Beautiful, green, and inclusive cities

One drive through the outskirts of any-city-USA, and the problems with our built environment become clear. We can't solve climate change if we rely on gas-guzzling cars and shopping as a means for recreation and meaning, and yet that is what our rapidly expanding (almost cancerous) suburbs offer. And as the outskirts of cities grow, our cities are hollowed out, with blight and despair remaining when city services and private investment lose interest. Long commutes, traffic jams, isolated elders, despairing youth, strained marriages, even the decline in civic involvement can be at least partly linked to the built environment.

Can we do better? Can we redesign our built environment to better meet human needs and enhance, rather than degrade, the environment? Can we build cities and communities that embody smarter, more inspired ways to live our lives?

Those are some of the questions we're exploring in the summer issue of YES! Here are a few more:

Can we create beautiful places that foster community (which we now understand is essential to quality of life, good governance, healthy kids, and a good old age, and so on)?

Can we live respectfully as part of a larger ecosystem, using energy, water, food, materials that surrounding regions can provide without harm, and giving off wastes that can be harmlessly absorbed?

Can we bring nature into our communities, so we can have daily experiences of beauty and wildlife--not through sprawl, which allows neither wild places nor the excitement and cultural synergies of higher densities, but through greenways, roof-top gardens, farmlands and even wilderness adjacent to cities?

And, can we reconceive of our patterns of development and settlements so we stop excluding people of color, immigrants, the poor and instead, come together in patterns that promote fairness and a high quality of life for people of all communities?

I'll write soon about what we've found so far.