Dwelling in Expanded Biotic Communities: Steps Toward Reconstructive Postmodern Communities - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 321

these problems require a “reconstructive” approach to community design. I use the term
“reconstructive” in the meaning given by David Griffin1 1 to distinguish this approach
from the “deconstructive” meanings that have come to be attached to the term postmodern .
Thus I am presenting a postmodern version of community that emerges through a
revision of previous modern and traditional concepts. Such as version of community
draws upon techniques and technologies that are willing to use any approach that
furthers the reestablishment of human-nature connection that was substantially lost in
the modern period. In this reconstructive approach I find philosophical foundation the
concept of biophilia by Kellert and Wilson. 8 The working out of design features that can
be used in reconstructive postmodern communities can be found in works by Kellert
et al. 9,10 and also Knowles. 11
18.3 Features of a Postmodern Community
A postmodern vision of community is needed as an alternative to the “modern” concep-
tion of the human community. Modern communities can be characterized as collections
of people who happen to inhabit a given place. However, there is little common bond
between people in modern communities because the communities are created mainly to
satisfy immediate human wants and each person tends to focus in an autonomous manner
on maximizing short-term monetary exchange value. These communities are distinctively
human community, and there are few, if any, perceived links between the human com-
munity and the natural world beyond the backyard. This seeming disconnect between
humans and nature creates a need to reestablish this link through effective community
design and planning. Therefore, the consideration of reconstructive postmodern vision of
community concept might be one that helps expands the notion of community to include
both human and nonhuman biotic components (see Chapter 25). The adoption of these
principal features in community planning and design would lead the residents of this
community to recognize that they in fact dwell in expanded biotic communities or, in other
words, live where the built environment and the natural environment coexist .
The first feature of reconstructive postmodern communities attempts to establish a new
vision of communities as we know them. This new view recognizes that every community
is a dynamic, ongoing process, and that no static maintenance of a community is possible.
Any attempt to hold back the natural development of a community is to go against its basic
nature, as something that—like a baby—comes into being, develops, and then matures.
This process is organic and, ultimately, can be flexible as the vision for the new community
emerges. Efforts to interfere with natural community development could risk the potential
for the community to flourish.
Healthy postmodern communities are characterized by what I call a mixed community—
one that effectively integrates the human and nonhuman components by design, not chance
(see Chapter 27). Such mixed communities share a common vision that they are more than
just aggregates of persons, but also contain the basis for what Aldo Leopold 12 called the
“land,” which includes the biotic and abiotic communities, ecosystems, and watersheds that
provide the foundation for traditional communities. Thus, I hold that any sustainable post-
modern community must involve viewing its members as persons-in-a-biotic community. 13 A
postmodern version of community based on this enlarged idea of community will recognize