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The Land Ethical City: Theorizing a New Design Ethic for 21st Century Cities

• Finding an Alternative to Sprawl Development

“Homo sapiens putters no more under his own vine and fig tree; he has poured into his gas tank the stored motivity of countless creatures aspiring through the ages to wiggle their way to pastures new. Ant-like he swarms the continents.”

-Aldo Leopold, The Conservation Esthetic

Peter Choquette, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, [email protected]

Ecocity World Summit ProceedingsApril 22-26, 2008


Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic vs. William Levitt’s Suburban Development

Leopold passed away in 1948 fighting a fire on a neighbor’s farm in Wisconsin.

Levitt broke ground on Levittown, America’s paradigmatic suburb, in

1947.


Atlanta Fell Out of Conformity With the Clean Air ActIn 1998 for Ozone

Atlanta experienced 49 smog days in 2007 in whichair was measured as unhealthy to breath.


In 2007, Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s Largest Source of Water, Almost Ran Dry

Lake Lanier, the Atlanta region’s primary source of water, nearly ran dry in 2007. Unchecked development has led to increased demand for water which, coupled with alterations to the natural environment and a prolonged drought, put the city in a severe hydrological crisis which drew attention nationwide.

• Thesis: What we need is a new design ethic in the United States, one which turns away from short-term economic expedience and embraces new methodologies which will provide the next generation and those to come with an urban framework built with the purpose of providing healthier, more just and more prosperous cities for all. What we seek, I propose, can be found by going back to the beginning of the postwar suburban boom of the 1950’s. What if, instead of continuing to build the places where we live in the mold of William Levitt’s Levittown, we chose the path not taken? What if we designed our cities according to Leopold’s Land Ethic?

“The ‘key-log’ which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each

question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

–Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic


•Obligation:

What we need now is treat the land, with all its life giving ecological functions, as more than just a means. We must extend our social ethic to the way in which we make decisions on how to design our cities.

“Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social ethic to the land.”

“Is it profitable for the individual to build a beautiful home? To give his children a higher education? No, it is seldom profitable, yet we do both. These are, in fact, ethical and aesthetic premises which underlie the economic system. Once accepted, economic forces tend to align the smaller details of social organization into harmony with them.”

-Aldo Leopold

Principles of the Land Ethic


• Community:

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for.)”

-Aldo Leopold• Diversity:

Cities are not altogether different from biota. The way in which biological diversity strengthen biotic communities is analogous to the way that many other kinds of diversity can strengthen human communities.

“The pyramid is a tangle of chains so complex as to seem disorderly, yet the stability of the system proves it to be a highly organized structure. Its functioning depends on the co-operation and competition of its diverse parts.”

-Aldo Leopold




• Evolution:

The path towards wide spread acknowledgement and acceptance of The Land Ethic must begin with a frank and honest discussion about sprawl and how it effects the environmental, social, and economic health of our cities. Sprawl affects everyone on a day to day basis on both local and regional scales, making it viable as a subject of real debate and critical thought for every citizen regardless of race, class, or creed. While this debate takes place, designers must look ahead to the future to insure that frameworks are put in place so that cities also evolve over time to become more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.

“I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever ‘written’. Only the most superficial student of history supposes that Moses ‘wrote’ the Decalogue, it evolved in the minds of a thinking community, and Moses wrote a tentative summary of it for a ‘seminar’. I say tentative because evolution never stops.”

-Aldo Leopold


Land Ethical Infrastructure:The BeltLine

Atlanta, Georgia• A 22-mile loop of underutilized or abandoned

post-industrial rails inside the perimeterof Atlanta, Georgia

• In 2005 the City of Atlanta and Fulton County,Georgia approved a special taxallocation district to help fund theBeltLine project

• The BeltLine is envisioned to be reconstituted into a neighborhood scaled streetcartransit corridor with linking parks,recreation areas, and mixed-usedevelopment


Land Ethical Communities: Stewart to Adair Stations Site Investigation



Existing Context: Year 0


Phase One: Years 1-5


Phase Two: Years 6-10

Phase Three: Years 11-15



Phase Four, Project Completion: Year 20


Land Ethical Architecture

Conclusion


When we accept The Land Ethic as our core principle we will begin to see the emergence of a new approach to the design of our cities; one which mixes an ever more complex and interrelated array of vibrantly different components, both old and new. The cities which we will seek to build then, these Land Ethical Cities, will grow and change over time as we embrace the land and embrace one another. What emerges will be like a great collaborative symphony in a state of perpetual revision and improvement, one which is never to be finished in any person’s lifetime, with each note bringing us closer to the goal of a place where the environment, our society, and our economy exist in equilibrium for the good of all.

“An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or involving such deferred reactions, that the path of social expediency is not discernable to the average individual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in such situations. Ethics are possibly a kind of community instinct in-the-making.”

-Aldo Leopold

Peter Choquette, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, [email protected]

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