The Weeping Landscape - Landscape Modelling: Geographical Space, Transformation and Future Scenarios - page 2

Chapter 1
The Weeping Landscape

Siamak G. Shahneshin

1.1 Rising Bubble

With this contribution, I would like to raise an urgent question: How can our world
best avoid committing ecological suicide?
Whether you accept it or not, we have crafted a culture bubble, and built an
environ bubble, within which the mindset of expansionistic thought represents the
overculture. The challenge today is to deflate the bubble before it bursts. The most
vulnerable sector may be the environ in the extended sense of the word (cf. Rees,
2003; Diamond, 2005). Whether you agree or disagree a bee without honey is a
simple illustrative example of the very nature of today's design culture.
In each epoch, expansionistic thinking has been both creative and destruc-
tive, but today it is the very existence of humanity, and the planet, which is at
stake. Expansionism is all about satisfying individual wants, while society requires
sublimating one's desires (and the willingness to compromise).
Conversely, the basic point of shrinkage (Shahneshin, 1996, 2004, 2008d) is that
sooner or later our principle premises concerning growth and expansion must be
urgently revised and reassessed. Shrinkage is global in reach, ranging from the well-
being of nature (Shahneshin, 2008a) to finance, from families to cities, and so on,
yet shrinkage is still in an embryonic stage. Needless to say, time is running out. We
need to act at wartime speed (Shahneshin, 2007a).
As a result, one of the best places to seek understanding of shrinkage is in the
study of sprawl (Hirschhorn, 2005) and postsprawl and the devastating implemen-
tation of those modern, and post-modern theories, as well as present hyper-thinking
trends which share their eudaemonist concerns. Given the systematically disap-
pointing results of these approaches, it is time to look seriously at the alternatives.
Ecological Landscape Urbanism (Shahneshin, 1996, 1998) is a catalyst leading
towards a sustainable world (Shahneshin, 2004, 2006a, 2007b, 2008e).