Taking it to the Streets: Aikido & Urban Planning

Over on David Byrne’s blog he’s got an interesting ditty about his recent trip to Vancouver. After what sounds like a great show:

I noticed a little old lady, in an usherette/security uniform, trying to get people to stop dancing — or at least stay in their seats — but after the 4th song she gave up. After that there was no stopping the crowd — they were dancing almost the entire rest of the set.

(Actually reminds me of a fantastic Chili Peppers show when we were dancing in the aisles next to our 12th row seats and an usher came down to us. We thought we were going to get hassled but instead he smiled and said he was there to make sure the other, roughly, 2000 people behind us stayed behind us.)

Anyway, after the show, the mayor, Gregor Robertson, is there and a group of Byrne’s folk and the mayors folk go out for a drink. They get on the subject of urban planning and:

Robertson said that there has been a radical transformation of the land and cityscape in a generation. Vancouver is no longer a small city, and having seen all the new condos and office buildings here, I wondered aloud if developers were simply unstoppable; if the city might lose some of its charm and character; that the human scale of the city will be lost if profit is left as the prime force determining urban texture. In Peñalosa’s terms this means that people with lots of money determine how everyone else lives, and what kind of city we all live in — which, he feels, is undemocratic.

Robertson responded,

“I don’t really see them as unstoppable. I’m doing the aikido thing, moving that drive for building and profit into the most positive outcome possible for the community. Not a simple thing. But my hopes are high.”

Love it. My take on it is change is going to happen. Development is going to develop. This is neither good nor bad. It’s the movement of universe. We don’t want to fight it; we want to embrace it. Embrace it and encourage this energy to transform things in a way that provides “the most positive outcome possible for the community.” That is sustainable development. 

Keep up the good work.

Tags: aikido, David Byrne, Gregor Robertson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, sustainable development, Vancouver

Why Sustainable is not Enough

Think about it. Sustainable is getting by-enough to continue to living. It means defining, targeting and ensuring a minimum. Drop below that minimum and we die–either slowly or in spectacularly apocalyptic fashion.

Then there’s the oxymoronic issue of sustainable development. Development, as currently practiced, is a linear process based on targets for growth. The paradigm shaping this practice is competitive, linear and sees growth as something that can continue indefinitely. “Development”, in the sense defined above, is unsustainable. Nothing lives forever. That includes Redwoods, the American automobile industry and George Burns.

Sustainable development also implies doing the minimum in the development process to maintain conditions favorable to development. If you’re mining minerals in a third world country you don’t need to make your workers wealthy, you need to keep them minimally healthy and maintaining community and ecological health is well off the radar. You just need to keep them working or find more workers needy enough to take their places. Doing so sustains the development process. Donating profits to UNICEF or some other NPO/NGO to be “socially responsible” makes little difference.

So, sustainability, asks us to do the minimum. Certainly many of us could get by with much less. We really could lower the bar on “enough” without engendering any suffering for our selves and our families. And, from what I see, I think we should. However, can we not also do more, much more, to generate value, create an abundant wellness, a world (inner and outer) in which we can all flourish?

Wouldn’t it be more interesting, engaging and exciting to focus on creating value for all constituents in the value web?

What would that look like? What would you be doing? Where should you start, NOW?

 

Tags: csr, sustainability, sustainable development