A breakdown of the family unit and an individualization of the ballot are two
causal explanations for the current levels of urban dysfunction, and an impedi-
ment to small open government. For a growing minority – the already convinced
and converted – sustainable harmony is a welcome prospect. The problems of
increasing human bad behaviour (crime and drugs), disease (Aids and cancer),
poverty (unemployment and unemployability), points to the need for correction
and change. The middle majority, particularly the comfortable middle-and-above
income cohort within the wealthy nations, are the ranks from which emerge those
who ‘know’ those who ‘teach’ and of course those seeking to ‘learn’.
Design in its integrative and creative sense has been established as something
planners and developers ‘do and deliver’. Community design cannot be left with
people without design-specific urban and landscaping skills. I agree with Carter
(1993) who holds the view that ‘The ability to manipulate [particularly in my view
design] form and place should be the core definition of planning’. The practical
reality is that teaching programmes weak or soft on design will produce chroni-
clers, administrators and transactors – rather than transformers – those who set
for themselves the task of deliveringa sustainable contribution to both conserva-
tion practice and development projects.
A teaching-place approach is needed which parallels the triple-balanced profile
for ‘sustainability’ set down in these pages; to reposition planners, architects, engi-
neers, landscapists and earth scientists – the ‘design and delivery’ agents – from
being a ‘modern part of the problem’ to becoming a larger part of a ‘sustainable
solution’. This is necessary in order to tip the balance toward sustainable out-
comes, particularly in regard to environmental and habitat issues, concerns and
factors, yet also with a view to being in harmony with material growth and social
wellbeing.
Environmental education and confidence-building for sustainable planning
practice is crucial. The aim is to get young people, from pre-school through to the
academy, concernedabout social and environmental effects, and to engage their
minds with improving possibilities. Blandishments, inducements and rewards,
backed up by selective penalties, must be used in the manner of ‘carrots and
sticks’, along with an ethical canon, to achieve a triple balance, and to deliver sus-
tainable outcomes. In short, the call is for an educational approach which fosters
an understanding of conservancy and developmental connected-
ness, an awareness of the cyclical socio-economic forces at work,
and to inculcate competence for the delivery of a triple-balanced
harmony.
Adverse environmental changes, for too long smoke-screened
as value-neutral, are now profiled as value-burdening. Progres-
sive top-down sustainable policy improvements are emerging,
positively enhanced by some landowners and developers, yet still
mostly observed in the breach by local and central government
jurisdictions. Development practitioners and managers should
not expect too much, too soon, in the way of results. There is
Tipping the Balance 275Big business has
attempted a hijacking of
the rhetoric of
sustainable developers.
Even Monsanto, the
scourge of most
environmentalists, has
had a clumsy go at
weaving sustainable
language constructs into
some position
statements.