Creating Tomorrow - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 467

For more than three decades, my firm has been engaged in community programming
and planning for both government and private sector developers. The following seven
challenges summarize a wide variety of concerns.
27.1.1 The Desert Culture
Cities in the Southwest have long topped the list of the nation's dynamic growth areas,
replacing untouched desert with homes and businesses at an unprecedented rate. When
confronted with statistics concerning the speed at which open land is becoming suburbia,
even the most astute observers can be stunned. At one extreme are those that exploit the
advantage of being in the right place at the right time. At the other extreme are those who
see a paradise being destroyed and vow to stop the insanity.
Between these two extremes, there is a range of less obvious voices that can be critical
to our future success as both occupants and stewards of the land. For those of us who
represent this third view, it would be helpful to hold in mind two questions. First, if we
agree to set our sights on creating a sustainable community, how might we raise our level
of dialogue and what long-range commitments should we be considering in the present to
achieve that goal in the future?
The second question concerns the visual character and quality of the environment. If
what we build were to draw its inspiration from the Sonoran desert, what would that look
like? These two questions are meant to address the full spectrum of community devel-
opment, from high-rise urban centers to that which occurs in the vastness of the rural
landscape.
To effectively design for the future, we must be willing to reconsider anything that
now stands in our way, including how we talk to each other and how we translate
our personal desires into a more collective sense of understanding and action. Years
of low-level dialogue in public debate have resulted in polarized standoffs and single-
issue arguments that have been both costly and self-defeating. Our new dialogue must
include a deeper understanding about what works and what does not—for all of us and
in the long term. 6
A heightened awareness, including all that occurs under the banners of smart growth,
green architecture, and sustainable design, is all about building and living in tune with
the nature and character of the land (see Chapters 28, 30, and 31). To understand our des-
ert heritage while creating appropriate desert settlements are two sides of an inseparable
quest. If we do not excel in both, we will end up with neither.
What if instead of identifying with the plains of the Midwest or the character of our
coastal regions or all the other nondesert places we have visited or once called home, we
could begin to feel a kinship to the builders of Pueblo Bonita and Canyon Chelley? What
if instead of using generated power to overcome the heat of the desert, we designed our
activities and structures around adjustments to the climate of these special places?
And what if we added to our collective memory a kind of imagined past in which we
felt some bond with the Anasazi and the Spaniards or with the ranchers who so recently
worked the land where our houses now sit? Could we not design for a heritage that adds
richness to our daily lives in the here and now? Would not this be more appropriate than
the tendency to see everything through the preconceptions we carry with us from nondes-
ert environments?
Those who long ago inhabited the Southwest found meaning in the mythic vastness and
qualities of the land (Figure 27.1). Instead of shutting themselves up in little boxes, they
found a way to have an ongoing dialogue with the environment. They and we live with a