On the way to Copenhagen and current focus on climate change, the familiar Thoreau quotation has been renewed by many. Images can remind us of past relationships of housing, changing modes of transportation and the planet, and provide backdrop for current progressive norms which advocate for a more sustainable future.

In Seattle, housing still graces the path of the cable car that ascended Yesler and ended in Frink Park above Leschi, from 1888 until replaced by buses in 1940:

Across the world, two Italian images from former donkey trails–now walking paths–show a farmhouse between Monterosso and Vernazza in the Cinque Terre, and an abandoned stone structure on the Sentiero degli dei on the Amalfi Coast.

Going forward, as we adapt transportation and land use patterns to continue goals of emission reduction, can we use these “anachronistic landscapes” (about which J.B. Jackson and others have written) in concert with Seattle’s pending Comprehensive Plan update and companion plans and programs in order to craft a vision of the post-Copenhagen future?