Concrete Points

The Key to Sustainable Cities 5-9, 27-85

• Philosophers have developed ways to categorize all basic human needs and uniformly place our need for material possessions relatively low on the list of those needs if at all. Why is it then that so much of our society is based on fulfilling these material needs? Our reading suggests that material needs often substitute for other needs, and mention is made of the correlation between lack of training in the arts and a tendency to over-consume. The need to buy a new article of clothing, for example, satisfies Max-Neef’s need for creativity and possibly identity, and Manslow’s need for self-actualization. This substitution is flawed, however, and does not truly satisfy these basic requirements. As a result we consume greater amounts in the desire to fill that void.

• Vicious circles exist in all aspects of our society. The author gives several examples of these destructive or damaging cycles. One of these is the choice to fix heavily dilapidated roads over mildly damaged roads leading to an inefficient cycle of overspending on roads that if properly maintained would cost a great deal less to repair. Hallsmith talks about yesterday’s solutions becoming today’s problems, as a means to illustrate such short sighted thinking. An example outside of the area of public policy is the example of people’s need for social interaction and that need requiring time. The lack of ability to do so leads to the creation of TV relationships which leads to less time to form real relationships and back around again. Without recognition, this flawed substitution can lead to dissatisfaction and more of the substitution behavior or other attempts to fill the void. The mention of these circles could be seen as obvious… perhaps not providing us with any new or particularly clever insight into many of our and our society’s destructive behavior. Despite the model’s straightforwardness, a simple model such as this can help us to gain insight into our own vicious cycles… a process much more difficult than seeing these cycles in others.

• The concept of community capacity is a simple concept that cuts to the core of the question… What is sustainability? If a sustainable society is defined by the ability to go on for an indefinite amount of time, we cannot exceed our capacities and thus our ability to regrow or maintain those capacities over time. This is as close as I have come to finding a satisfactory definition of sustainability. Essentially, use only what can be replaced. Hallsmith extends the notion of capacity beyond relatively easily defined parameters in our physical world (environment, economy) into defining social capacity and linking the capacity for a communities amount of caring with that communities overall social health.