Category: sustainability

envisioning the blend: tradition, tourism and sustainability

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, politics, sustainability3 Comments

At the interface of tradition, tourism and sustainability, dramatic photographs can tell a story that is hardly apparent at first glance.

A stone’s throw from the traffic and diversity of nearby Arusha, Tanzania, village community—what we might call neighborhood—is preserved in the distinctly non-urban, tribal traditions which overlay the foundational stratigraphy of East Africa.

As the Ngorongoro Conservation Area yields to the Serengeti plains and wildlife of lore, Maasai villages dot the landscape–easily discernible settlements of the country’s oft-noted tribe. The Maasai culture, which gains sustenance, measures wealth and attracts wives by numbers of cows, resounds with the color of robes, talking sticks and spears, amid the real-time exhibition of long walks across varied terrain.

Roadside Maasai observers, whether solo or in groups, help define the travel experience from Arusha to safari destinations. Safari-bound visitors take note and wave, and sometimes a vehicle from this contrasting culture of Land Cruisers stops to take a photo or to buy jewelry and crafts. In such interactions, traditional dances converge, as both the musical expressions of the Maasai culture and the negotiations of modern commerce play their respective roles.

The visual and interactive experience is compelling, if not overwhelming, and it is not difficult to romanticize the storybook Africa we want to see. But even amid this dramatic setting, we should not forget how today’s sustainability concerns play out in natural and conservation areas, where the simplest introduction of cultural change—including the modern acoutrements of a packed lunch—can implicate the surrounding environment.

Against this backdrop, last week, a Maasai man waited patiently with three dogs some 20 feet away from our lunchtime rest spot under the canopy of an isolated, acacia tree on a cat-track northward. He looked at us and we looked back, both with respect and wonder about how and why.

After 20 minutes of this dance of glances, and a Swahili exchange of offer and appreciation, Elisha, our guide, passed on two plastic bottles of water. Then, the man arose and walked dramatically to the horizon, until he became the classic silhouette of spear against sky, reproduced above.

This timeless image, in today’s terms, raises basic questions of sustainability of an age-old ecosystem, not unlike those presented in today’s urban environments. Think of the concerns behind recent American city efforts to ban plastic bags and styrofoam, but played out in a distant land of lore.

At first, such inquiries seem almost mundane, but echo beyond simple litter control. Should plastic bottles and cling-wrapped sandwiches populate the safari lunchbox? If so, should they leave the vehicles? And if shared in the community of the rudimentary, traditional Maasai village, where do they go when empty?

Another case in point: We visited a Maasai village, and conversed with the chief’s son in a cramped, domed hut no larger than a small walk-in closet. We sat not on the classic hardened dung and sticks in the walls built by women, but on overturned, round plastic drums—a Home Depot-like incongruity, to be sure.

From an outside perspective, it was readily apparent that best practices could define conduct of the tourist industry in today’s Tanzania, which could, in turn, have a positive impact on traditional cultures and the unrivaled ecosystem of the region.

There are efforts underway, including those of Damian Bell, a former safari purveyor who, from the vantage point of non-governmental organizations, provides laudable consulting, partnerships and audits via the Honeyguide Foundation. The Foundation’s inspiring mission is based on a combined approach, whereby the tourism industry and local communities unite to “protect Tanzania’s natural heritage and landscape” and simultaneously “empower local peoples”:

At Honeyguide we strive to link local communities with the tourism industry in order to catalyze economic opportunities and Responsible Tourism practices. In order to advance our mission, Honeyguide is committed to strengthening:

* Improved and transparent community governance
* Sustainable management of natural resources
* Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropic strategies

Bell and his colleagues are also in the start-up phase of the related “Responsible Tourism Tanzania” (RTTZ), with more focused efforts to establish an accreditation body for “eco-friendly” practices which adapt standards developed elsewhere to local context.

Such efforts raise more, traditional questions of how to incentivize human conduct—beyond simple “trash in, trash out” policies—in places where regulatory compliance and enforcement are not ordinary aspects of daily life.

Some see the stuff of legend in dramatic photographs. But young warriors-to-be are long barred from the rite of passage of the lion kill.

Today, the facts behind the Maasai man on the horizon raise universal questions of how to manage sustainable practices in a changing world.

busting barriers and achieving the urban balance

On By Chuck WolfeIn environmental and land use law, infrastructure, placemaking, politics, sustainability, transit oriented development2 Comments

Cities are the focal point of interaction between human and natural systems and are the laboratories of how best to live—call it “achieving the urban balance”. We all have pictures of what that balance should look like, both visually and in terms of environmental impact.

Of the many human systems that contribute to the urban balance, land use regulation plays an important part, as the consensus constitution for forms of urban development going forward. Traditional land use tools need to evolve in order to assure a sustainable urban balance and to better wed land use and transportation issues.

The question is how to achieve balance amid the implementation barriers common to presentation of new urban land use approaches.

Many examples of innovation exist, from form-based codes to sustainable development regulations, all designed to move away from increasingly disfavored separation of zoning uses, to approaches which facilitate less reliance on the automobile where possible, encourage forms of transportation which emphasize human health, as well as more clearly enable sustainable development tools.

As a hopeful indicator, there are positive signs in the Puget Sound region. For example, in the time since a report identified regulatory, political and fiscal barriers to transit oriented and urban center development in 2009, initiatives at the local and state levels have turned renewed attention towards issues of concern in the transit and infrastructure-funding arenas. Municipalities have experimented with types of zoning which focus more on look, feel and mixed use than hard and fast, traditional techniques. In addition, last Fall, on behalf of the region, the Puget Sound Regional Council was awarded $5 million in the form of a federal Sustainable Communities grant to enhance planning for urban centers along transit corridors.

However, fallout from recent midterm elections has illustrated the risks of backsliding—a reminder that “achieving the urban balance” and related inventories of best practices and regulatory enactments are more often than not inherently political—and often fall short of lofty goals.

Backsliding can be offset by “stay the course” non-governmental organizations, professionals and citizens who will survive political change, and who will continue to parlay an evolutionary urban agenda.

Let’s both grow the toolbox, and keep it open.

Cross-posted as part of the inaugural series, “C200“, on Citytank.

“citytank is alive”

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration1 Comment

The city lives in many online fora. A new one, Citytank, assembled and launched today by Seattle’s Dan Bertolet, is well worth noting.

Bertolet has assembled a wide range of local and national contributors to write in a focused fashion on the potential of cities, as a conceivable predicate for a true “think tank” on applied urban ideas.

The inaugural series, “C200” features a range of 200 word contributions—required reading for both ethereal and pragmatic “urbies” online.

Much of today’s urbanist dialogue features dueling claims to universal messages, which no one should own.

Through his creation, Bertolet has implicitly acknowledged this communal power of ideas, and has pledged to assemble the best.

Check out Citytank, here.

Photo: Screenshot from Citytank, March 15, 2011.

in the city, we cannot live by social science alone

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, sustainability, urban abstractions, urban views16 Comments
Seattle at dusk, March 9, 2011

On March 8, Professor Edward Glaeser, a currently popular author on the subject of cities, applied his template for success to Seattle in a New York Times blog piece. He found our city to exemplify an ideal urban model, a former one-industry wonder now both economically varied and culturally cerebral.

According to Glaeser, we avoided Detroit on Puget Sound–with brains, a diverse, innovative economy, building height and the reach and influence of the University of Washington.

Glaeser’s piece is great press—the stuff of boosterism and for use as evidence in corner of higher education, in the face of looming budget cuts in Olympia.

But the essay lacks the essence of Seattle from the street, the qualitative sense of the city’s success from the look and feel of direct and knowing experience. It only hints at the personal interaction and bond with where we have chosen to live, or are destined to stay.

So, to offset the glory of Microsoft and Starbucks, Amazon and Nordstrom, apocryphal metrics and Glaeser’s convenient reference to fewer tall buildings than you might think, I decided to return to first principles and capture the authentic bustle of a March day.

The photograph above purposely compresses Seattle’s intensity, with the zoom lens illusion that three blocks are one, and that West Seattle is a hill above the downtown waterfront. Why? Because a populist article without an anchored essence is incomplete and calls for so much more than the notion that “smart people” come to a place and create a marketplace of wonders.

I have watched the city change since I was aware of cities, and wanted to imply change based on my own abstract dialogue with the local urban experience.

On this theme of relationship with built surroundings, I also reached out to a talented friend, a teacher and former lawyer-turned writer in New York City, Annie Q. Syed, and asked for her best “prose of place”. She did not disappoint, and suggested her remarkable rejoinder to the classic E.B. White essay about New York City.

Simply entitled NYC, Syed begins with the compelling “New York City is an impractical, yet awe-inspiring, relationship you cannot quit”.

Syed’s one sentence, the rest of her always integral, personal words, and a photo-based urban walk at rush hour reminds me once again: In the city, we cannot live by social science alone.

communicating urbanism–make no little plans, updated

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, politics, sustainability, urban administration14 Comments

Surely every self-styled urban visionary, and quotation-centric student of prose, knows the magic words attributed to monumental, “city beautiful” Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.“

A recent case-in-point came two years ago, when President Obama invoked Burnham in his inspirational speech, urging expansion of high-speed rail in America.

There is nothing wrong with such inspiration based on large visions and  diligence. But, Burnham’s words need updating in order to communicate enhancement of sustainable cities in the digital age.

Here is a start, with five alternative slogans, and why we should use them:

  • Make no long speeches, nor write articles of more than 800 words.

You know the score:  the digital age has amplified the art of efficient consumption.  To sell today’s message of the critical relationship of land use and transportation, jobs close to home and multi-modal forms of transit, punchlists are in, treatises out.

  • Make no statements or share no photos that cannot also be tweeted or communicated by Facebook status message.

Any successful urban adage, such as “@mayorsmith: we need form-based zoning in Anytown”, needs to be, well, what you just read.

  • Make no introduction of a new initiative without a youtube or vimeo video with catchy music and pedestrians.

Introducing a complete streets program or sidewalk dining?  Flip camera in hand, or you lose.

  • Make no statement about small business without allowing for street food and vegetables grown on adjacent parking strips.

It’s not about dining rooms or produce sections of supermarkets anymore.

  • Make no mention of children without poll results revealing no desire to grow up to a family car or a house, but to zipcars and downtown living.

No elaboration needed.

Tongue-in-cheek? Of course, but with a not-so-subtle message. In today’s America, we need even more New Age Burnhamisms in the quest to communicate urbanist messages with a populist voice.