Restoring Babylon - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 17

fertile farmlands that are now barren, salinized, and arid; and given that its gover-
nance structures are being remade from scratch—given all this, it seems that Iraq
has the potential for a similar Warsaw effect. The major factors likely to impede
the emergence of a restoration economy are (1) the paucity of social unity (which
the Poles had plenty of), (2) the political and economic distortions inherent to oil-
based economies, and (3) the heavy-handed U.S. mismanagement of the rebuilding
process, which is overly focused on urban infrastructure (thus leaving rural areas
desperate and unstable).
REBLINDNESS
Most of us are blind to the highly lucrative industries, technologies, products, and
services that are restoring our world. We're so used to being in pioneering (sprawl)
mode—building and maintaining new stuff, and conserving what's left of nature—
that we ignore most of the end-of-lifecycle activities. I refer to this as “reblindness,”
since so much of what we can't see starts with “re”: restoration, remediation, renova-
tion, replacement, revitalization, reuse, renewal, regeneration, redevelopment, and
the list goes on. Our reporting systems are blind to this fast-growing economy, too.
We hear government reports on “new housing starts,” but where are the reports on
housing renovations and restorations?
Most of the new commercial space that comes onto the market each year
in the United States is renovated, adaptively reused, or restored, not built new.
Add in the new office buildings that are built on remediated brownfield (and
other infill) sites (which also counts as restorative development), and the per-
centage of commercial space attributable to new sprawl develops shrinks much
further. The same applies to infrastructure, as indicated by this quote from
Howard B. LaFever, PE, DEE, executive vice president, Stearns & Wheler Co.
(a 250-employee engineering firm): “Almost all of our sewer and wastewater
projects are rehabilitation these days. Even with urban sprawl, construction of
new systems is a rarity.”
Few government agencies have any idea of how to go about changing policies,
codes, and tax structures so as to enable and encourage revitalization (most still
encourage quite the opposite). Many environmental groups are still focusing on
greening destructive practices rather than encouraging restorative practices. They
put most of their efforts into protecting marginal remnant ecosystems, rather than
restoring the areas around these ecosystems so they can expand and connect to other
ecosystems (ecosystems don't like to be small, nor do they like to be severed from
other ecosystems).
One might ask whether specific training in restoration is really necessary. After
all, can't any competent biologist restore an ecosystem, can't any competent architect
restore a historic building? Sure, it happens, but then, civilians with no police train-
ing also stop burglaries, and civilians with no medical degree also revive heart attack
victims. But that doesn't mean they should try to make a living at it. In fact, restora-
tion and revitalization, if done properly, usually require unique technologies, materi-
als, processes, policies, training, and technical disciplines. Consider the following: