CB Truce drops by for the the final installment of our forum “On Cities”…. So, what do YOU think? How important are cities to contemporary culture in your view? What’s your favorite city and why?
Cities are seen as a departure from our agrarian roots, a perversion of the natural order, but I think cities hold the greatest potential for humankind’s ability to live responsibly with nature and with ourselves. I take the perspective of a city planner, an environmentalist, and a social theorist. Cities concentrate our use of natural resources and in doing so, help to mitigate the inefficiency and wastefulness of the car-centric suburbs. Beyond this, cities allow us to leave more of nature untouched, it reduces the size of our physical footprint on the natural world. I envision of world of vertical metropolises with surrounding farmland, leaving ample room for nature to reassert itself in the lands formerly claimed for suburban sprawl.
The impact of cities extends to the sustainability of human relations, as well. By concentrating our intellectual and artistic resources in cities, we create endless potential for human achievement. However, cities greatest contribution to human sustainability comes in its ability to concentrate different groups of people in close proximity to one another. Much has been made of New Yorkers gruff disposition and selfish attitude, but I see New York in different terms. New York is proof that human co-habitation is possible and beautiful.
Related Posts:
Join us:
