Sustainable Communities — The Potential For Eco-Neighbourhoods

Architectural Review, The, June, 2000 by Adam Voelcker

Edited by Hugh Barton, London: Earthscan

Publications. 2000. [pounds]17.95

Fostering community, once believed possible and then later discredited, may be back in fashion in the new clothes of sustainability. As Hugh Barton says in this absorbing book, 'planning neighbourhoods is a suspect activity'. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues at the University of the West of England proceed to indulge in it: by trying to define more clearly what we mean by community and neighbourhood, by weighing up whether 'communities of place' are still valid in a world where place means less and less, and by concluding that they are, and indeed must be if we are to take sustainability seriously.

The book is not just a polemic. It examines the practical application of these ideas to the many conflicting facets of everyday life whether we live in the city or in the back of beyond -- how we let ourselves be governed (when we should govern ourselves in smaller more governable communities), how we rely on the car quite needlessly (but would not need to if working/living/social patterns were different), how we expect to be supplied with endless energy (when we could use less and even generate it ourselves), how we use supermarkets to supply us with food from all across the world (when we could be growing it ourselves). Other issues discussed are optimum densities in cities, the physical attributes of neighbourhoods, local movement systems, the neighbourhood as ecosystem, to list but a few. There is also a very full bibliography and a list of eco-neighbourhoods world-wide, with brief descriptions, contact names, website addresses and so on. All very useful.

The shifting of hearts and minds is the big problem, of course. If transport-related energy consumption is the real guzzler, what will curb our use of the car? Hugh Barton suggests that promoting sustainability under the banner of health would give the issue better emotive appeal. Maybe, but I fear our individual and collective health has to get far worse before we lose our dependence on our cars.