Stitching the Suburbs Back Together Again

There’s a principle in the modern discourse of environmental management (for the United States, specifically) simply named “collaborative management” or co-management. It is a strategy which relies on the collaboration of numerous private land-owners to fulfill management strategies on their own private land, which in many cases, is the only way to regulate large swaths of land in the United States. Well detailed in a book called “Stitching the West Back Together” by Susan Charnley, it has growing relevance in a nation in which almost all the land that exists in it is privately owned, particularly in the American West, where certain large scale environmental disasters such as forest fires, flooding, and erosion are preventable but only so when huge areas of land are addressed and treated properly in advance. Herein lies the importance of having land owners be aware of the fact that they have the ability to prevent issues that may occur elsewhere i.e. miles downstream, or at lower elevations, etc. and helping them see the benefit of acting to ensure those issues are addressed. 

 

environmental disasters don't recognize if they're on private land or public land

 

It is not too different, in my opinion, from how suburban land owners may not think about (or want to think about) how their suburban lifestyle contributes disproportionately to climate change (per capita) when compared to those living in a more densely populated area. That’s where the topic of co-management has extreme relevance again. In order to actually effectively change suburban areas on a large scale, the most efficient system would involve large percentages of private landowners to see the benefit of purposeful densification and act complementary to one another. This of course would happen in tandem with private developments which also seek to densify, as well as retrofits of existing properties. Easier said than done, but in order for it to exist on a scale that actually has possibility of changing the urban fabric in a relatively quick rate (to help mitigate climate change) I can’t see it happening with out large scale engagement of private landowners--because they already own everything that is already out there. It wouldn’t be effective to simply wait until say, a walmart goes out of business to retrofit it into some new urbanist hot spot--the push towards denser cities would have to become an integral part of the process of owning and maintaining properties.