Sustainability: Europe vs. U.S.?

[Roland Beinert]

Thanks Robert. I’ll take a look.

[Claudia Dinep]

Hi Roland, I wanted to get back to you regarding the worm issue which is not typically interesting to most people – yet fascinating to us landscape architects for some reason. I agree that many people struggle to get beyond the basic ‘less than pretty’ realities of natural processes. It certainly is a sticking point in education – especially when it comes to educating clients who believe they want sustainable landscapes but don’t really know what that entails or what that looks like or how it functions. I’m still curious as to whether, regardless of political party (and I agree with you that no matter what party, most people think worms are icky), Europeans, in general, are more accepting, more aware of and more in tune with natural processes, such as composting, than Americans, simply because they are more exposed to it or are they better educated about its purpose?

[Claudia Dinep]

Hi Robert, Thank you for the comment. I agree. My feeling is that the next phase of sustainability in the U.S. will move beyond sustainable sites into the realm of ‘behavior-based sustainability’. In other words, the sustainable design of places and objects is critical, but obviously without a fundamental change of values and behavior, even the most efficient designs are merely a drop in the progress bucket. Landscape sustainability must be a person-by-person effort. (But it would help if public policy led the way!). Perhaps Europe is leading the way with this personal effort and likely the sustainable sites effort too, in many parts (but not all) of Europe. What is your feeling? Thanks for the heads up on Topos 70. I’m preparing a talk on sustainability at the CELA conference (with Kristin Schwab) in The Netherlands in May and will take a look at the journal before then. Will you be attending?

[Claudia Chalfa]

Well, simply put: I visited Germany in 1988, and even then, I observed people riding their bikes to the end of their street with the basket full of washed items to be sorted and recycled.

Recycling is just one small part of being sustainable, of course, but what I am suggesting is that the cultural attitude in western Europe is very different from here. We are culturally still caught up in the manifest destiny attitude, and are still defiant of government controlling what we do as individuals. These are the principles America was founded on and they are very, very difficult to change.

My husband is British, and there are many days when I feel like packing up and moving over there because I get so frustrated with this. But I am not giving up on America just yet.

[Robert Schäfer]

Hi Claudia,
on one hand I expect intelligent technical solutions saving energy and ressources, minimizing waste etc. There are so many good technics available already. At least in Germany they get accepted quickly. On the other hand, as you say, the behavior of ourselves must change, solutions for housing and traffic are key issues.But we are only at the beginning. If you noticed the lamento after 5 days without air traffic in Europe recently, you know how economical reasons dominates our society. Good to hear that CELA is dealing with those questions now. I am not sure if I can attend, but I should come and share opinions.

[Claudia Dinep]

Hi Claudia, (lovely name!)

Thx for your thoughts. I do that too – weigh the pros/cons of life here/there….

Yesterday, in the class I teach, we talked about the ‘cradle to cradle’ concept and then diagrammed waste processes – all of which were linear and dead ending – not cyclical. Now that you mention the manifest destiny concept it makes sense that in the US, partly because of this attitude, partly because of the newness of the culture and partly because of all the space we have, development has not been cyclical (re-use) but linear (leap frogging across the land).

In Europe, or at least what I’ve seen in Switzerland up until maybe 20 years ago, rather than sprawl, land-uses had been rebuilt and repurposed over and over again – perhaps because they would just not fathom turning farmland into malls…or jeopardizing the delicious milk chocolate!

[Author]

Posts