Prince Charles spoke a year or two ago on sustainability. He described the sustainability conundrum: How can we determine appropriate policy and strategic actions without the ability to forecast the future, without a crystal ball? How shall we act, now, without the ability to forecast the future? Casting our gaze around us, we see the present circumstances:
Nationally, we are developing land twice as fast as population is growing.
Vehicle use in America has more than doubled since 1970 (offsetting all fuel economy gains).
Most development does not happen one building at a time.
Transportation now uses almost a third of United States energy consumption; fuel consumes almost a third of our energy.
Buildings use at least 45 percent of energy consumption.
Globally, the world’s population has grown to 6.5 billion, with more than 4 billion being added since 1950. It may grow another 2.6 billion before beginning to fall, according to the United Nation’s lower forecast.
Today’s 3.2 billion city dwellers are likely to increase to 6 billion by 2050.
The world has consumed more natural resources since World War II than in all of history prior to that time.
Finally, we face an unprecedented global economic crisis without clear resolution.
Even without our crystal ball, we can see that unsustainable growth or growth that exceeds its resources may be the greatest threat to the future of humanity here at home and across the globe. Without sustainable growth, billions of people — not to mention other species — will be condemned to suffer its unfortunate consequences. So we ask ourselves:
How can we bring population growth and the increase in human places and spaces into balance with the natural environment to create long-term sustainability?
How can we accommodate the adverse effects of climate change and degradation of our protective barriers? What strategies, tools, and techniques are worth consideration and deployment before we have exhausted our resources? How can we meet the economic challenges that could undermine our best “green” efforts?
In terms of the sustainable growth of human settlement, what should we do?
When we parse the Bruntland Commission’s definition of sustainable development (“Development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs), we discover we can first look back in order to look ahead. So, absent our crystal ball, as we ponder the range of approaches to sustainability — from the technological solutions, like hydrogen power, to non-technological strategies, like better design and planning practices that don’t necessarily rely on technological advances, and the combinations of both approaches — we should ask ourselves four questions, drawn in part by Jeff Vail’s essay on technology.[i]
First: “What has worked best, over time in the long run?” While it’s true that we cannot accurately predict the future, we can begin to look back in time. We can look back over generations and millennia of human settlement and physical development, to determine what strategies, tools, and techniques have allowed certain places to survive, endure and even prosper over time, and which have failed outright or struggled and declined. What decisions allowed ancient settlements to survive and evolve over centuries in response to internal and external forces? We used to build compactly, with our daily needs within walking distance or a streetcar ride away. Many traditional multi-story dwellings included a first floor adaptable as a living room, café, or workplace with housing above, configurable for a wide range of ages. Charrettes have been time-tested over the least fifteen or twenty years. We call this metric “Time-Testing.”
Second: “What sustainable solutions can be employed with relative efficiency and simplicity by the greatest number of people?” Allowing a local stone building wall to absorb the warmth of solar energy has been employed for centuries while photovoltaic panels require relatively expensive labor and materials and a specialized industry. Each member of a community, neighborhood or block, from elders to youngsters, can become an expert in conservation when local systems are in place – reducing and reusing instead of generating land-filling waste; walking instead of driving. Charrettes offer relative efficiency and simplicity for many people in proximity to the event. This represents our “Vernacular” metric.
Third: “What remedies offer broad applicability for a wide range of circumstances and over a diversity of environments?” Compactness should be encoded in all new development and applied in virtually every jurisdiction through governmental policies and development standards at the scale of the neighborhood, community, and the region. This works in almost all climates, regions, and cultures. Connectivity works to improve everyone’s mobility, from the elderly and disabled who are limited to wheelchair or walker, to toddlers taking their first steps along a public way. People will walk, bike, or use transit when the available means are convenient, attractive, and efficient. Passive solar can be employed for both heating and evaporative cooling. Until the technology of photovoltaics evolves into a simple, inexpensive, and broadly applicable solution, it fails our measure of “Pervasive.” Charrettes can be deployed wide range of circumstances and over a diversity of environments. This represents the criteria of “Pervasive.”
Fourth: “What strategies, tools, and techniques will limit or reduce potential negative consequences, and leverage positive impacts, in the short and long term?” The current ethanol dilemma — a fuel process that consumes nearly as much non-renewable fuel as it yields while displacing agriculture for food — is a poster child for undesirable consequences. Planting native foliage can reduce storm runoff, minimize irrigation, and decrease the “heat sink” effect. Connectivity, combined with compactness, creates a self-sustaining feedback loop. The New York Times recently compared actions for reducing global warming gases, including the reduction in oil consumed and the dollar savings. The calculations found while choosing energy-efficient lighting and appliances makes a difference, changing how we travel would make by far the biggest difference. Charrettes employ positive feedback loops to allow the best ideas to emerge and flower; the process builds support for the long term. We call this metric “Virtuous,” because the strategy or action produces positive feedback or consequences relative to sustainability.
So even without a crystal ball, we can employ the metrics of Time-Testing, Vernacular, Pervasive, and Virtuous to evaluate proposed sustainable solutions, to determine if they are affordable and broadly accessible without the need for specialists or causing unintended consequences that undermine the core objectives. If we apply these measures to our growth strategies and techniques, we can discover what has worked best, and what will work best in the long run.
When we plan and build compactly, with many ways to circulate, within the context of people, place, and time, and employing adaptable design and building practices as we did for thousands of years, we conserve non-renewable or environmentally depleting resources and energy-consuming building materials, and limit undesirable waste. We must re-compact and reconnect our cities, towns, villages and neighborhoods to increase mobility proportional to the scale and pattern of connections within each. In this way our new places may still be navigated by child or elder within a convenient walk, wheelchair or bike ride, saving energy and reducing pollution with every step. Finally, we should use the time-tested, vernacular, pervasive, and virtuous Charrette as a sustainable planning process.
We need to research the environments and absorb the intelligent regional and local lessons of planning and development as a direct step towards employing “what works best in the long run.” Finally, our places and spaces must be designed with the sufficient flexibility of function, and for adaptive response to physical, economic, and social conditions that will certainly change over time.
My green crystal ball suggests that we need holistic thinkers/doers to help get us out of this mess. We need generalist architects, planners, engineers, scientist, politicians, educators, environmentalists, economists, urbanists, and citizens — educated, motivated, and capable of deploying the sustainable strategies and techniques, testing and evaluating the ideas and plans, and implementing the Time-Tested, Vernacular, the Pervasive, and the Virtuous. Let us join the growing community of voices that believe that appropriate information, rather than mere technology, represents the building block of sustainability. I look forward to continued collaboration with those at the forefront of this movement so that we can build a more robust and sustainable future.
[i] Vail, Jeff, “Elegant Technology.” Rhizome: Weekly Notes on Emergent System, Geopolitics, Energy & Philosophy, November 6, 2006. Accessed from <http://www.jeffvail.net/2006/11/elegant-technology.html>