A Case Study worth visiting
Sustainability as a philosophy, that is to sustain growth within our limited existing knowledge and resources, is expressed as that – a theory worthy of pursuit but impossible to actually deliver.
Australian endeavours with sustainable development are ideally placed within local government. The Federal Government poor response to Local Agenda 21, token endorsement of the Kyoto Agreement, lack of green house gas policy further questions the actual pursuit in obtaining sustainable development.
Whereas the local government relationship to its community empowers it in achieving this goal and leaves it little option but to pursue the application of this theory because of its grass roots development.
However, while theoretical possible in Australia within the United States, sustainability as expressed in urban design, as a program for development, is at odds with the fundamental cultural development of community and its legislature. The very existence of cities, communities and territories (eventual States) were, and are still based upon growth.
United States Local Government is in one part a complex article of social governance which is subservient to the economic component that delivers the growth and funds to sustain it. Therefore, sustainability in this sense is the ability to provide services based upon an ongoing pattern of growth and use.
The release of America’s foremost New Urbanist’s doctrine to prevent ongoing urban sprawl, still endorses growth. Development is based upon the reorganisation of the built form and recreating cultures from a non-existent form. New Urbanism, the American Style, has limited success in existing communities, but celebrates the sprawl based lifestyle of faux communities such as, Florida’s Celebration, Seaside and Colorado’s Monument.
Suburban Nation (2000), published by Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck, clearly champions the desire of the American Dream while challenging sprawl; ‘…America will continue to grow, like it or not. The challenge is to do in a way that contains sprawl and offers attractive living choices for families of all descriptions and income levels...’
As we have recently seen, without growth, population and its pending consumption, the American system falters. Growth is what sustains the American Dream and a theory that is fundamentally opposed to incessant growth is lost in the translation.
Therefore the philosophical notion of Sustainable Development is an impossible ideal that will not be achieved, in its pure sense, within the United States and other developing countries that do not place the importance of community culture and expression above population expansion.
The question for Australia is that while growth (to an extent) is inevitable, our ability to sustain our lifestyle as requested in the current election campaign, will depend on how our existing built environment is managed. As with new urbanism theory, Sustainable growth should not only be targeted at the edges, but must be brought to bear within our cities.
Our local governments aren't tied down by the economic tentacles like our US counterparts, however it is time that local government stepped up to the plate and discussed openly with its community about achieving long term sustainability - this means raising the density issue and a whole lot more, and time to bring back good urban design to our cities.
2 comments:
Sustainable development - the mother of all oxymorons. There is nothing sustainable about
civilisation. The modern economy has been
described as an elaborate suicide machine.
Similarly there is nothing 'green' about the
creation of industrially made environmental
products. The system is profoundly sick, no amount of theoretical discussion about the
role of cities and urban design will make one
iota of difference to the future sustainability of civ, cities and humanity. The 'project' is tied to growth, exponential growth on a finite planet is a mathematical impossibility. We need profound and massive change. All discussions about sustainability are greenwash BAU - ie. business as usual.
Groundswell,...there is truth about human impact on the earth and the term sustainability. However, as humans we do need places to live and these include the many varieties based upon different societies and cultures. In some of these cutltures there is more excessive waste, our role is to first demonstrate there are better ways and then improve on this once we have consenus. It won't happen in our lifetimes, but I would rather plant a good seed then continue to water a weed.
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