Saturday, October 20, 2007

TRANSFORMING OUR PLANET: Crusade for Smaller Ecologial Footprints

As the new millennium progresses, our planet is getting denser than ever before. Our human presence is increasing at staggering rates, consuming more, producing greater economic capacity, demanding mind-boggling comfort and creating a superior degree of mobility. Such quandary does not come at a discount; we have managed to transform the world into a homogeneous collection of anonymous places, a conglomerate of banal environments, an endless domain of colonization and urbanization and an absolute threat to our human survival. Our current predicament is blighted and requires massive change. Bringing about a universal sense of unity amongst humans, the natural environment and the man-made is becoming our most challenging human crusade.

The production of sustainable food sources, the discovery of new energy supplies, the ecological compensation and the reverse of our most recent actions is turning into a matter of
emergency. International consortiums, independent countries, regions, cities, small towns, neighborhoods, citizen groups and individuals are fed up with the cheapness and banality of the available strategies. But, fortunately, a group of positive heroes is emerging; innovation, appropriate technologies and smart alternatives will entrench our human race with a new sense of responsibility and preservation for the sustainability of our planet.

Today, everyone is trying desperately to obtain more space; but, our ecological capacity is putting constraints on our ability to grow. At home, our ecological footprint requires a piece of territory equivalent to 4 times the size of what is currently available. If everyone in this planet would start behaving like us, we would need three additional Earths to deliver our most basic supplies. Therefore, the construction of a new world is of the outmost necessity.

A new city is of the essence; the kind of city that acknowledges these challenges and incorporates them as part of our communal desires; a city which increases our capacity to grow within its current territory; a city which makes use of under used and incapacitated areas; one that will not only extend horizontally but also upwards and downwards; a city which will become denser in some areas and will loose density in others; a city where alternative modes of transportation decrease the production of CO2 gas emissions; a city which makes amends with its surrounding country side; a city where unconventional energy resources contribute to our collective freedom; a city of optimism rather than consumption; a city driven by moral ambitions and facts rather than biased by its political opinions; in short, a city of real human opportunities.

Apparently, we are unable to understand the force and power of design until everything fails. But, should we wait until the next accident, the next hurricane, the next disaster, the next crisis to be aware of the irrefutable damage we are causing to our environment? Or should we establish an immediate agenda for the global reconstitution of a planet in danger? More importantly, how can urbanism, architecture, landscape, design, art and their associated professional friends help in the development of this massive change?

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