The Complexity of Human Relationship with Nature

Published in APLD Magazine — Design Online — July 2020

The United Nations defines sustainability as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  I begin this way because the term sustainability has felt a bit like a moving target in our society over the last 10-20 years.  Many folks have their definition or application and most don’t align.  The word sustainability itself wasn’t translated into English until the 19th century.  In terms of historical context that is very, very recent and to some extent is a justified reasoning for the evolving definition we see today.  Originally, the concept came from a German word that described harvesting a forest during the early 1700’s.  Their word simply meant not harvesting more from the forest, that it couldn’t regenerate on its own.  It described an equilibrium of resources over time when effected by human use.

So, the word is intrinsically tied to human consumption, our effect on the natural environment and its ability to respond to our usage.  I would also posit that we didn’t have such a word before this time because the human being hadn’t yet wrapped their heads around our ability to impact the Earth, but I’m not saying that life was utopic.  As a matter-a-fact, even though we didn’t have a word for our responsibility to create this equilibrium, we had centuries of observing the results of not being responsible.  It was many thousand years BC in Persia, when working the fertile crescent through newly developed irrigation methods, that they discovered soil salinization.  It was then that crop rotation became popular in order to rest the earth so that it could regenerate.  We even see this in the Bible with a seven-year Sabbath on the worked earth.  That was clearly a method of sustainable practices despite not having a word to describe it.  And, a good example of how this whole understanding of human impacts on our world began.  It seems that the human condition is constantly at odds with nature and in dire need of nature all at the exact same time.  And yet, historically, this isn’t the same truth for all societal development.  Some human species were driven to develop, control and put to work the local environment, some were happy to live off of that environment and let it do the work on its own.  To a great degree this was a phenomenon unique to latitude.

Research has looked at the upper half of Earth’s societies and compared those who lived at the equator and those who lived further north.  Those in the northern latitudes contended with winter every year.  They had to create surplus, store foods, prepare for upcoming cold while not generating crops and with limited ability for movement.  Those at the equator were free of such a burden and had much more limited needs for preparation, preservation and planning for the future.  The working theory was that over a few thousand years those in a harsh northern environment bred in this work ethic that drove them to plan, prepare, save, store etc.  Their ability to live off the land was much hampered by season.  And, now that gets translated into cities, commerce, trade wars etc.  Meanwhile the Hawaiians live on ‘Hawaiian time’.  And who can blame them.

The results of this Maslowian work ethic, driven by this need to sustain life, overlooked some of its resulting effects.  The Earth became a tool for necessity and if some damage came to it, so be it.  This driver for human need mixed with the transient life of a human, who defines life with a beginning and an end, hobbles us when looking beyond our span on this earth and in an effort to appreciate what came before us and what will be left from us.  This seems to get into the philosophical weeds a little but it is this philosophy that shapes how we treat nature around us.  Native Indian tribes lived in the U.S. before white man, in the same cold winters and did a pretty decent job of treating or respecting the land on which they shared life.  In many regards we are seeing trends in Agriculture that are taking us back to such a time.  I call it post-modern agriculture.  We are recognizing our impacts on the Earth and beginning to circle back to earlier practices or at least earlier philosophies.  None the less, what we understand from this is that sustainability was culture driven, and is still the same today.

The good news is that as an industry we typically fall on the more positive side of history.  Well maybe not during the Renaissance.  But, for the most part, and most certainly in modern America we tow the line for ecology.  Naming just a few early designers on this side of the pond we would start with Andrew Jackson Downing (1815 – 1852) and Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 – 1903).  Both men were avid writers who became avid activists.  They moved our discipline away from simple agriculture or architecture and framed it as a unique discipline unto itself.  Their activism, mostly FLO because Downing died young in a steamboat accident, quickly took shape within the politics of our niche.  FLO, after traveling abroad for a few years as well as seeing the city migration to the country for health reasons, demanded that cityscapes required green spaces for every man equally.  Human heath depended on it during these times of industrial advancements and crowding cities.  Not all were Vanderbilt’s and yet he felt each of us deserved to walk a green glade as if a Vanderbilt.  When offered a small spot for Central Park he wouldn’t have it and fought for the space he felt it required, funding and governmental support.  Granted he filled in a swamp and ran out tent villages of homeless.  Not sure how to defend that.  But, he did fight for green spaces, treed natural rolling lands that were both biodiverse environments and human centric, within a space that was publicly supported. 

The other early “American” influence, that would put FLO to shame on the eco-sensitive designing, is Jens Jenson (1860 – 1951).  His book Siftings is still one of my favorites.  He writes as if he was Thoreau (1817 – 1862), who died after irritating his tuberculosis with a night of counting tree rings from a stump in a storm.  Real men back then.  However, if you read Siftings or visit any of Jens Jensen’s landscapes you would feel a real sense from the first designer using only natives.  He, during the Victorian Area I’ll have you, was retreating from exotic plants, complex designs and he developed a style that was heavily grounded in the native environment he worked in.  He studied, walked and philosophized in a way that takes you back to a time that was maybe even before his own time.  A man of the earth, of paths and woods, spaces that spoke a vernacular we often miss out on in our modern time.  Jensen purposely pulled back as a designer to plan in a way that was seen as a walk in the wild.  He created spaces that harkened oak opening spoken about by Indians, nymph infested brooks, and very purposeful views.

This foundation based on the embrace and collaboration of nature in our built environment is what frames us as a group today.  Not simply that it’s a good thing but a necessary thing.  Same is true when we drill down to suitability specifically.  We can proudly say we have not only carried that torch but built on this legacy.  We are adding green to roofs, walls, parkways and driveways.  We are finding species that are more reliable and friendly to our work.  We are developing ways to maintain these with less and less inputs.  And this should not be a surprise.  Because, as in the words of Richard Bode, life is like rowing a little boat, for when rowing a boat, we look back at where we came from, our wake.  With this retrospect we chart our course for the unknown future.  We use our past, the places that we’ve been, the terrain and troubles we have crossed to inform us on where we are going.  Sustainability seems a daunting, overwhelming task.  But, if we look at the history of this fine group of plants-people and planners, the future has hope.  Because of this I feel strongly about the power of history, to learn from, to shape our course in life and to give us encouragement to build on the vast work that precedes us.  Be a voice for sustainability and wallow in the small gains, future designers require this in order to shape their own course.  I will plan to leave this world my wake sure and true.