Inheriting the Land

Revolutions, riots and discontent. These are the fruits of our increasingly globalized world. We can’t seem to move past the inherent greed and selfishness in our society. We constantly want more and more and when will our appetites stop? From Haussmann’s redesign of Paris to the increasing instability our world faces, it is clear that more control is no control at all. Trying to create order from this top down approach cannot induce any sort of concord with everyday people.

I probably have a unorthodox view that we need to have a more “religious” view of the world when we are dealing with these issues. Our actions of today are inherently linked with what the generations after us will face. We live in a democracy across time. Probably the one person who has addressed these problems and those of David Harvey’s “The Right to the City”  with the greatest holistic vision is an author named Wendell Barry. He believes in a return to an agrarian culture which is based in a whole philosophy of creating a “commonwealth”.

If we look at the two types of typical development that occur today, there is the developer model and the owner model. Now the developer is in business to sell. He does not have this long term vision for his projects. They are a means to his quick wealth. However, the projects that are typical of this do not have the vitality and the purposefulness of one that is owner built. We can see this in the favelas throughout the world. Even though they have issues, the environment that they develop has a sort of life that is never present in developer projects. Perhaps it is true that the meek will indeed inherit the land.