<< The glorious past or the hopeful future?

The environment and everything around it, is a topic of much heated discussion nowadays. At the same time in countries like Norway, we discuss quality of living and the right of every citizen to a dignified living space.

Both valid points. But solutions that cannot be further away from each other.

In the midst of these discussions, we have come to rather incomprehensible scenarios: complaints of environmental negligence meet with ever growing urban development. This sometimes as part of an effort to preserve historical towns where development is next to impossible because of conservation concerns.

 I can’t help but think we are not being coherent. What is it better to have: history, or a future?

I’m by no means a radical environmentalist. But I like at least taking care of nature and animal species, and believe they’re an important part of what constitutes real quality of life (that doesn’t prevent me from eating meat though, even if a bit more reduced than before). 

At the same time I think anyone with two active brain cells should recognize how much good it does to people to have access to green areas, clean air and water. Climate change is real, yet we’re really not good at picking the right solutions (or even having coherence in thoughts for that matter).

Hydric stress to set an example (lack of water) is a real problem that, as David Wallace-Wells* put it, it will eventually affect millions. We’ve known for ages that water infiltration to subsoil is important, and that reduced by urban expansion can be a major help in solving the issue; yet we prefer to build far and wide out of interest in conserving city patrimony. 

The quality of life we demand is not possible because protected buildings cannot be modified to allow better windows or more light in, as it reduces their conservation value.  The same local administrations who are more environmentally active, refuse to redevelop areas (that many don’t even visit) simply because of the day some stones were set there.

What is it going to be then?  The drums of impending environmental doom certainly lose a lot of credibility when we cannot even decide what is really important.

For all the talk on the environment and radical actions, we seem to be quite enamored of the past. Should this mean we should just raze our cities down and start anew? No. But we must be more reasonable when evaluating if maybe it’s time for that one building to go.

Almost 30 years ago, the internationally renowned architect Ken Yeang, wrote about the importance of designing buildings with a life cycle in mind. In his book: Designing with nature**, he invited designers to see their creations as temporary resource allocations within a territory.

Seeing construction as necessary but recognizing the limited resources was for him, one of the main lessons we should take with us when trying to hep the planet. 

It’s time perhaps we think about his very important choice: Which do we rather?:

The glorious past, or a hopeful future?

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Notes:

*The uninhabitable planet- A story of the future/ David Wallace-Wells

**Designing with nature: The ecological basis for architectural design/Ken Yeang