Creating Tomorrow - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 466

shapes were contorted with little or no relationship to purpose, simply because technology
made it possible to do so. At the turn of the century, this search for the dramatic had gone
beyond the meaningful to produce the merely curious.
In the wake of this obsession with imagery, we are beginning to pursue a deeper com-
mitment to purpose. After centuries of gradual change, starting in the 1950s, important
metrics including population, water use, the increasing number of motor vehicles, the con-
centration of atmospheric CO 2 , ozone depletion, and the loss of tropical rain forest began
to spike upward. 3 This is now fostering a more integrated need to understand ecologically
sustainable objectives that will revolutionize and broaden the reach of architecture, plan-
ning, and related disciplines. It is nothing less than the world of design reaching out to
embrace the design of the world. While development patterns of the past will not take us to
this more comprehensive engagement, the design professions have the greatest potential
to move us toward ever-higher levels of ecological understanding and performance. 4
James Rouse, one of the twentieth century's most philosophic developers, insisted that
we are not coming up with the right answers because we are not asking the right questions.
As an exploratory start in asking the right questions and with a focus on the Southwest,
consider how we might answer the following:
1. Do you believe that our now dominant patterns of growth can lead to a better
future than our recent past or will continuing in this direction lead to a deteriorat-
ing quality of life?
2. Of that which you have observed or experienced, what planning and development
activities provide hope for a future you would like to see happen? Which cause
you the most concern?
3. Do you believe that the Southwest is blessed with a compelling sense of urgency
that could inspire a youthful, creative spirit?
4. If the advantages of climate, natural beauty, open government, human vitality,
and imagination could form the basis of a heightened level of commitment, could
you foresee a future brighter than our past?
5. In the spirit of creating a ground-swell urgency for good design, what guiding
principles would you regard to be among the most significant?
6. What qualities do you want most for your own life that money alone cannot buy
and you cannot have unless a great many others have them as well?
7. If you were given the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a high-performance
desert community of whatever size and location you choose, what key differ-
ences would you advocate from what now exists in our dominant patterns of
development?
The purpose of these questions is to get beyond the far easier and by now tiresome recita-
tions about what we do not like and rather thoughtlessly call “sprawl.” If we are serious
about beneficial change, we must know that for the future to go beyond replicating the
past and we must decide to do something different in the present. Among the beliefs that
are not helpful are those in this editorial statement from an Arizona newspaper. “The
rugged truth is that most of our local desert is doomed and has been since the Europeans
first brought their concept of property ownership here.” 5 This view assumes the presence
of people, you and me, to be ruinous to the desert. What if the reverse were true? What if
instead of exploiting the desert character, we became involved in a cocreative understand-
ing as to how to live in partnership with what makes it so special?