Sustainability and the city

introductory text to our MAASD course, 2013/14

Sustainability is an under-theorised notion.  The Brundtland definition of sustainable development, proposed and internationally adopted in 1987 contained inherent antagonisms, that continue to play out today: which human needs (or desires) should be met?  Whose future should be protected?  are sustainability and development (as currently realised) mutually inclusive or exclusive?  The scientific method is giving us greater insights into the likelihood, impacts and proximity of risks we face and whilst it has also delivered technical solutions, our societal capability to apply these appears to be frustrated by the very processes that produce them.  Einstein said that you don't solve problems using the same thinking that created them; he also said, 'the environment is everything except me.'  Via sustainability, we have reduced the environment of 'everything' to 'everything physical' , thus excluding the role of human relations from the discussion. Science and technology are only produced through human relations, however and this disjunction lies at the heart of the environmental conundrum.  

Some of the authors in the reading list propose that the problem of sustainability is primarily a social, not a technical one.  In their view a sustainable world is not only also a socially just world; social justice is a precondition of it.  (Un)fortunately, the (post)modern processes identified by Berman and Beck have already set to work on the under-theorised notion of sustainability, hollowing it out, so that the terminology has become a set of empty symbols, devoid of meaning; yet at the same time these processes continue in powerful, reflexive modes according to Beck.  Modernity may yet provide the radical energy to re-invent the world.  This leaves us the challenge of identifying  the roots of sustainability, as a fundamentally Modern process.  If we go back to the city at the turn of the century and follow Simmel, one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, we gain an insight into the Modern processes at work on society as it rapidly shifted from the rural to the urban.  We understand the city as a mental construct, as much as it is a physical one and we trace the roots of these antagonistic forces that continue to shape all of our lives.  If as Lefebvre proposes, the city is a social product, then a sustainable city requires first a sustainable society.  The immediately apparent inequalities of the city lie in stark contrast to this vision.  Minton's writing identifies this contradiction within contemporary urban development and in doing so, only through words, makes it tangible and possible to challenge through architecture and design.

During the first semester, we will focus on this theoretical reasoning, sharpening our critical tools and building our understanding of the history and etymology of an under-theorised idea.  Observation is key and we will learn to look again at the city around us.  Locke's twin modes of engagement with the world: sensation and reflection, will be separated once more so that they can usefully inform one another.  The skill of writing will be developed, so that in 5,000 words, a final report will build the basis for intervention in the city, to be undertaken in Semester B. 

Roland Karthaus, Alan Chandler & Anna Minton