ETHICS AND URBAN SUSTAINABILITY
Theology And The City - Babylon And Zion
BY PETER NEWMAN
Professor of City Policy, and Director, Institute for Science and Technology
Policy, Murdoch University
INTRODUCTION
In the first case study on ethics I examined
the way local ecology, human ecology and urban ecology were the basis for an
environmental ethics for cities. I suggested that the basis could be found in
ancient traditions that are expressed in religion. It is possible to find such
bases in many different religions.
Photo 1. Many
religions have well developed ethical approaches to issues of
sustainability.
For example the Chipko movement in India is based on Hindu
motivations and has been an
inspiration to many people
around the world.
But here I am only able to outline western
spiritual traditions, partly because they have a well developed approach to city
sustainability, but mainly because it is my tradition. It is also developed in
some detail because many people in the west no longer believe that they have
spiritual traditioins that are able to assist them in solving their urban
sustainability problems. Many are now following New Age philosophies which
contain beliefs in, for example, the ability of crystals to solve many personal
problems.
Photo 2. New
Age beliefs in crystals and other 'icon' materials are very
popular in the west and indicate the extent to which people
no longer trust much of western spiritual tradition.
For many people, therefore, the traditions of
the west in terms of spirituality are seen to be no longer relevant and this
often means that they cannot see how urban environmental issues could ever be
solvable. I would thus like to try and briefly present what is the basis of the
western spiritual tradition as it relates to local ecology, human ecology and
urban ecology in order to show that there is a rich tradition for people in the
west to use as a source of hope in urban sustainability.
WESTERN SPIRITUAL TRADITION AND LOCAL ECOLOGY
The first statements about local ecology in
the Western spiritual tradition begin in the book of Genesis which goes back
into the nomadic hunter-gatherer period of human history and were part of
aboriginal oral tradition in the Middle East for thousands of years before being
written down first around 500 BC. It describes the cosmology of life this
way:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth... And God said let there be light... let there be sky... let there
be water... and land... let the land produce vegetation... let the water teem
with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth... and let the land
produce living creatures... and let us make man in our image...".
This cosmology is consistent with Big-Bang
theory, geological continent formation and the evolution of life. But there is
a distinct addition to any scientific cosmology..."God saw all that he had made
and it was very good."
All the scientific descriptions of the
origins and of our present day world cannot make a value judgement like that -
it can only tell us how it all came about. This simple phrase from
Genesis says that all life has significance, it is inherently good as it has
been created that way by God. This is the spiritual and ethical basis of
organic thinking, of interconnectedness in the western tradition and is the
reason for Gilbert Whites' extraodinary enthusiasm for the biological life
around him. We all come from the same source.
Photo 3. The
value of the created world, from all spiritual traditions,
is that the world was created 'good' and thus all life has
significance.
The Genesis story goes on after the creator
says how creation is all good, to describe how he makes the first humans,
in his image, with the task of looking after this natural world: to "rule" the
animals, fish, cattle, birds .... and also to "till the earth and care for
it".
It is easy to see why dualism could occur if
'rule' was taken to mean an exploitive and utilitarian approach to nature.
White(1967) suggests that the west has taken it to mean this but the context is
showing the opposite of a dualism with a unity of creation under its creator.
The next verses show not exploitation but Adam's first task which is to go out
and name the plants and animals like a good ecologist. There is no dualism
here.
It is not the first time people have taken
different meanings from an ancient text. The Gilbert Whites of this world saw
mostly an emphasis on a task which required great care with nature and thus
found inspiration for their organic work from these ancient
words.[1]
In this ancient view of the world from
Genesis we are all called to be local ecologists, in this wonderful creation.
Throughout western history there has been a powerful awareness of this
interconnectedness to nature through our shared creation. The Psalms of David,
the Song of Solomon, the Hymn of Job are part of that long oral tradition which
constantly reminded the faithful of their close link to creation. The sermons
of Jesus about 'considering the lillies', the Canticle of the Sun by St
Francis... all are part of this tradition of environmental awareness that has
been given to the west.
This tradition is not presented in long
philosophical treatises but in the words and songs learned by ordinary
communities who followed this tradition. Perhaps one of the best ways to see
how much a tradition means is to see how it is expressed in music as this is
about as organic as an idea can get. Oral traditions in the west include hymns
that are passed on from one generation to the other by people gathering in
groups to sing them together; the hymnals are full of songs like this one from
C. A. Arlington in the 19th century:
" Lord of beauty, thine the splendour,
shown in earth and sky and sea,
burning sun and moonlight tender, hill and
river, flower and tree,
Lest we fail our praise to render, touch our
eyes that they might see,
....thou in all art glorified". (Hymns
Ancient and Modern)
This largely oral western tradition is not
often seen today by the New Age generation nor by some commentators who see the
West as having only negative approaches to the
environment[2]. But it
was certainly the oral tradition of the Reverend Gilbert White and many in the
local ecology movement in the west ever since.
WESTERN SPIRITUAL TRADITION AND HUMAN ECOLOGY
The Western spiritual tradition does have a
local ecology tradition. However there is always history to show that western
societies have not always been very successful at doing much about this. The
same historical assessment can be rather unflattering for all settled societies
(Toynbee,1978). It is only hunter-gatherers who seem to have had a more
harmonious use of the environment though sometimes settled human communities do
manage to come to some more peaceful relationship with nature. Thus we need to
see what are some of the ethical traditions behind human ecology.
The Genesis account gives us some basis for
understanding human ecology in the story of the Fall and the expulsion from the
Garden of Eden which reflects the loss of our purely ecological nature as we
changed from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural and urban societies (the
change began to occur about 10,000 years ago). The Fall story is also an oral
tradition handed down from this time that attempts to show how humans now found
themselves in a new relationship to nature and to each other. Genesis suggests
that the harmonious situation in the Garden was lost when humans made a choice -
to 'eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. The layers of meaning
are many, but it does at least suggest that once we chose to try and create our
own environment with tools and culture a kind of barrier was erected: a barrier
to nature, a barrier between ourselves and in ourselves and a barrier to God.
This theology means that people thus saw themselves in settlements as being much
more on their own: that humans must toil to obtain their sustenance and that
nothing would be gained without a painful struggle as we now can see the
consequences of our choices. It no longer will just happen
naturally.
The human condition is thus one of struggling
with choices rather than being programmed to automatically be harmonious with
nature and with each other. We do seem to have a faint memory of a perfect
natural order and dream to be part of it. Utopias, noble savages... we want
them to exist but none of them actually do. There is no way back to Eden.
History throughout the rest of the Bible and on into modern history reveals
humans developing technology, constantly at war and in the process causing great
harm to their environment (Osborne, 1948).
The Organic Tradition In History
However the western spiritual tradition on
the environment goes further. It is based on community-led approaches to
environmental concern. This organic tradition is fundamental to understanding
how humans in the western spiritual tradition have achieved any environmental
gains and is the basis of the human ecology tradition developed
above.
Building organic community based on shared values and goals is fundamental
to the Judao-Christian tradition. Despite American theological and political reinterpretation,
the individual in Judao-Christian tradition is considered to
be defined by their community rather than vice versa (Yoder,1984, Hauerwas,
1981, Lasch,1985). The organic processes of community are thus central
to the western spiritual tradition and these communitarian values are only now
being recognised for their significance in all areas of ethics and policy
(MacIntyre, 1985, Bellah, 1985, Ife 1995) including the planning of cities (Cunningham,
1996, Blanco, 1995). Cunningham says that city planning depends on an
"altruistic surplus" which is generated from
civil society's values. Blanco says that communitarian values mean
that the 'goal of city planning is community'.
Photo 4. When
humans misuse the environment they are under judgement;
prophets arise from
civil society to heighten the moral issues related to human ecology.
This area was once the
wheat region of the Roman Empire.
Whenever a community in the ancient organic
tradition lost their direction and began to impact on the poor, the weak, or the
environment (they are nearly always linked) then there became a role for the
prophet. These people were spiritually attuned to see clearly how their
communities were failing and set about reversing the process. As is described
further below this process was not to discuss ethics but to graphically show the
implications of their behaviour.
The prophets usually set out two scenarios
(based on city death or city life) and then it was up to their communities to
respond through changing to a better lifestyle. It is this tradition which is
still critical to the ethical conclusions reached by generations in the western
spiritual tradition and it is characteristic of the approaches taken by human
ecologists and urban ecologists on the environment and cities.
Photo 5.
Ephesus in Turkey was once the third largest city of the Roman Empire.
Its
port silted up (seen here at the end of the main street) and is now 13
kilometres in land.
The silting
was the result of over-cutting of forest in the upland areas.
WESTERN SPIRITUAL TRADITION AND URBAN ECOLOGY
The western spiritual tradition has at its
heart a process of developing a choice by the community who are facing ethical
dilemmas to do with their cities. In this tradition there is a critical role
for prophets, who are able to see the issues of their day in an historical
sense, to be able to heighten the sense of moral responsibility, and thus to
provide perspective for the future. It is then up to the people at a grass
roots level how they respond. Awareness and community action are the two sides
to environmental and urban ethics in this western spiritual
tradition.
The history of the biblical prophets covers
the various civilisations that rose and fell over several thousand years. Their
approach to raising awareness was essentially to describe the issues the people
faced in terms of two scenarios. These scenarios were described as two
alternative cities - Babylon, the city of death and Zion, the city of life - two
cities of the mind and spirit that represent the two sides of human potential.
These scenarios were always very graphic extremes of how the future could go.
Thus the moral dilemmas facing the people were presented not as disembodied
moral philosophy but as a choice between two cities that they could easily
imagine, not as some rules to be obeyed but some choices to make.
This ethical approach to cities has been used
by prophets and community leaders for several thousand years and was a major
approach adopted by 19th century environmental activists trying to clean up
industrial cities (Girouard, 1990). It is almost identical to the kind of
approaches taken by those in the urban ecology movement today, though there seem
to be few who are aware of the tradition to which they belong. Thus it is
important to give a little detail on how cities are viewed in this ancient
tradition.
My approach builds mostly on the writings of
Jacques Ellul, French sociologist and theologian in his book "The Meaning of the
City" (Ellul,1970). This book provided the theological and spiritual basis for
Ellul's most famous work "The Technological Society" (Ellul, 1964) which was one
of the first to show how modernism had spread the mechanical approach into all
areas of life.
Ellul suggests that the two prophetic images
are cities that exist on a spiritual plain but which give substance to the
physical cities in which we live, indeed our whole civilisation. They are in
essence alternative futures which we can choose between.
Babylon - City of Death
Babylon was the city that lived only for
itself, the city that in its arrogance exploited people and nature without
concern for the future. Individualism was elevated to the highest good; this
was seen as the most fundamental of all evil: "You thought in your own mind I
will scale the heavens and make myself like the Most High ..." And the
implications of such arrogance then follow for the environment and for the
social system: "Babylon - who shook the earth, who turned the world into a
desert, who never let his prisoners go free to their homes"
(Isaiah14:13)
Photo 6. The great 'Gates of
Babylon' (now in Berlin) and 'Hanging Gardens of Babylon'
are depicted in this drawing of the megalopolis of ancient
Babylon.
Photo 7. The 'Lion of
Babylon' shows the cruelty and exploitation that
symbolised the
treatment of many people in the ancient city.
All cities that take on the arrogant
characteristics of Babylon are rejected for the same reason. For example
Ninevah is rejected as "...the city that exulted in fancied security, saying to
herself 'I am and I alone'" (Zephaniah 2:15).
Photo 8.
Ninevah was also called 'Babylon' and Jonah was
asked
to go and point out its moral problems.
Babylon of course was an actual city which
was greatly feared for its harsh repression of those it captured and used as
slaves. It was also a city that collapsed, due in part to its arrogant abuse of
the forests in surrounding mountains which it stripped for its war machine, with
the inevitable soil erosion leading to silting of the Euphrates and the collapse
of the irrigation system on which Babylon depended. Isaiah hints at this when
in 750 BC he saw a vision of how the oppressor city would meet its end, and when
it does, he suggests:
"The whole world has rest and is at peace, it
breaks into cries of joy.
The pines themselves and the Cedars of
Lebanon exult over you,
Since you have been laid low they
say
No man comes up to fell us." (Ch.14
vs.7,8).
Photo 9. The
cedars of Lebanon. Only a few remain in their original habitat.
They were an
important tree for ancient cities who pursued major military campaigns;
like Babylon, their cutting
seems to be related to the silting up of the Euphrates.
This shows the close link between the values
associated with arrogant individualism and environmental decline. It is the
kind of approach adopted by Satesh Kumar in the quote at the top of this
chapter. Arrogance and greed destroy cities and their environment.
But the prophets never presented their
spiritual message as anti-city polemic, as though cities were evil in themselves
and all who would seek truth and purity must cleanse themselves and live in the
wilderness. The wilderness experience was only for special insight, the city
itself was an entirely acceptable habitat for humanity, it just needed to have
its core values changed. The city can be saved if people responded to
the message of the prophets. There were always alternative visions from the
prophets which showed how cities should be built and based. Isaiah had visions
of doom but also visions of hope where the Cedars of Lebanon could dance with
joy.
Zion - City of Life
The image of Babylon was always in the
context of Zion. This other alternative future was always beckoning people away
from the Babylonian despair:
"What answer is there for the envoys of the
nation?
This, that the Lord has fixed Zion in her
place,
and the afflicted among his people shall take
refuge there." (Is14:32)
"I am laying a stone in Zion, a block of
granite,
...I will use justice as a plumb
line
and righteousness as a plummet." (Is
28:16-17)
 
Photo 10 and 11. Zion or Jerusalem was seen as the other 'city of the mind' with
alternative values of hope, peace and right living.
Photo 12. In
a "land flowing with milk and honey',
i.e. agriculture and
wilderness in harmony with humanity.
This place was where "the lion will lie down
with the lamb", where peace and justice existed, where in the region instead of
devastation there was "milk and honey" (i.e. both agriculture and wilderness
were in harmony with humanity). It was also a very practical and human city.
Zechariah's image of Zion in 520 BC was of a very beautiful traffic calmed
streetscape:
"I will return to Jerusalem, my holy city,
and live there. It will be known as the faithful city...Once again old men and
women so old they use a stick when they walk, will be sitting in the city
squares. And the streets will be full of boys and girls playing." (Zech
8:3-5)
Photo 13.
Zechariah saw the value of traffic calming to a city's soul.
For every message of despair and doom from
the prophets there was a message of hope. Both scenarios were presented and
then the people had to respond. If they continued to live as though social and
environmental ethics did not matter then their cities would eventually be
judged. Invariably this fate was expressed in environmental destruction as well
as violent loss of life. War has always been devastating for cities and the
environment. If however they changed their ways then peace and justice could
occur and infuse their cities and their land.
The characteristics of those two alternative
futures - despair and hope, death and life - presented by the ancient prophets
as the two cities of the mind, are set out in a much fuller way in the last book
of the Bible, Revelation. It is instructive to see how the two stark images of
the future were developed as it is these which have been used most in recent
years in the western spiritual tradition.
Revelation was written by John in his old age
as he contemplated Roman cities that had begun to show some of the
characteristics of their declining civilisation (including the imprisonment and
torture of christians) and as well there were some cities that had begun to
adopt the christian faith. It is a mystical piece of writing that sometimes
seems, like a Coleridge poem, to have been written under the influence of some
substance. Thus it is very mystical but it gives the most complete picture of
the two alternative spiritual cities.
Babylon is presented as the great city which
has no values other than its own glory. It represses and exploits and delights
in its wealth and finery and power. But it is under judgement for its arrogance
and this comes in several images - seven angels are described which bring the
judgements, nearly all of which are environmental:
- The first depicts people with
malignant sores (like those dying in African famines).
- The second has the oceans polluted
blood red and dying (red tides are an algae that occurs in polluted
waters).
- The third has rivers and springs
polluted and dying in the same way.
- The fourth has the sun burning people
dreadfully (an ozone layer image?).
- The fifth has darkness (like an
energy crisis?).
- The sixth has rivers drying up (an
image of climate change?) followed by plagues.
- The seventh has an earthquake and
fire image that destroys everything (not unlike what a nuclear war could
do).
This is the Babylon image where individual
greed and arrogance are given an absolute free reign. Such values give this
city power but lead to its end - it sees no one else, it sees no environmental
constraint, or any other kind of limit on its operations. Its only goal is
consumerism. It is a vision which ultimately leads only to despair and death.
As the Revelation story concludes:
"Woe! Woe O great city,
O Babylon city of power!
In one hour your doom has come!
The merchants of the earth will weep and
mourn over her
No-one buys their cargoes anymore." (Rev
17:10,11)
Photo 14. 'The
city of consumption' - is it enough to make a city work?
Zion is the other image of the future
described by John. Its characteristics are opposite to that of Babylon but are
spelt out in a more symbolic way. It is described in terms of precious
jewels:
"The wall was made of jasper, and the city of
pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated
with every kind of precious stone.....The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each
gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold,
like transparent glass."(Rev 21:19 and 21)
So the alternative future is clearly a city -
it is not the Garden of Eden revived. It is not a romantic medieval rustic
village or a hunter and gatherer primitive culture. It does not turn its back
on human technology and ingenuity - it perfects it. It is a city made of jewels
and with streets of gold. Precious stones and gold are, of course, dug out of
the ground and refined with human skills. All of the technical skills of the
miner, the scientist, the engineer and the artist are combined when it comes to
cutting diamonds and other jewels. So the city of Zion expresses all that is
best in human endeavour.
The vision then goes on to describe the city
with a 'tree of life' and a 'river of life', in the middle of the city. There
is biological life in the city in harmony with human endeavour. The human
environment encompasses the natural, there is harmony between the people and
there is life. Such a system is perhaps no more difficult to imagine than are
current somewhat mystical images of ecocities (Downton, 1994, Register, 1987).
It is a coherent new order of city with none of the ecological or human pain
that we know so well:
"Now the dwelling of God is with
men....
There will be no death or mourning or crying
or pain, for the
old order has passed away." (Rev
21:4)
This is a city or society with a radical kind
of peace but it is not built just on mystical, disembodied philosophy but on a
series of small, very practical but beautiful jewels. Each jewel has been
created by day-to-day human creativity and effort. And most importantly, each
precious stone that is cut for the city is fashioned to fit into the city wall,
to be its future security. It is not an isolated jewel that sparkles in its own
setting - showing off its beauty for its own sake. It fits into the city, it is
a part of the common good, the community's benefit.
This is the basis of the organic approach to
cities, particularly to the idea that every step of urban development should be
part of a healing process (Alexander, 1987). This idea is similar to the notion
of creating a tapestry in which all the various parts can express their own
diversity but which together make up a whole creation which is coherent and
harmonious. The process is at the one time both practical (based in the
everyday) and spiritual (based in eternal qualities).
In 1893 Henry Drummond summarised this
sentiment when he said about the writer of Revelation:
"John saw his city descending out of heaven.
It was, moreover, no strange apparition, but a city which he knew. It was
Jerusalem, a new Jerusalem...This city then which John saw is none other than
your city, the place where you live - as it might be, and as you are to help
make it. It is London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Melbourne, Calcutta - these as
they might be and in some infinitesimal degree as they have already begun to
be."
So the Western spiritual tradition suggests
we have a choice about how we build our cities. We can build a city which is
based around arrogance, greed and selfishness where people find all kinds of
ways to escape the demands of the world and of their neighbours. Such a city
will also be polluting and will devour resources without restraint. We can
choose as a nation or region or city to isolate ourselves from problems rather
than sharing in global solutions. We can choose to denigrate mutual,
co-operative solutions that build up the common good. We can choose to live in
the city as isolated dwellers, even in a 'gated community' as is happening in
some US cities. Such isolation and independence means we assume the land and
other living systems on which we depend and human community means just as
little. In such a city the overall urban situation will deteriorate. And in
the end such a city is under judgement, it will collapse.
 
Photo 15. Are modern cities sprawling
because of values that were once at the heart of Babylon's demise?
Photo 16. Is the privatisation of
modern cities another expression of the Babel Tower?
The alternative vision is of a city infused
with harmony and peace but made with human creativity. It suggests that the
spiritual dimension of any physical reality in which we work is constantly being
added to the city just as surely as the technology we choose to use and the
bricks and mortar we create. It gets built into the fabric of a city. This
spirituality, like a jewel, can be quite small but it acts like a symbol to
reverberate amongst others. It has an enduring, transcendant quality to it,
even though it may be quite practical. It is the sum total of the everyday
stories of hope in a community.
It is common to talk about the soul of a city
(Kostoff, 1994) and the concept above from Revelation suggests that it is a
reality which is linked to the spiritual values of community, expressed through
their everyday activity in the city. Artists know how their work can provide a
quality that goes beyond its immediate appeal and has some kind of eternal
dimension. Those who provide their diamond of hope in any area of urban life
can have a similar sense of its eternal quality from this western spiritual
tradition.
Western Spiritual Tradition and Urban Ecology in the Nineteenth Century
The choices that have been outlined above and
symbolised in the two visions of Zion or Babylon have been the basis of the
western spiritual tradition on matters to do with urban ecology. When Rome was
in decline and decided to imprison Christians and use them for blood sports with
lions and gladiators in the Colisseum, the city was denounced as Babylon and the
prophets of the day called for a new morality. They eventually won this battle
after a tremendous struggle and much loss of life, and such human blood sports
have not occurred since.
Photo 17. Rome was called 'Babylon'
when it was using Christians for blood sports in the Colisseum.
Throughout the ages the images have been used
by people like Augustine in the 5th century, or Peter Abelard in the 12th
century who wrote a popular hymn:
"Now in the meanwhile with hearts raised on
high,
we for that country must yearn and must
sigh,
Seeking Jerusalem, dear native
land,
through our long exile in Babylon's strand."
(Hymns Ancient and Modern)
But the prophetic images of Babylon and Zion
were never more used than in the nineteenth century. In the 1880's and 1890's
the great industrial cities of Europe and the new world were afflicted with the
pollution of industry and human waste as well as desperate poverty and lack of
community values. The organic, small, walking cities of the past had been
transformed in a few generations and seemed to be totally out of control. In
response, the urban prophets of the day waged a campaign to establish a new
ethical order in their cities. The images they used to expose the processes of
environmental and city despair were taken from the 3000 year old western
spiritual tradition of urban prophecy - the images of Babylon and
Zion.
Girouard (1990) in his coffee table book on
the history of town planning devotes a whole chapter to how these concepts were
used to heighten the moral dimension of Vivtorian cities . Byron called London
"mighty Babylon", Victor Hugo said the same about Paris as early as 1831,
Hippolyte Tain called Manchester "Babel built of brick", Chicago was described
by G.W. Stevens in the 1890's as "Queen and guttersnipe of cities, cynosure and
cesspool of the world,...the first and only veritable Babel of the age", and
Melbourne was described in the 1880's as 'modern Babylon'. On the other hand
Zion, the city of life, was to be built among 'these dark Satanic Mills'
(William Blake).
The above quote from Henry Drummond in 1893
shows the commitment of these prophets to a reform process based on the
spiritual images of Zion and Babylon.
The prophets of the nineteenth century and
early twentieth century heightened the ethical awareness of the community about
the state of their cities, predicting death or life, based on the choices of the
people. Moral campaigns were waged by people such as John Ruskin (1819-1900),
William Morris (1834-1896), Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) and Patrick Geddes
(1854-1934). Such people gave rise to modern town planning in the Anglo Saxon
world, a movement founded on an ethical framework or system designed to create a
better environment. And across the world a new kind of city was built with
urban sanitation, trams and trains that enabled the city to spread out more and
create sub centres and suburbs and corridors of green spaces between the
corridors of urban development (Hall, 1990).
At the same time there was a whole rash of
urban reform movements based on very practical things like Sunday schools and
youth groups (eg YMCA) designed to provide educational and moral training for
the poor children of urban ghettos, the Mechanics Institutes for training their
unemployed parents and the urban parks movement which was designed to provide
environmental health and moral inspiration. Many of these things we now see as
rather quaint and of course town planning has become a technical process, but in
their origins they were strong ethical stances (Boyer, 1978). The result was
that they changed their cities from the potential collapse that many had
predicted[3].
Western spiritual tradition suggests that
urban ecology is a prophetic process which presents alternative images of the
future based on the city's spiritual priorities, and that the necessary changes
must come from all levels in society but is in essence a grass roots community
process.
The Urban Ecology/Organic City Tradition Today
The organic urban ecology tradition is the
opposite of the complete, unified, single solution of 20th century totalitarian
regimes or of much 20th century modernism. Thus it does not devise new
ecological communities or ideal suburbs which are separated from all that went
before. It is much more organic than this, building on the heritage of whatever
we have in our cities. It is based on subtle changes which begin where we are.
It involves little gems of work, little cuts to a diamond each day.
The organic approach to cities clearly can be
shown in the actual physical expressions of these values in technology and
bricks and mortar. Thus the urban ecology experiments of communities today are
some of the gems which are giving life back to our modernist cities (Newman and
Kenworthy, 1999). But gems can also be in the visions we help to create, in the
environmental policies that get built into the city's institutions, in the
community relationships which we build with spiritual values of trust and peace
and caring rather than using people for competitive advantage or racial
superiority. Such values hold communities together and prevent them dissipating
and dispersing physically and socially.
This organic approach has had its followers
this century as well as with those above who fought the nineteenth century
industrial city. This century it has mostly been a fight against destructive
modernism. The arrogance of such modernism in cities was to think that all
which went before in history should be swept aside. Thus Le Corbusier dreamed
of his sky scraper cities flattening all of the previous few centuries of
building and where the traditional street no longer was needed.
Photo 18. The
visions of LeCorbusier and other modernists were the
opposite of the organic city based on human qualities.
Photo 19. The
suburb and the freeway can express the
values of
'escape' so detrimental to sustainable city values.
Others dreamed of mass produced suburbs
(often rationalised as garden suburbs) where you could escape all of the
problems of the city. The car rapidly became the symbol of modernity as well as
being a necessity for those escaping to the suburb, so all planning had to
accommodate it. Soon the era of gigantic motorways became one of the century's
major building legacies.
But in many cities the move to oppose such
city building was spearheaded by people who recognised the hubris of this kind
of modernism and intuitively felt a more organic approach was far better. For
example the process of reclaiming and reviving the old city of Copenhagen has
been documented by Gehl and Gemsoe (1996) over a 20 year process. They show how
the community were able to reduce the impact of the car each year by reducing
parking (by 3% per year), narrowing and pedestrianizing streets and squares and
simultaneously creating more human-oriented activities in these public spaces.
The result has been a more attractive city economically, socially and
environmentally. But if the changes had been planned and implimented in one
large scale process they would have been painfully rejected. Instead the city
has slowly made this urban ecology transition by healing one piece of the old
city after another.
This organic city ideal is presented by
another English Anglican clergyman, who like Gilbert White captures something of
the human side of our relationship to the environment, but this time it is to
our city environment. It clearly shows the kind of values about cities that I
have tried to stress in this chapter. It is from Bishop ER Wickham of
Salford:
"Integral to the spirit of the good city is
its public and social life, its zest and gaiety and the capacity for
intermingling... It should be a place of exuberance and exaltation of the human
spirit, a place for celebration and public 'happenings', for rich and easy
encounter, for relaxation and enjoyment. It must not be simply functional and
utilitarian." (Wickham,1987)
The organic city movement in the 1990's is
alive again and has a new sense of vision similar to the 1890's. It is timely
because cities continue to grow and sprawl devouring farm and forest land,
filling the sky with automobile emissions and creating suburbs with which we
have considerable ambivalence. It is also timely as the whole mechanical vision
of how we should function is being questioned and torn down by popular culture.
However without an alternative vision the power of the mechanistic spirit to
dominate and control our society will continue to fill the vacuum.
The organic solutions are nevertheless being
rediscovered. The ISTP at Murdoch has attracted some 50 PhD students in its
first few years of operation and nearly all these research projects have some
link to this organic or communitarian approach (see the kind of responses in
this volume and also Phillimore, 1995). Many are contributing to the processes
of landcare or city activism in the kind of practical knowledge they are
obtaining. In the research that I have done over the years we have always tried
to answer questions that were being asked by people involved in urban and
environmental struggles, often becoming closely involved in the struggles
ourselves (eg Newman, 1988, 1992, 1997).
It would not be right to characterise this
organic movement as completely coherent and without its own internal
contradictions and struggles. There is some conflict for example in the visions
of the urban ecology movement over the extent that urban sprawl is opposed; some
groups are more rural in their orientation and are happy to see low density
suburban solutions despite their greater car dependence, while others want to
see cities become more urban and the countryside more rural in order to be more
conserving of resources and land (see Newman and Kenworthy, 1999).
However, the urban ecology movement is
networked across the world and is struggling to:
a) Stop motorways and provide a new vision
for transit-oriented urban villages, pedestrian scale developments, traffic
calming, bicycle facilities....(STPP, 1994 , Newman and Kenworthy,1999, and
Urban Ecology newsletter).
b) Provide neo-traditional planning that
emphasises real streets where people can meet and kids can play, which go in a
short distance to shops and schools and other activities (Calthorpe, 1993, Katz,
1994, - loosely called the New Urbanism ).
c) Bring environmental thinking into city
planning through water sensitive design, waste recycling, community permaculture
and other green innovations as well as a strong emphasis on community scale
technologies and management (Hough, 1984; Newman & Mouritz, 1994; Moran et
al, 1993),
All of these movements are opposed to grand
scheme planning that does not incorporate organic, grass roots processes. Not
only is this environmentally dangerous it is economically questionable as well.
Jane Jacobs says that grand economic schemes do little for cities but the real
vitality comes from the intricate, diverse relationships that flourish in urban
communities where people meet casually in streets and social gatherings. She
concludes that the 'science of city planning and art of city design, in real
life and in real cities, must become the science and art of catalysing and
nourishing those close-grained working relationships' (Jacobs, 1961). This has
been confirmed in recent years by studies on innovation and the role of "local
milieus" (Willoughby, 1994).
The struggle for the city however is just as
fierce as it was in the 1890's when an urban paradigm shift occurred of a
similar nature to the one we are facing now (Newman, 1996). Thus at every level
these changes are opposed:
a) There is a freeway building frenzy across
the world suddenly, almost as though some engineers are having a last desperate
push of the old paradigm before they have to admit defeat as they have in Los
Angeles after the Century Freeway was declared the 'last to be built' (Newman,
1994a).
b) There is enormous cynicism amongst some
Town Planners about neo-traditionalists and urban village concepts and often
'ecological' reasons are used to justify some of the worst low density urban
sprawl (expanded in Newman, 1994).
c) There is constant bickering if not war
between EPA's and planning authorities over who looks after the environment in
cities - whilst the mechanical suburbs keep rolling out.
d) Infrastructure agencies like Water
Authorities, Electricity Commissions and Transport Agencies as well as Town
Planning bodies are rarely able to let go of their central powers and grand
schemes to allow more for communitarian approaches with localised technologies,
planning and management; they seem ready to fight it to the end perhaps also
sensing that the moral justification of their position has gone, along with
modernism.
Photo 20.
Bremen's city centre is pedestrian friendly and builds on centuries of organic
urban tradition.
Photo 21.
This neighbourhood in Nurnberg turned a carpark into a
community garden and began an urban renewal process in the
neighbourhood.
Small victories are being achieved and they
begin to form a pattern that gives heart to the new generation of organic city
thinkers and activists. In Copenhagen they now have an "Urban Ecology Guide"
containing 45 demonstrations of green city achievements (Munkstrup and Lindberg,
1996). As the world community confronts this new approach almost every
international agency OECD, ECE, UN and even the World Bank, have their Urban
Ecology programmes (see OECD, 1996). The processes of change are gaining
momentum at every level but in the end will live or die based on organic
approaches given ethical legitimacy from local communities.
CONCLUSIONS
I have attempted to show that the ethical
mosaic for approaching our urban environment revolves around three approaches:
local ecology, human ecology and urban ecology. These were developed based
around the stories of three key people who have been deeply immersed in the best
ecological and organic traditions of the west and who have pioneered the
expressions of these in the 20th century city.
The three movements today are recognised by
most commentators to be critical to our future. But environmental ethics
discussions are often disparaging of any environmental ethics traditions from
the west. I have therefore tried to elaborate what are some of the main
elements of this organic western spiritual tradition. I am not trying to say
that such ethical traditions are only to be found in the west. But beginning
from oral tradition that is thousands of years old through the history of many
ancient world prophets and down to our modern day prophets, the western
spiritual tradition has been the inspiration for much urban environmental hope.
There are some who write about the ethical
roots of these organic city movements as they are expressed today (eg
Cunningham,1996) but in general there is not a lot of awareness of the links in
these movements to the long tradition of western spirituality. Perhaps this
chapter may help to see in western cities that we are involved in an ancient
ethical struggle, but we are not without some powerful cultural heritage.
Perhaps it can help us to see that the focus on organic community values in our
cities is the central means for overcoming trends we feel so often are out of
control.
Organic community values are winning the
struggle in such issues as motorway madness in Copenhagen. These values can
undermine the pretensions of modernist, mechanical cities anywhere. Their
potency lies in revealing the inadequacies and perils of urban goals that do
little more than extend privatism and consumerism. Perhaps this tradition again
can be a central part of how we find meaning for ourselves and our children in
shaping our great lumbering, unsustainable cities.
Questions
- Why is it important to build on local traditions in
urban development?
- How have communities in the
past been inspired to create a better city?
- Are there lessons for today's cities from the
spiritual traditions of the past?
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[1]Dualism
appears to be much more evident in Greek philosophy (see Passmore, 1974,
Dawson,1953) where elaborate attempts were made to try and show how humans had
something extra over and above nature. This appears to be the main
philosophical tradition to many and also by theologians in the tradition of
Greek philosophy who tried to describe this difference as a soul. However the
ancient verses in Genesis give no hint of any difference with humans apart from
their being given a task to do.
[2]Lyn White's
famous 1967 paper "The Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis" blamed
Christianity for all our environmental problems and in particular he blamed the
verse in Genesis about the human role to "rule" creation. He suggested that Zen
Bhuddism and Animism would be a better basis for managing the environment as
nature is sacred, so tree spirits (even if we dont believe in them) need to be
evoked before we consider cutting forests and so on.
This approach, though heavily critiqued, was
accepted almost implicitly by those committed to the environmental movement for
almost two decades. It is a major part of many writings in the Deep Ecology
tradition where Nature or Gaia is considered to be sacred. And it is used to
show how Judao-Christian traditions have nothing to offer in environmental
ethics (eg Marshall, 1992). Beatley (1994) in his excellent outline of ethical
land use principles (all strongly associated within this organic tradition)
still maintains in his brief outline of the philosophical
underpinnings:
"...there is little doubt that, historically,
Christian thinking has promoted a more exploitative view of land than eastern
religions, such as Taoism, Shinto, and Zen Buddhism, which hold a more organic
view of the world, without the sharp separation between human beings and
nature". (Beatley, 1994, p21).
Passmore (1974) criticised the Lyn White
approach as it would make the very action of science to be wrong as science
requires objective measurement and a belief in physical and natural cause and
effect laws. Both are inconsistent with a sacred approach to nature, so
ecological studies of nature would be inherently wrong. Passmore suggests this
is why science has developed from western not eastern culture but concedes that
western science has many times been used in the process of dominating nature
rather than the more gentle 'local ecology' science of Gilbert White and
others.
[3]The prophetic tradition
described above has been attacked by some deep ecologists as part of the problem
not the solution. They say that we should not take any kind of moral stance
because we need to be more like other animals that just accept where they fit
into nature. This is basically saying that we can just become pure by being
ignorant to the pain that surrounds us. It suggests that the Fall did not
happen (ie we are only hunter-gatherers) and that we can become innocent without
any knowledge of good and evil. It is hard to see how this can help us come to
grips with the ethical challenges to our future. As Kenneth Boulding has said
"We have eaten the apple and there is no way forward but Zion." Herman Daly (an
environmental economist) and John Cobb (a theologian) have written about this
from the perspective of the western spiritual tradition; they say that not
taking moral stances is only allowing the problems to get worse. They say:
"there is really no alternative to the prophetic stance in fallen history. We
think that deepening the knowledge of good and evil can even now put our
situation into perspective that makes possible choices to reduce if not avoid
the catastrophes toward which history hastens."(Daly and Cobb, 1989, p390).
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