Let's go out with a bang

I find it tough to justify (and understand) the ‘Ecological Urbanism’ debate. It seems that the only way in which we can redeem ourselves is if we create an alternative culture that is able to coexist with nature’s needs. The two will be so intertwined that the new culture will be happy and comfortable, but so will the environment…sounds like fairytale. Do we even have enough time to make this a reality? If the population is growing at an exponential rate, then surely, the time we have left to change culture is moving towards us with acceleration. I don’t see a good ending to this situation, and while I do agree that ‘the world would be a much better place’ if we stopped being wasteful, learned to live with nature, and refused to destroy the environment for our current cultural needs, it’s all a little late don’t you think? (see image below if you still feel optimistic).

To me, the whole ecological urbanist issue serves to provide a topic of discussion amongst people that like to think (and dream), with the hopes that people will listen. However, we should be putting our minds to ideas and innovations that enhance our current cultural comforts and desires as each narrative has the same ending at this point. We are now in a phase of palliative care, not preventative care.

Lastly, people won’t change until the effects of their actions are felt directly. And the more severe the effect is felt, the more susceptible an individual is to change. Maybe we should be speeding up the destruction of the planet by riding around in our old school American 5 MPG SUVs while drinking from as many plastic bottles as possible, just so that we can reach the point of awareness. Or maybe we need to just rip off the band aid and go out with a bang. We could use our last years to develop some of the most wasteful but cool buildings. After all, who’s going to be around to remember Mostafavi’s article on Ecological Urbanism.