouraged
by ensuring that sufficient habitat and purity of environment is maintained to
allow the diverse ecosystems extant on the planet to be conserved. It is thus incumbent upon a sustainable
humanity to avoid further destruction of habitat and degradation of the natural
physical environment.
The nascent requirement from humanity for
achieving ecological sustainability is to determine its fair share of the
planetary ecosystem. The planet is
capable of supporting a limited biomass, dependent principally on incremental
incident solar energy, weather patterns and, latterly, human intervention. The decision required is how much of this
biomass should be allocated to humans, and human support systems. The development of the concepts of optimal
population and resource consumption tolerances are key issues in finding a path
through this difficult debate.
Any realistic decisions must take into account
the fact that Homo sapiens sapiens is
but one species amongst many millions on this planet, (and one that is well and
truly in plague proportions). If this
one species is to have a greater share of the available biomass than others,
this must be recognised as philosophically and morally in need of justification
from a non-anthrocentric point of view.
In order to commence to resolve this issue, each
community must determine its own available resource base and develop resource
allocation systems to enable it to live within the capacity of the ecosystem to
support it. The ‘ecosystem (or biomass)
catchment area’ for a community will be the area commensurate with the net
allocation which the community has determined in a self aware manner, is its
fair share of the global resource base.
The non-destructive development and use of valid endemic ecosystems as
resource generators will allow the catchment area for a community to be enhanced
without ecological detriment. It must be
realised that in a sustainable culture there is a relatively fixed resource
base which implies a direct trade-off between population and individual share
of the available resource. It is
essentially a zero sum game between each human, and the rest of our species and
the rest of the planets species.
A further task in developing sustainable
societies is the need to create awareness in the population of the limitations
and opportunities available. The NIMBY
syndrome must be inverted to a YIMBY, (yes, in my back yard). All environmental impacts should, and must,
be contained within the ecosystem catchment area of the community benefiting
from the actions causing the impacts.
Problems generated by actions must be seen as the responsibility of
those deriving the benefits from those actions.
Pipelines taking away waste and supply lines bringing in resources are
not sustainable concepts and must be eliminated. Each community must learn to live within the
capacity of its ecosystem to sustain it.
Social
Sustainability
The issues of social sustainability are
extremely broad and varied, ranging from governance systems through human
rights and employment issues to social equity.
The overall principles which underline all of these factors is the need
for fairness and the acceptance of change.
To be sustainable in cultural terms a society
must be capable of responding to constant flux.
Sustainability is about time, lots of it. To be sustainable a social system must be
capable of adapting to meet the constantly changing needs and desires of the
community it serves. This entails an
intrinsic flexibility in the basic precepts of the system and it it
necessitates that it continues to be seen as fair and equitable by a consensus
of the community.
Governance
One of the great limitations of our current
legislative bicameral and partisan systems, is that their natural state is
conflict. Radicals stir things up,
eventually gain power through the democratic system, alter the legislative
system, appoint like minded people to positions of bureaucratic control and
enshrine their particular message in the code of laws governing behaviour in
the community. They thus become the
conservatives and attempt to suppress the upcoming radical element whose views
necessarily threaten existing power bases.
Someone is always in control and someone else is always controlled.
Though this system has led humanity to an
awesome zenith currently, it lies in wait to bring the entire confection
tumbling down at any moment, through it’s inability to respond to a serious
long term outlook.
Social sustainability will require stability,
but not stability through resistance to change and suppression of the new,
stability may also be derived by the creation of mechanisms which allow for
constant cultural, legal and technological change by consensus rather than
conflict. Continual review of all laws
not only avoids the anachronisms prevalent today, but makes people constantly
think about their cultural attitudes, philosophy of life and their relationship
to the world around them.
An interesting alternate system is that of the
scientific method. The scientific system
is the most successful of our culture’s developments, it rests on the principle
that nothing is fixed or immutable, particularly not truth. Humanity’s explanations of the reality around
us are merely theories which may be disproved by adverse empirical findings or
supported by corroborative evidence but never absolutely proven. Conservatism in this form of melange has a much
harder time taking root and is easily tumbled by the emergence of new fact and
changes in perception. Science does
continue to move forward by both revolution and evolution, this success can be
applied to our social systems. It is
essential that a sustainable system of governance has as its founding principle
that all laws are creations of humans and are thus based on perceptions that
have a temporal existence and are not immutable laws of the cosmos. They are an artifice, a code for normalising
individual behaviour within whatever are perceived to be acceptable limits by
the community, to allow us all to live together in some form of harmony and
freedom.
A critical part of a social sustainable culture
will be the manner in which it chooses to govern itself. The two concepts of government (control over
actions) and governance (consensus of actions) should be closely
examined. Our current system of
government was designed to allow an heirachial arranged existing group to
maintain their power base over rapidly expanding populations. They believed they needed to control large
numbers of people to do this for the benefit of all. With the emerging maturity and awareness of our
societies, a major departure from this can be envisaged. All the current debate about amalgamations
and boundary changes demonstrate that local communities wish to be able to make
their own decisions about resource allocation, behavioural standards and
cultural policy. They find governments
and bureaucracies an inhibition to this desire.
The achievement of fairness and equity is most simply and profoundly
gained by ensuring all members of the community have access to resource
allocation and policy decisions without the straightjacket of complex and
inhibitory bureaucracies and diplomacies.
The forums of the first democracies at which all
citizens could attend, state a case and be a part of decision making, were lost
in the contemporary revival of representative democracy as the principal form
of governance. We have now ended up with
a political culture at odds with the representation of community ideals, we
have an antagonistic ‘us versus them’ attitude to government. A response to the nature of party politics
where ther is no real fixed philosophical agenda just a floating platform set
to gain 50% of the vote. A perversion of
the concept of citizen based democracy.
Community consultation and consensus both during
the development of a sustainable system of governance and for its ongoing
operation must be paramount. Efficient
systems of obtaining communal consensus must be developed, and this is a point
at which enhanced social systems and communications technology may be applied
to one of civilisation’s oldest tasks.
Our modern system of decision by committee and executive has given us
very powerful tools for dealing with large public meetings. Points of order and debate supervision
strategies are highly advanced and are capable of coping with great numbers in
coherent and practical ways. Talkback
shows and on-line teleconferencing have also developed ingenious debate control
techniques.
Current information technology: interactive TV;
mobile phones; on-line networked computers and so on; have created a planet
wide cross cultural cyberspace without walls or distances and also, most
remarkably, without government, bureaucracies or police! One of the beneficial possibilities of
cyberspace is the potential for instantaneous population wide petitioning and
referenda of topical contentious issues.
An instantaneous government of for and by the people, as individuals not
by representation, with all its ego driven pitfalls.
This zeitgeist is no longer a techno-fantasy but
a virtual reality. Widespread access to
the necessary technology and information paths must be secured and enhanced. Filtering of extraneous issues and fraudulent
activities is critical and cyberspace security is a major international
issue. In practice, however, this is no
different to the current systems of debate and government, all are subject to
interference on a number a levels. Such
practical problems should be solved, not allowed to drown the solutions. As far as the issue of changing our ways of
doing things, it is not the technology but the obsolete rules and laws we have
created that are getting in the way. The
active involvement of the community in all decision making is perfectly
feasible with these forms of technology, and this is a goal worth pursuing with
vigour (and appropriate caution).
Nationhood
One of the unique benefits of the Australian
experience is that the artificial borders of the ‘nation’ are also
(predominately) the natural continental boundary. Thus there is an essential ecological
validity to the grouping together of humans within this boundary. Any further constitutional identification of
‘state’ should be based on real identifiable spatial environmental boundaries
rather than irrelevant historical formulations.
The use of river paths to divide communities is typically inane from an ecological
standpoint. A river is the centre of a
zone of ecological effect and interactions, a ridgeline conversely is a
divider.
Collectivisation must take into account the
concepts of ecosystem catchment area and cultural cohesion of a community. The linking of administrative groupings to
coherent topographical, ecosystemic and cultural ‘places’, optimises the
potential for community identification and sustainability.
For a community to be culturally sustainable it
must have an identity and sense of purpose, there must be a reason for its
existence, and the more compelling that reason the stronger the community will
be. In past eras the reasons were
racial, regional, resource or trade based but with the requirements of modern
consumption and capabilities of trading and communication systems such reasons
have lost their validity. It is
essential for a socially sustainable community to have a reason for its
existence and for being where it is. The
development of a community vision of what it wants to be, a constitutional
community entity and strong cultural goals gives the community a focus and
‘raisons d’etre’.
There is a real and emergent possibility of
non-localised or non-spatial communities, dependent entirely on IT
intercommunication systems for cohesion.
Cyberspatial communities who have no real physical location but exist
neverless.
A
Job
The fixation of contemporary economic modelling
with the outmoded concept of a ‘job’ as the only problem of, and solution to,
the current employment crises, is having a disastrous consequences on our
culture’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing social, environmental, work and
leisure patterns. The concept of a job
is relatively new and is not some immutable law of humanity. Having a job is not the only way to be
employed and being employed is not the only way to live ones life and make a
fair and just contribution to a society in accordance with ones reliance on
that society. This is an attitudinal and
marketing problem, a hangover from the industrial revolution and immature
capitalism.
A series of social strategies should be
developed which recognise that gainful employment may take many forms and that
an official job is not all there is to life.
A growing reliance on a community’s capacity for wealth generation to
support members of the community who do not directly contribute to that wealth
generation is a feature of this country’s (and the World’s) emerging state of
late capitalism. The most advantageous
manner in which to treat this phenomenon is not to brand all those without a ‘job’
as somehow deficient but to recognise their capacity to make a valid and viable
positive contribution to the society in whatever way they choose.
The segregation (almost an apartheid) occurring
in our culture between those with a recognised (socially acceptable) job and
those stigmatised by the denial of such classification, must be combated
immediately before it transmogrifies into a paralysing conflict. It is essential now to build up the status of
not having a job till it becomes not only acceptable but conventional. The whole concept of working away at a ‘job’
which gives little or no satisfaction or challenge for an entire lifetime, only
to allow one to retire and begin living at 60 years of age, is a social and
personal disaster for a great many people.
If people are given the option to work or not to work without attached
social stigma (and without the other strange, marketing induced fixation with
material consumption), many would take a lower strata of personal consumption
as a reasonable tradeoff. They thus
gain the freedom to choose a way of working that utilises their skills,
challenges them physically and intellectually and that, most importantly, they
enjoy.
Much is lost by considering so many things that
people do as ‘hobbies’ or ‘pass-times’, things that are actually gainful
employment and contribute to the ‘wealth’ of our culture and should be used as
such.
A sustainable long term solution to the
employment crisis must recognise that the function of society and technology is
to reduce the input required from humans to perform the task to which it is
applied. The obvious end result of this
is that with the proper application of society and technology, the physical
wealth of a culture increases and the input of humans to that wealth generation
decreases. With the meteoric path of
technology continuing unabated, the phenomenon of the requirement for reduced
input from humans must be dealt with as a matter of urgency.
Insisting that people have a ‘job’ is not a
sustainable solution without giving everyone a job. As this is widely admitted to no longer be
possible within the current paradigm, the current paradigm must change. Simple adjustments to the system in the short
term could bring rapid easing of tensions but the only medium to long term
solution is the elimination of the concept of ‘job’.
Emerging contemporary strategies like reductions
in working hours, job sharing, broadening of the scope of self employment,
communal ownership of industry, part time work practices are all effective
provisional approaches. Such tactics
together with a more equitable division of the resource and wealth cake could
be combined with structural and attitudinal change, from the earliest education
to the oldest reactionary, to the deal with the immanent elimination of the
concept of a ‘job’.
This is one of the great potentials for human
well being that may be gained as a spin off from the push for ecological
sustainability. We are human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens, a mammalian
species of the hominid genus, of the primate family, the concept of a job is
not an intrinsic part of our physiological or psychological makeup. The need for community acceptance, a sense of
belonging and being a contributing part of a troupe, are.
To be sustainable in a rapidly changing
technological culture, we must recognise the fundamental nature of humanity,
what is intrinsic to us as creatures and respond meaningfully to those things.
Economic
Sustainability
Economic sustainability is often seen as a task
in isolation from, even in conflict with, ecological sustainability but they
have a link which should be underscored.
That is, any economy is dependent upon its resource base for survival
and wealth generation, and the resource base in a sustainable society is
limited by the ecosystem’s ability to sustainably regenerate materials and
energy. Any economic system, no matter
how good, complicated or resolved, is merely a tool to allow humans to attain a
desired cultural pattern and not an end in itself.
The requirements of a sustainable economy are
that it must be a system:
i) that works, that is it must promote the
community’s ability to achieve social goals and visions;
ii) is
stable in a sustainability long term time frame;
iii) is
ecologically sound, with no nett impact;
iv) is equitable (meaning fair and just) for
the current generations and those of the future and for all the other species
with which we share the planet;
v) is
flexible and robust, capable of adapting
to changing issues and priorities.
Monetary
Basis
A working economic system is big ask. An economic system exists to support the
ability of humans to have a comfortable, secure, joyous life. This often forgotten principle must be
clearly stated and be placed at the core of any sustainable economic system
along with the principle that this must not be achieved at the expense of
others. The zero sum game played now,
must be rewritten from the start.
In order to facilitate this, the system must
have procedures which allow humans to develop resources, trade commodities and
support an non-economically oriented cultural sector. So looking at our current system, one could
be surprised it doesn’t work, it does all these things. Its problem is not in the way it works at its
higher levels but its basic underlying assumptions. The current monetary system is based on
non-absolute, non-real, highly manipulatable concepts, that of faith in the
continuance of the stability of governments, potential for future gain and the
concept of risk assessment. It is at
this basic level that a paradigm shift is required. If the basis of the monetary system is
altered to represent real, fixed, absolute ecologically relevant costs and
values then the task of developing an economically sustainable system becomes
more realistic and achievable. The
development of such a medium of resource assessment and allocation is of
critical importance to the furtherance of the sustainability debate.
Stability is a response to the foundations of
any system, a monetary system founded on human perception of reliability, risk
assessment and future prospects is inherently unstable. A sustainable system must be based on the
absolutes of the reality of the planet on which we live, respecting its
limitations and recognising its sustainable bounty. Ecological soundness will derive from
accurate, absolute assessments of the impacts of, and limitations on,
procurement of resources, based on the reality of the planetary ecosystem.
The identification, assessment and analysis of
these sustainable resources could be a precursor to the development of a
‘budget’ for any given ecological catchment.
Equity
The need for equity in a sustainable economic
system is critical, this may only be fulfilled with the elimination of
want. Any disadvantaged sector will be
active in demanding radical alteration to the resource allocation system. The current monetary system has been
developed in order to apportion limited wealth. ‘Money is a symptom of poverty’
. It is unlikely in the short to medium
term that there will be sufficient resources available to satisfy all
want -
so … equitable resource distribution and allocation systems which are
seen to be fair and reflect community priorities must be instigated. The principal way of achieving this is by
ensuring that the community, through open governance, have direct influence
over resource allocation decision systems.
The current system or resource and wealth
allocation has gone dramatically astray, as so vividly demonstrated by the results
of recent research into the uneven distribution of wealth in the world. The ten richest people have more resource
than the poorest billion, this is a terminal indictment on immature capitalism.
Part of the vision of the community should deal
with the future aims of the culture with regards to economy and the goals it is
attempting to achieve through the economic system. It must become the task of the economic
system to directly account for its success in moving towards the stated goals
of the community.
Government
Economic Policy
The purpose of government should be to determine
resource allocation and distribution policy and to legislate for cultural
pattern formation and enhancement. By
allowing governments to control economic theory, policy and manipulation, a
series of massive problems are engendered.
Firstly economics becomes linked to politics,
which necessarily blinkers proponents to the overall appropriateness of the
underlying systems.
Secondly government economic policy is determined
by people whose fields of expertise and understanding are not necessarily
related to the issues involved.
Thirdly, the valid evaluation of the performance
of particular systems is clouded by the need for the government to appear
correct.
Finally, an overstressing of the role of
economics leads to the manipulation of the economic system being wrongly
perceived as the way of correcting problems which are essentially social and
environmental in nature. It is a powerful
tool, but one with strict limitations.
The implementation of an environmentally based
monetary system would lead to the removal of the need for ‘economic settings’,
which have been manipulated with such negative consequences in recent
decades. The system would be based on
real parameters which could not be altered by the intervention of humans. Stability would be achieved as a reflection
of the condition of the planetary ecosystem, and the satisfaction of
humanity. Economic modelling and
theories would be subtly altered in their focus into predictors of social well
being, environmental condition, the response of ecological systems and resource
availability to various actions and strategies.
Economic
System Framework
The framework of a sustainable economic system
must be robust and long lived, it must be linked securely to the absolutes of
the global ecosystem and resource base.
The details and infill can be plugged into the framework and removed
again once their usefulness is passed without altering the structural
framework. The concepts of immutability
of theory in economics must be eliminated.
Economic modeling and theory are complicated to the point of obscurity
by the fact that they are to do with human beings, the nature of whose choices
is eminently unpredictable.
To achieve any sense of the reality of relevance
of all these economic modelings, application of a scientific method of analysis
is again called for. That is, develop a
theory or model, develop a test for the theory, apply the experiment, analyse
the results, if they agree with the theory the theory is supported, not
proven. If the results disagree with the
theory, the theory must be modified or discarded according to the level of
discrepancy. It is critical to constant
review the testing of the theory or model to ensure its continued to relevance
to the cultures aims and goals.
The contemporary ad-hoc, scatter technique of
economic theory development (rooted in fashion, political mumbo-jumbo and
outright subjectivism) is a waste of time and effort. Supporters of any particular theory often
have chosen that theory in support of political ends rather than any firm
belief in the benefits or relevance of a given system.
Corporate
Ethics
Another aspect of our current economic system
which is at odds with sustainability practices is the corporate system. For humans to become citizens in our society,
they must be born, reared, fed and clothed, educated, disciplined and led to an
understanding over a couple of decades of their responsibilities to the
community. Some still get it wrong.
For a corporation to become a legal citizen it
must fill out a form or two and pay a lot of money to a bureaucracy. Corporations are set up to limit liability,
the sole aim and guiding moral principle of a corporation is to make money. The corporation becomes a responsibility
shield for the individuals who make the decisions of the corporation outside
the normal acceptable moral mores of the community. The current Corporations Law, company codes
and attendant bureaucracies are woefully over complicated and in the same
breath inadequate for the task of assuring that corporations behave in a
socially moral way.
The focus of corporatisation must be shifted to
the development of a company ethos. A
company should be a group of likeminded individuals with a particular goal, and
a defined moral code. Companies must be
seen as public entities with the same responsibilities as individuals but due
to the public nature of their activities they must have fewer rights to
privacy. Many of the worlds major
corporations are now experiencing this sort of emerging moral maturity. Such moves should be officially recognised
and lauded.
Corporate and bureaucratic secrecy, which have
created so many of the fears and problems in our culture must be eliminated, by
law if necessary. Secrecy gives
information power and corrupts any economic system which relies on an informed
marketplace. Eliminating secrecy breaks
the power of information and eliminates the destructive inhibitions created by
the paranoid fear of disclosure prevalent in many of our organisations.
Ecological
Balance of Trade
An Ecologically Sustainable Culture must exist
within the regenerable resource base available to it according to the
determination of its allowable share of the ecosystem. This must be also be achieved without
adversely impacting on ecosystems outside its catchment area. Within the ecosystem catchment for the
community there are two principal options for resource procurement:
Option One - a
nothing in - nothing out attitude must be set or;
Option Two - a method of determining a trading balance,
in ecological terms must be developed.
Trade has, since the
earliest historical times, proved to be a productive and healthy source of
cultural exchange and generator of wealth.
If a system can be devised to accommodate trade within the nature of
sustainability then a major milestone will have been reached.
An ecologically balanced trade would require an
evaluation system based on absolute ecological principles and would have to
allow for the ecological impacts of transport of resources and
administration. Such systems are currently being developed. A system called EcoCost is attached as an
appendix. The application of such
systems as the basis for a monetary and trading systems ensures a balanced
accounting of procurement incorporating ecological impact.
The concept of trade should also be expanded to
include interactions with other ecosystems and through time with other
generations with the principle of present dollar value discounting altered to
be valid in a non-anthrocentric / temporalcentric manner. Trading over distances in both time and the
three spatial dimensions should have penalties associated by the use of proper
ecological accounting of the full costs of transport and translocation, making
trade with adjacent and nearby areas and eras preferable to trade at a
distance: without the need for subsidisation, tariffs and artificial trading
barriers.
Such a system would allow the current bureaucratic
organisations to continue without direct intervention but it would gradually,
in the short to medium term, alter the priorities and operations of such
authorities.
Balancing the trade and budget becomes a
meaningful act of living within the sustainable resources of the planet.
Making it Happen: What Our Cities Can Offer
Each new example of massive new town
infrastructure, inevitably going awry, either through insufficient perception
of need or through rapid cultural change or through social stigmatization,
should be used as a data source as in a scientific experiment. Using each of each of these experiments to
refine our understandings, to move new projects towards being models of twenty
first century restraint, symbols of the emergence of a cultural maturity that
expresses our emerging perception of our place within the planetary
ecosystem. Let these be places for
research into the potentials of this country for supporting humanity in a
sustainable way. Places for succouring
and investigating the properties of valid endemic ecosystems that may be used
to generate viable resource bases for the local community.
Development Control Bureaucracies must use the
research and experience of those vanguard who have been investigating
sustainability for decades now. The
scientific understanding and the technological knowhow is there waiting to be
tapped. The Ecoforestry Institute of the
north American continent, Masonobu Fukuoka of The One Straw Revolution, Amory
Lovins and the Rocky Mountains Institute, the Rainbow Power Company of Nimbin,
and numerous other subversive organisations, have a range of profound well
grounded and practical solutions to the problems faced in the implementation of
such policy documents as the National Strategy for ESD. Up to now they have been continuously
sidelined by bureaucracies simply because they do not fit in the correct mould,
their principles do not wear suits, talk in megabucks, play diplomacy or wheel
and deal. They do however, through years
of careful research and the practical experience of trial and error have a
poultice of answers to the problems facing society. Urban projects are golden opportunities to
bring these solutions from alternative obscurity into the mainstream to alter
the path of our society from consumption and degradation to ecological,
cultural and economic sustainability.
To focus the problem tightly, most of our cities
suffer from the problems of a sparse layout and overly zoned planning. There are large areas of amorphous wastelands
around our city’s hearts. Vast carparks,
hopelessly under-utilised major buildings and excessive roadworks dominate
these areas. The optimal sustainability
solution for our cities is to encourage projects which have: the potential to
improve already blighted land (ecologically speaking); increase urban
densities; improve human amenity; or which overcome or sidestep other
ecologically impacting problems, such as transport and resource procurement.
We have the opportunity to put the multiple
billions of dollars that the infrastructure development of new towns consume
into solving the problems of existing cities: transport and service
infrastructure; resource procurement; and ecological catchment management.
Consolidating the existing city fabric,
ecologising the service infrastructures and enhancing attractive and efficient
public transit systems should be given much higher priorities than the typical,
big bucks, androcentric ‘
The plethora of arguments espoused concerning
our international competitiveness and the need for continued growth are in
direct conflict with achieving sustainability.
This market throughout our Asian and world
context is vast, vaster than any of our primary resource based markets and it
is sustainable.
Implementing sustainability is about examining
the basic principles upon which our society is founded. It is the opportunity to avoid the
fundamental mistakes of our recent past.
We must not allow a repetition of these mistakes to be hidden by laying
a pastiche cloak of green over the proceedings.
If we do not make the fundamental changes so clearly required by the
scientific and environmental professional communities, then we risk the inevitable
decimating ecological, social and economic consequences.
Implementation Strategies.
Sustainability is much more about attitudes,
education and responsibility than physical form. Architects and planners by nature enthuse
about ‘the grand solution’ but this is not the way. The use of major development projects as
eco-sensitivity platitudes rather than pushing for real reductions in
humanity’s impact and degradation of natural environments is farcical. Major developments are a large part of the
problem when it comes to environmental impact.
What is needed are ways to alter the manner in which current settlements
are managed, it becomes essential to have guidelines for sustainability and
ecological impact minimisation. As
previously stated the physical form of a development is a secondary
consideration to the cultural attitudes and the manner in which the community
is run. Once sustainable attitudes and
governance principles are installed however, the physical patterns, forms and
make up of the community make it work.
The concept of continuing unlimited growth is
not sustainable, development must be perceived as the act of changing the
existing rather than creating anew. This
is a hard pill for the design professions to swallow but it in no way infers
the end of creative design or invention of the new, it is the focus of the
application of these skills and talents which must be altered. History has demonstrated that we have not
been very successful at paradigm shifts in the design and planning professions,
the stylistic imagery of a new philosophy is consumed, assumed, digested and
excreted to be forgotten, without changing the underlying attitudes. The expression of ego through design remains
the paramount driving force. In the
case of sustainability however, the imperatives are so intractable, widespread
and non-anthrocentric as to force a major paradigm shift. The imperatives must come to underlie design
rather than an appliqué of pastiche to it.