British slums still exist
Barely a week goes by without hearing reports about the state of the country's urban and suburban building fabric. Today there has just been a report by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) on the poor state of housing development - nearly 30% of which they say shouldn't have received planning permission!
Globally, we now are an urban society, with more than 50% of the population living in urban environments; this is set to grow to 66% by 2030. Mexico City has a population of 22 million. The pressures and problems this is causing are huge and will only get worse. Growth has been so fast that infrastructure and facilities often are totally inadequate and many people end up living in urban slums. The pressures and demands that urban conglomerates put onto the surrounding countryside are vast. Agriculture and transportation has to intensify to keep people fed, food has to be moved long distances from its point of origin and the strain on water resources is enormous. In China, the water table under some cities is said to be dropping at 6 metres per year. That's serious trouble.
In the UK things might not be so extreme but there are still many serious issues, most of which lie just out of sight. Within the next decade soaring energy costs are going to put huge strain on the economics of transport and agriculture and at some point it will become unviable to transport food long distances. That has huge implications for the way we will live.
Landscape, especially in a urban setting, has to step up to the mark. No longer can it be a profession concerned solely with the beautifying of space between buildings, it has to address wider ranging issues of energy, local food, environmental cleansing, low carbon footprint, social cohesion and community. A tall order, you might think, but landscape is literally the fabric which holds and contains our daily lives, so it must be central to the solution of contemporary problems too.
The trouble is, before a problem can be addressed it has to be acknowledged, and whilst we are finally admitting to global warming, few people are taking the problem of energy decline seriously. Once you start looking into this issue, you begin to question very hard why it is not the number one issue we are all preoccupied with. Make no mistake, things are going to change, and change fast.
If we make big efforts now we can adapt and prepare, so that our societies can cope with the coming change. But if we do nothing, things run the risk of simply collapsing. I'm not going to detail the problems and reasons here, for that is the subject of another article. Instead let's assume that this will happen and look at what a sustainable landscape fabric can provide our urban society.
Intensive urban agriculture in Cuba
urban food production
A good example of how a society can cope without fossil energy can be found in Cuba. After the collapse of the soviet regime, from which Cuba gained 80% of its economic support, Cuba found itself in crisis, exacerbated by the U.S. sanctions still in force from the “Cuban missile crisis” days.
With 75% of its population living in urban centres and little food or fuel, Cuba had to find ways of feeding itself, and fast. Prior to this, Cuba had been an intensive grower of sugar cane and imported all of its wheat and much of its other agricultural staples, such as beans, plus most of its fertiliser and agrochemicals.
With 75% of its agricultural imports and export capacity gone, Cuba shifted to a co-operative model of urban organic food production with the use of intensive raised beds in urban spaces and parks. Human labour and biological pest control replaced fossil-fuel derived methods of production. This was achieved by radical restructuring of governmental departments and attitudes and the outcome was an unprecedented level of agricultural self-sufficiency.
first world urban design
How does Cuba relate to us in the UK, or USA, or Europe? We shouldn't be so complacent as to think that the same thing won't happen here; the energy crisis is real and imminent, and we are doing nothing about it. I'm not saying that we should dig up Hyde park and plant potatoes, but we should be looking to the future and issues of food security, local waste cleansing, pollution reduction and increased social space. All these activities can take place harmoniously within the urban fabric.
One of the biggest changes must be to how architects perceive their work; no longer can buildings be monuments to their own egos, they have to be biological entities within the urban system. that doesn't mean they cant look good and stylish, indeed they must. Design must return the urban space to people; it has to be livable in.
In may be that in a centaury or two, we will no longer live in urban conglomerates, which will be dismantled and recycled. However, the countryside will not be purely pastoral either. Instead, there may be huge ribbons of low density development into communities that are semiautonomous in terms of energy, food, resources and waste. Until we arrive at such enlightened living, however, we have to learn how to retrofit our cities so that they become less of a burden to the planet, more of a delight, and most importantly, part of the solution to the over burgeoning of the human race.