Commodifying Hope

I had high expectations for the recent Generation Regeneration online summit last weekend, July 10-12. While it was not wholly without merit, I found it disappointing and somewhat misleading. We definitely need a vastly different approach to our human enterprises and existence on this planet, but I remain unconvinced that most proposed solutions will work. What I can do here is share my impressions of the event, the majority of which I attended, and why I am having this negative reaction.

The Generation Regeneration online summit was sponsored by Future of Cities, and hosted by Tony Cho. It turns out that FOC and Tony Cho are essentially the same thing. I learned about the event through a Facebook advertisement that promised I could reserve my free seat for the live event. I signed up.

Why was I interested in this at all? My next book, provided I can find a publisher, will be a collection of essays centered on urban natural history. Not in the usual sense of squirrels, raccoons, and pigeons, but on the most common urban animal: Homo sapiens. I want to be able to offer readers some concrete examples of successful innovation and social progression, and hoped to find that in this summit.

The first....red flag, if you can call it that, was that while I did receive confirmation of my reservation, it did not include a link to what I had assumed was a Zoom call. Turns out it was streamed on a handful of platforms. I chose YouTube. The post-conference assessment from Future of Cities boasted an attendance of 20,000 viewers. I was one of no more than eight (8) on YouTube, at any one time. Maybe there were 20,000 participating via Instagram. I don't know, I do not have an Instagram account. I'm skeptical.

The second annoying correspondence suggested that I should upgrade to the "VIP Experience," for a mere $99, which would include a copy of Tony's forthcoming book, in press now, and access to the recordings of the presentations/conversations/interviews making up the summit, for a longer period than if I retained my free registration. This seems to me to be a classic bait-and-switch marketing tactic, and it was a real turn-off.

Then there was, in the aftermath, the "but wait, there's more," an invitation to enroll in the "Co-design Cohort," an online course, for $555 until midnight tonight (July 13), before the price jumps to $1,111 thereafter. Now I can see this for what it is, mostly: an economic engine for Future of Cities.

What is a shame is that there were some truly important featured guests at the summit, who are doing critical and successful work. Majora Carter is an urban rivitalization strategist, a MacArthur Fellow, Peabody Award winning broadcaster, and author of Reclaiming Your Community: You Don't Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One. Her conversation alone would have been worth the VIP package. Same with Atossa Soltani, Director of Global Strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, and founder and President of Amazon Watch. Dr. Dominique Hes was another outstanding interview. She is a Director at Greenfleet, in Melbourne, Australia. She helped engineer and execute a paddock project, implementing eco-inviting components in a human-centered development, with exciting results.

See what I am gravitating towards, here? I wanted more Indigenous and other minorty voices. There were at least many women featured, which is a great start, but it still felt like it came up a little short.

Then there were people we have heard from before, and now consider largely irrelevant, like Marianne Williamson. There were self-help gurus, people who Tony Cho met at Burning Man....Some even admitted that what they do, and/or subscribe to, is often viewed as "woo-woo," new age mumbo-jumbo. Whether there is any validity to such things is largely irrelevant when public opinion is mixed at best. The last thing we need right now is any more devisiveness.

We do not need catchphrases like "regenaisance" (seriously, this is what Tony Cho is calling this). We don't need more self-appointed leaders trying a bit too hard to be fashionable and progressive. We definitely don't need to prioritize the accommodation of capitalism. Cho repeatedly asserted that the regenaisance does not seek the elimination of capitalism. There were a few too many guests in relatively fancy offices sipping vendor coffees, at least for my taste. The entire event resembled a series of infomercials in many instances, punctuated by truly meaningful content.

At least I can now go directly to some of these individuals, and their organizations, to learn more and get recommendations for other people to investigate and learn from. I can appreciate Tony Cho for collecting all of these people, even if I find only a few of them relevant to my own projects.

In Praise of Vacant Land

Growing up in Portland, Oregon in the 1960s and 1970s, I spent my lonely childhood exploring the forests, fields, and vacant lots around our neighborhood. Maybe it was the time period, maybe it was the culture, but I was allowed to roam freely for the most part. Not today. Our vacant parcels of land, whatever their size, have gone from implicit invitations to traverse them to extreme possessiveness and a clearly uninviting nature full of fences and other explicit boundaries and "no tresspassing" postings. I long for the good ol' days.

It would be an interesting exercise to plot a timeline of American land use over the centuries, from the frontier to current efforts to shrink public lands. Some things stand out from my own education, both formal and subsequently informed by "alternative media." We clearly usurped indigenous peoples in our effort to conquer the wild landscape and settle what were apparently chaotic ecosystems prior to our arrival as European colonists. Resource extraction went from individual mining claims during the Gold Rush to mountaintop removal for coal, to fracking done by faceless corporations. We tamed forests through logging and fire suppression.

If you believe that to have value, a given parcel of land must provide an economic return, then you are starting with the wrong premise.

Eventually, individuals with great foresight and appreciation of wilderness brought us the concept of parks, wildlife refuges, and roadless wilderness. Then came Aldo Leopold's land ethic, and Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons. Our population boomed in post war celebration, and prosperity seemed boundless. The interstate highway system replaced the railroad as the way to move freely about the country, unfettered by fears of peak oil. Everyone could have everything, including their own piece of real estate. We could feed ourselves, recreate, work, and live, all in different locations. Sprawl was not the name for subdivisions back then.

Where once land was appreciated on several levels, today there is but one consideration: financial gain. If you believe that to have value, a given parcel of land must provide an economic return, then you are starting with the wrong premise. Land already has value as the ecosystem engine that keeps us breathing, keeps us grounded, keeps our minds resilient and stokes our creativity, awe, and curiosity. The idea that human activities enhance the value of land is a corruption of economics that ignores biology. I have personally never seen a natural landscape improved by the addition of a strip mall or suburban housing project. Indeed, such projects diminish the value of land at best.

Undeveloped acreage is protected the way ranchers protect their cattle before they take them to the slaughterhouse. The average lot is merely reserved for something "better" at some future date.

Today, the vacant lands of my youth are protected from children, and all other innocent and worthwhile interests. Undeveloped acreage is protected the way ranchers protect their cattle before they take them to the slaughterhouse. The average lot is merely reserved for something "better" at some future date. I ask what could be better than wildflowers, the hum of bees and songs of birds? What could be better than an unofficial playground for our wonderfully wild, exuberant children? I never got curious about illicit drugs because I was curious about insects and reptiles and other wildlife. I was able to satisfy my inquisitive nature precisely because I had places I could go, safe or not, where I could find and observe other organisms. This is saying something considering that I am an only child who was raised mostly by an overprotective single mother.

Vacant lots are only as much of a blight as we allow them to be, at least in urban settings. Why not take that weedy block and turn it into a butterfly and bird garden, or even a community garden that feeds people as well as wild things? Grow something other than another concrete and steel building. Density and infill are not dirty words. Apply them humanely and shrink your city's sprawl. Leave the larger pieces alone or manage them for all the biological services they provide us. Leave them for the kids.

Sprawl vs. Nature at Banning Lewis Ranch

What we have here is a failure to appreciate. The prairie presents an illusion of emptiness, giving license to unwitting abuse. It looks like a waste of space, Mother Nature's vacancy sign beckoning development. Indeed, how could it have any other value besides potential for human housing, shopping, and business?

A herd of Pronghorn near Jimmy Camp Creek Park, a parcel of the annexed Banning Lewis Ranch at the eastern edge of Colorado Springs

Vastness defines the landscape and the ecosystem. It quite literally cannot exist at a smaller scale. Sprawl, and industrialized agriculture, are killing it. Subdivisions and strip malls are poor replacements for prairie dog towns. Those rodent settlements foster far more diversity than any human equivalent. A prairie cannot even be properly grazed when it has been fragmented into disconnected patches. The deer and the Pronghorn can no longer play; and the bison? Long gone, unable to roam once highways divided the range. Heck, even the railroads spelled their doom.

Some summer day take a walk through the grass. Tall, short, or non-existent, it hides the truth of abundance. You will realize the very ground is alive, a blanket of grasshoppers, crickets, leafhoppers, beetles, ants, solitary bees and wasps, and flies. Horned Larks burst from beneath your feet to alight on barbed wire fences. Meadowlarks sing from the posts. Above them kingbirds perch on power lines and bare tree branches. Higher still soar Red-tailed and Swainson's Hawks and Golden Eagles. Mountain Plovers contradict their name, nesting in the middle of the nowhere plains.

What we have here is the failure of assumptions. We assume that the definition of progress is the erection of man-made structures, opportunities for acquisition of material goods, services, and personal financial wealth. The other side of that balance sheet is environmental health, ecological integrity, and the well-being of those people who value such things. Even if you do not count yourself among those who bird, or otherwise enjoy other living organisms, you are obligated to respect the rights of those who do.

Our collective civil liberties include the pursuit of intangibles, emotions, and fulfillment that cannot be quantified or even fully explained. How does one articulate the exhilaration of seeing a Prairie Falcon blazing across the sky? How do you measure the importance of personal or scientific discovery, such as spotting a Mexican Silverspot butterfly, never before seen in Colorado, or this far north of the Mexican border? That happened in Jimmy Camp Creek Park.

Mexican Silverspot butterfly

We have choices. We can choose to have a city of muscle, bone, and heart at its core, or a city fat with haphazard housing developments and shopping centers flung into the outskirts. It may seem the logical thing to do, adhere to the annexation-and-build model that every city seems to follow. It may even feel like a necessary action. Ah, but that is how an addict thinks.

Our city and county leaders may need rehab. Perhaps they need to be sent to Portland, Oregon, or some other municipality that has learned proper land use planning, worked diligently for public and private consensus, and actually allowed annexation to pay for itself, something that rarely happens. A flexible "urban growth boundary" may be in order to accommodate not just new residential neighborhoods, but local agriculture and wildlife corridors.

There is nothing that has yet been done with the Banning Lewis Ranch property that cannot be undone, but once you build there is no turning back. No recapturing the scenic views. No tearing up the roads, no calling back the birds, the bees, the Pronghorn. We must have all stakeholders at the table before we do anything more. We have to consider all potential solutions, all values. Maybe that means adding more land to Jimmy Camp Creek Park and Corral Bluffs Open Space. Perhaps the state could take over the property as a wildlife management area. Should cattle continue to graze there? What should be the role of local farmers? How do we manage the water? We need honest, open dialogue that includes more than elected officials and real estate developers. It will go a long way toward transparency and true democracy, toward a healthy human ecosystem.