SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES FOR THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY BLUEPRINT

Have you ever not wondered about the meaning of the word “sustainable”? What is a sustainable city? Are our cities just a set of structures for places to live, work, recreate and worship in, with added pathways to allow us to get to and from each building on our powered chairs?

One must relate this to a continuing saga of human beings in this world of ours. It is both rational and logical to think that to create a sustainable city one must breathe, drink water and eat food consistently and communicate from taking the first breath at birth to the last breath on our death bed. Are we at that moment in time an organic recyclable entity?

In order to grow and change we need nourishment to satisfy our insatiable need for energy and communication to provide agricultural labor for sustenance, armaments for protection and clothing from fiber. We are in constant motion from the beginning to the end of our lives. We need to satisfy not only our physical needs but also to drive our mental and physical actions.

We have been inventive in reaching great distances by extending our walking capacities with bicycles and other forms of vehicles mostly driven with fossil fuels. Nature has provided us with materials to create structures for habitation and mobility. We have handled our waste by-products in a abhorrent manner and have left much of our security/safety and justice in the hands of our governments.

To challenge the urban ecology patterns required for a sustainable community we need to be far more cognizant of how we fit these cities at all scales to serve population needs satisfactorily into balance with the prevailing natural indigenous setting. The economies of exchange will flux and flex in bartering shortages and excesses by freely importing and exporting people and goods by only understanding the individual worth of the common things we value.

In this time all of us must entertain creative alternative presentations of new cities from clear visions and then adjust them to reality. The most difficult decisions we will have to make is to properly evaluate thoughts and ideas and the resulting products for which there has to be a substantive and intrinsic measure as to there their utility, efficiency and economy of production, to raise a better quality of living, in order to build better places for all the people on this earth.

The only way to carry out this goal for prosperity is by means of urban design - first. This only happens with precepts guided by intelligent use of new tools. An idea depicted via a conceptual sketch, an assessment of value, and a utility in production, a satisfactory life cycle and usefulness in application are the evaluation criteria.

Collectively we all are urban designers because we live our daily lives, participate in and propose advances for our places. The skills with which we pursue this purpose and integrate a united effort toward building better practical cities, is the matter of future civilization.

Graham Kaye-Eddie

Master Urban Designer