Restoring Babylon - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 16

approach only delays inevitable economic and environmental disaster. It hardly lives
up to the goal of leaving things better than we found them.
Here's the good news: we're now spending approximately $2 trillion annually on
restoring the world, and it's the fastest growing of the three modes of development:
new development (sprawl), maintenance and conservation, and restorative develop-
ment (Cunningham 2002). Children have every reason to believe that the world they
inherit will be healthier, wealthier, and more beautiful than the one their parents
grew up in.
Obviously, renewing, restoring, and revitalizing the entire planet will have to be
accomplished by a collaboration of industry, government, and nonprofit profession-
als. But where will this vast army of restoration-remediation-redevelopment pro-
fessionals come from? Which universities offer degrees in restorative architecture,
restorative ecology, or restorative engineering? Which ones turn out planners, public
policy professionals, or economists with specific training in the theory and practice
of revitalization? And where do students go to learn how to leave the world better
than we found it … how to restore the world for a living?
More to the point of this topic: as we labor under a worldwide plague of degraded
watersheds, exhausted farmlands, polluted waterways, collapsing fisheries, dying ecosys-
tems, contaminated urban land, decrepit historic assets, and failing infrastructure, what
chance does Iraq have of being restored, ecologically, economically, or culturally?
WHAT IRAQ CAN LEARN FROM WARSAW
I submit that the sheer level of destruction that has taken place in Iraq, both pre-
and post-U.S. invasion, makes it a candidate for (eventually) becoming the “Silicon
Valley” of the Arab world's restoration economy. The only way an area can quickly
build a critical mass of restorative skills at all levels—white collar, blue collar, tech-
nical, scientific, academic, and so on—is to have a huge quantity and diversity of
restoration challenges in its own backyard. Preinvasion Iraq showed a strong inclina-
tion toward engineering and the sciences, so there should be no cultural resistance to
moving to the leading edge of these disciplines, which is revitalizing communities
and nations via the restoration of their natural and built assets.
I refer to this as the “Warsaw effect” (Cunningham 2002). World War II left
Warsaw the most thoroughly destroyed city in the world: its infrastructure, indus-
tries, and public buildings were almost completely dismantled and eradicated. After
the war, there was no Polish economy to rebuild, so it was created from scratch via
the rebuilding of Warsaw. After the bulk of the rebuilding and restoration of public
services was complete, the local populace found itself imbued with skill sets much
in demand throughout Europe. So, they went off to help other war-damaged cities
rebuild. The money they sent home while working abroad was what kick-started a
new Polish economy. It was unfortunate that heavy-handed Soviet mismanagement
of that economy didn't allow it to follow its own evolutionary path, as it might have
blossomed into something quite unique, given that restorative beginning.
Given the level of damage to Iraq's urban and rural infrastructure, its great
marshes, its coastal areas, and its historic sites; given its vast areas contaminated
by crude oil, industrial chemicals, and war materials; given its expanses of formerly