In a recent post on his Original Green Blog, Steve Mouzon made the excellent point that while it might be gratifying and just to “take the hide off” BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, we are actually to blame, having created a suburban nation which continues to make us slaves to oil. Of course this is easy for New Urbanists to claim, but what else are we supposed to say about the emperor’s nudity? If all we do as a result of this disaster is make one multinational oil corporation pay heavily, we will have missed a huge opportunity to change our ways and begin to implement patterns of settlement that are actually sustainable.
I often wonder when I hear things like ‘change a light bulb, save the world’ just how deep our culture’s understanding of sustainability is. I’ll read an article that discusses how the American lifestyle needs to change, but the answer at the end has more to do with fuel efficient cars than urbanism or smart growth. This article is compelling to me because it demonstrates with solid data how New Urbanism and Smart Growth are a systemic approach to sustainability and dealing with the climate crisis…
The short film “Built to Last” won first place in The Congress for the New Urbanism CNU 17 video contest. I think environmentalism is often focused on symptoms rather than the underlying systemic cause of our global problems. Our automobile/ oil dependence is probably the largest man-made disaster in the world. What’s counter-intuitive is that [...] Read more »
An answer starts with a question. The question? Can and should we be splitting these enormous boulders all over South Main into something useful? Having just returned from Europe and seeing some of the most amazing architecture in the world, plus listening to the audio book The Pillars of the Earth on the trip, you [...] Read more »
One of our highest hopes for South Main is that it will serve as a model of what’s possible for future development. We’re looking to demonstrate the most sustainable model possible for new development in the west. The heinous effects of sprawl in the west and the alarming loss of cherished open space is certainly [...] Read more »
