The Loma Prietan
July/August 2005
Urbanism as Environmentalism: Why Environmentalists Should Love Cities
by Martin Dreiling, SLU committee Forum member
As environmentalists we spend a lot of
time focusing on wild places and trying to
protect them from the effects of human
habitation. We study both various components
of natural environments in isolation
and complexes of interwoven habitats
and species.
Sometimes we deal with cities, but
generally that effort seeks to bring nature
back into the city or otherwise tame cities
so that they behave more like nature.
What we fail to do is fully consider the
needs and opportunities of the human
habitat. I say this with caution as I don't
want to be associated with the wise use
advocates who claim that humans are an
"endangered species". That's silly.
Instead my premise is this: The failure
to adequately design and manage successful
human habitats is largely responsible
for the continued sprawling of
human settlement into natural places
with resulting exponential degradation
of those places.
We, of course, recognize this. We seek
to rein in the cities and suburbs with regulations
so that they don't further
encroach into less human places. While
the rules that we have invented and the
political will we can focus remains critical
to environmental health, I seek to add a
new tool to the kit. I seek to make cities
attractive, not as models of nature but as
models of humanity.
I want to see the city rediscovered, in
all of its potential forms from small, isolated
hamlets to
first ring railroad
suburbs to busy
inner cities. I want
to see them rediscovered
and made
whole again so that
we don't flee them
to further pollute
the country.
I see this not as
an engineering
exercise but as an
explicit environmental
exercise. As humans are a subset of
the natural world, for better or worse,
human habitats, cities, are a subset of the
larger environment, worthy of proper
consideration, care and management. I
see "Urbanism", the art and practice of
making sustainable human settlement, as
a subset of Environmentalism.
This calls for a "New
Environmentalist": the steward who
focuses her energy on the city the way
many before have focused their energy on
the wilderness. The New
Environmentalist will be the person who
examines, understands, researches the
habitat of humans,
who seeks to understand
an idealized
environment for the
human species so
that the human
species doesn't continue
destroying the
habitats of other
species.
The New
Environmentalist
will not be a person
who seeks to make
the city like nature. He will not be someone
who tries to hide the fact that we are
humans behind a veil of trees, berms and
English parks. It will be someone who
builds cities that are desirable, healthful,
satisfying human needs, addressing our
gregarious nature and celebrating our
shared existence.
The New Environmentalist will be an
architect, a planner, a doctor, a farmer,
an urbanist; a person who seeks to dignify
the places we live so that we don't
feel pressure to run away. It will be
someone who invites us to live closer,
rather than forcing us to do so. But that
person should be an Environmentalist
first.
We will continue to care for wilderness,
farmland, oceans and national parks.
We need to add the person that cares for
the human habitat to the extent that that
habitat can become as glorious as the natural
places we also love.
For 10,000 years we have made cities
wonderful for commerce, convenience
and comfort. Now we need to make cities
wonderful in order to survive. We need to
make cities wonderful to save the environment,
to save the planet.
That's why the city is important to
the environmentalist. It is not a place to
avoid, it's a place to fix, just like we
want to fix the rivers and oceans and
forests.
What is your reaction?
Anyone can post their response
to:
LOMAP-LANDUSE-FORUM@lists.sierraclub.org
Any Sierra Club member can
join the Forum listserv by following
directions on the Sustainable Land
Use committee's homepage:
lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/slu/