Sustainability: A Tall Order
The word sustainable is not unexpectedly a foreign term to most of America, and one that's difficult to apply to American cities as they have existed so far. London, Venice, Beijing and St. Petersburg: most of the world's cities developed over thousands of years. In many cases they have changed little in that time. The same town squares, cobblestones and buildings enjoyed by generations of citizens can be visited by their descendants.
What took Paris thousands of years to develop took Chicago decades. San Jose grew up even faster. Many of America's cities can be described as anything but sustainable. Pittsburgh grew out of a fork in a river to produce steel for the world in a few short years. The wells of Oil City, Pennsylvania, left the city dry as soon as they were depleted. Many people left Youngstown and Gary, Indiana, just as fast as they came.
Once confined to a small part of Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland metropolitan area now stretches over a large corner of the state, while housing fewer people than it did twenty years ago. Great amounts of housing stock in Buffalo and Detroit sit vacant while enormous population pressures push at the edges of Las Vegas and Phoenix. Floors of empty space hover over quiet streets sheltering spiders and rodents from the wind while homeless people sleep in the cold below.
Center cities cry that sprawl is depleting them of residents and tax base while towns on the suburban fringes salivate at the potential for economic development and tax base that comes when a small factory or big-box retailer is lured. Farmers lament the systematic destruction of a lifestyle that's supported their family for generations while at the same time praising the riches a highway or housing development can bring.
"Walking to work instead of driving is perhaps the greatest thing an individual can do to promote the cause of sustainability"
Nature lovers board their gas-guzzling all-terrain vehicles and head to vast macadam parking lots built to accommodate hordes of other visitors in the last remaining wild spaces the country knows, while poor urban residents risk their lives trying to cross highways and concrete barriers, dodging traffic just to get to work in suburban malls.
The income gap in the United States continues to grow, with corporate executives getting pay increases that seem to correspond to the numbers of people their companies lay off. Meanwhile, at the borders, the lure and promise of America continues to attract immigrants in droves, while those inside fight to close the doors of opportunity, preferring to keep the promises to themselves.
Each day there's something new that's disposable. Cameras, Handi-Wipes, impoverished Afghan people and illegal immigrants.
Let me tell you this "sustainability" ideal is no small order.
First we need to ascertain what people are talking about when they say the word "sustainable." Perhaps the most common reference is the environment. The idea here is that we have to live in a way that doesn't use up all the resources or pollute the natural environment for future generations.
In urban areas, the talk is about "green building," using materials that don't pollute and constructing buildings in a way that conserve energy. But the references to the environment define sustainability far too narrowly and thus exclude major segments of the population from being involved in the movement (there is great debate over whether fewer minorities have broken racial barriers in insurance companies or environmental organizations).
While we talk about the environment in terms of sustainability today, social reformers of a century ago might have used the word sustainability to urge political and corporate leaders to address social inequities. The civil rights movement ushered in the new era of a more sustainable politics.
Today we not only waste natural resources and exploit the environment, we allow the abilities of people to be underutilized, we accept the notion that rights are for Americans and so generate exasperated resentment in the underdeveloped world. Immigration, the income gap, a lack of purchasing power and racial and ethnic inequalities: these too are sustainability issues.
Our Changing Cities
Riding on a moving walkway through the Saint Louis Airport, in a purple tunnel decorated with black granite, listening to a Muzak version of a Beatles song, I thought how dramatically Saint Louis had changed in less than half a century. The monumental Saint Louis Union Station was completed in 1894. For about a century, from 1870 to 1970, the railroad station was where you would be if you were traveling. And the railroad station was downtown.
Today the airport, while often serviced by trains, completes most cross-country or international voyages. Rarely is a "concourse" on par with any significant train station. The airport is a maze of walkways leading past stores and television screens until you reach the one of several dozen bland waiting rooms assigned to your particular flight. No staircases lead to the plane either--instead huge metal snakes connect the concourse to your individual tube that will transcend geography and place, allowing you to arrive in a different, equally nondescript airport somewhere else. Nor is the airport in a central location within a city; it's usually a few dozen freeway miles away, with the namesake city not so much as in view.
"How far are we from Saint Louis?" I asked an attendant in the airport. Obviously confused, believing she was in Saint Louis and I in a cloud, the attendant replied, "You mean downtown Saint Louis?" Saint Louis, in 1997 was no longer a city, an arch or a group of people. It was a region, a place on the map with no specific boundaries or characteristics-- kind of like the airport.
Nineteenth Century Lithographs of fourteenth to eighteenth Century European Cities--Strasbourg, Venice, Vienna, Prague--show scenes that would not be all that different from those we might find there today. Activity is centered around a square, people are out shopping in markets or watching theatrical performances; buildings are close together, with some are already hundreds of years old and still serving their original purpose. But the Cleveland of the new millenium is so far removed from the city it was just fify years ago that we don't need photographs and drawings to demonstrate the changes--some of us can remember them.
Cleveland in the 1870's did not differ dramatically from many European cities hundreds of years older, but now…! In many Twentieth Century cities, the urban structure continues to change at the same pace at which modern cities were built. A photograph of Pittsburgh in the 1930s would show one dramatically different from one taken fifty years earlier.
Alexis De Toqueville, a European, remarked in his Nineteenth-Century book, Democracy in America, that cities, unlike people, do not grow old. And while this is true of European Cities and a few North American ones, I think few would argue that Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and even Baltimore haven't grown old. De Toqueville couldn't foresee the the boarded up shopping plazas and rotting Detroit skyscrapers, or imagine that a city could be as disposable as a toothpick.
By the 1970's there was a growing national consensus in the United States that its cities had grown old. The idea of even having a city, the value of a city as a place, was part of history.
What is Sustainability?
A brochure for a city in Taiwan quoted something called the Tatung Chapter of the Book of Rights that describes what could be a good outline for a sustainable city. "The old have completion, the strong have a purpose, and the young have growth." I like this definition because it is such that it would necessitate a healthy environment, yet deals in terms of people rather than air and water. How many of our cities have been able to live up to such a code for more than a few decades? This could be quite a valuable measure of the vitality of a city.
"One measure of America's potential for long-term vitality," read a publication from the President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development , "will be the emergence of communities that are attractive, clean, safe, and rich in educational and employment opportunities."
Indeed, many of today's cities do not have all, or even most, of these factors. Up until a few years ago the popular concept of a city did not conjure up images of an attractive place, or a clean and safe place, with perceptions of educational and employment opportunities mixed. Though cities still contain many great universities and are home to major corporations, a high school education and entry level employment are too often not things to be had in cities.
The Presidents Council on Sustainable Development discussed some characteristics of cities and connected problems to changes that have occurred over the past half-century. "Sustainable communities are cities and towns that prosper because people work together to produce a high quality of life that they want to sustain and constantly improve," the President's reports says.
Where and how we live, as well as the places we design, contribute not only to our quality of life, but to how well society works as a whole, and how well our communities will provide the young with growth, the strong with a purpose, and the old with completion. The way we live contributes to the sustainability of our culture by measuring how well it can absorb the past and contribute to the future.
But how do we create and sustain such a place? How can we insure that people become engaged in building a community together? How do we insure a participatory approach in decision making? How can we be sure the measures we take aimed at conservation and sustainability won't prohibit the growth necessary to provide the young with a future?
Although change may seem contradictory to the word sustainable, in fact, like the natural world, an urban environment must grow and evolve in a way that complements history and existing structure. A sustainable urban environment is more than anything else a balance between yesterday and tomorrow. A sustainable urban environment must serve as a test facility for the new without completely destroying the past to make way for it.
Jane Jacobs said that healthy cities required a variety of buildings in varying conditions. They provide opportunities for the young entrepreneurs to start businesses and places for established corporations to employ large numbers of people. The complete reform of the city to meet the vision of architect Le Corbusier--who was one of the first to envision the glass buildings and highway ribbons, Urban Renewal Pioneers, and City Beautiful planners--results in incompatible forms, the old walking city with the new automobile-dependent one superimposed on it. The past then can not be sustained any more than an entirely different future can be created. While it may seem the energy created by the forms at odds with each other may be a part of sustainability in that they provide for growth, a closer look at a plan which aims to forcibly replace an old city with a new one in one sweep shows that it will inhibit the natural growth that is necessary for a sustainable city.
A city's greatness, in the words of historian Donald L. Miller, "is a the result of an uneasy balance between order and energy, planning and privatism, diversity and conformity, vice and reform, art and enterprise, high culture and low culture, the smart and the shabby, the permanent and the temporary." Such a balance exists in many places--places we continue to choose over others not so evenly balanced.
What can we do?
While we can expand the cause of sustainability to include many of the issues currently plaguing the world, sustainability, like charity, begins at home. It is a far more realizable goal to change ourselves and our immediate environs than those far away. For practical purposes, the cause of sustainability is limited to the things we touch and the people we come into contact with.
Considering things, first there is the obvious: recycling. While the number of communities recycling continues to increase, too often the efforts end at the curb. Despite all its benefits, recycling is a fix that occurs at the end of the production line. Many of the containers in the recycle bin need not have been purchased in the first place, or their contents could have been transported in reusable or more permanent containers--or no containers at all! It's important to think about recycling not only when throwing away objects, but more so when purchasing products. If you buy fresh vegetables and carry them home in a reusable cloth sack that you own, there's nothing to throw away when you're through with them.
For those in colder environments, it's important to use energy as efficiently as possible without sealing your houses up so much they damage your health. Much heat is lost through the attic, so insulate there and keep the heat down. The best way to conserve heat is by wrapping your body rather than your house. And here's one that SUV-driving, backpacking nature lovers hate to hear: as warm and fuzzy as we think they are, campfires and wood-burning fireplaces and stoves pollute, are an utter waste of trees, and come with a great risk to both the natural and built environments because of fire hazard.
Perhaps more important than being aware of sustainability issues in terms of recycling and energy-saving is the need to live as close to your work as possible. This leads to the notion of sustainability in terms of people, because you'll find you come into contact with quite a few more when you walk to work or shopping than when you drive. Walking to work instead of driving is perhaps the greatest thing an individual can do to promote the cause of sustainability. Even the most fuel-efficient car contributes to the perceived necessity of building ever increasing lanes of freeway.
When you meet these new people you'll discover on the sidewalk, ask yourself how your contact with them might help create a more sustainable world. Perhaps they are homeless or new immigrants who could use some help. Perhaps they are just very different from you in terms of race or religion, or just have a completely different world view. A little interaction, even just a smile, might go a long way to help create a less fearful, less nervous world. And hey, it might even make you feel good to pass along a smile, instead of pretending to be engaged in a very important cellular conversation.
There's more to do in terms of people, things and yourself. Ask yourself, is your own life sustainable? Do you contribute as much to the economy, to your community and your neighbors as you receive? Sustainability isn't only a liberal issue. The additional energy we put into our work--whatever we produce--that's above and beyond what we receive is a surplus that goes toward a more sustainable world. If you create more widgets than you use, there's an extra widget out there that someone else might need. And if you own the widget factory, consider that the wages people receive must be adequate so they can not only afford to purchase additional products--a process that contributes to increasing the wealth of their neighbors--but also be able to afford to live a healthy, sustainable life and contribute as much of their talents as possible to the future. And it's true beyond economics--the additional time we spend playing with children, talking to elderly neighbors, or helping friends, neighbors and even strangers find employment, contributes to a sustainable society.
At some point we have to look beyond our own environment, however. Even if we all recycle, walk to work and help our neighbors out, even when our cities are built so we don't have to drive much because things are in easy reach, we have to have a knowledge and interest beyond ourselves and know that the world may not be as sustainable as our communities. Our efforts to control pollution and reduce social inequities don't exist everywhere, and in some cases the actions of our own nation, which we as citizens must accept responsibility for, have contributed to pollution and inequality in other parts of the world. In order for the world to become sustainable, individuals have to be aware of what's going on in the world.
When the message of sustainability is sent by a nation using the majority of the world's resources, it runs the risk of not being taken seriously. In a quickly developing world, the need for promoting the necessity of developing in a sustainable way is all the more important. Yet without the ability to send the message with a serious face, the prospects for the recipients to heed the warnings are slim. It is critically important for each and every American to become conscious of these issues and practice what we preach in the very short term.
The hard truth is we don't really know what sustainability is because we've never seen it, yet somehow most of us know it must become as common an ideal as truth and justice. It's not often we see those either, but it doesn't keep us from working towards them.
Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.
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