Sustainable Urban Planning

To act in a pragmatic neomodernist manner in the New
World context is to behave sensitively and cleverly in
relation to ecology, economy and society. This is about
cultural survival exercised through political choice. So it
is very much a ‘political’ matter. The call in the twenty-

first century is to integrate this preference with practice.

Cross-referencing with the expansive Box 3.7 Matrix

given in chapter 3, consider the following pragmatic array:

Box 1.2 Continued

‘Was’ twentieth-century‘SMART’ ‘Could Be’ twenty-first century‘CLEVER’

Power: Dominion over nature Wisdom: harmony with nature

Top-down command structures Bottom-up: knowledge sharing

Material growth Human fulfilment

Mono-culturalism Multi-culturalism

Interdisciplinary Trans-disciplinary

International Regional and local

External dependency Within-nation reliance

National intervention Local action and delivery

Bulk exporting Niche exporting

Military posturing Demilitary positioning

Paradigmatic science Biospheric science

Environmental restoration Environmental defence

Hard technology Soft technology

Exploiting resource ‘capital’ Living off resource ‘interest’

Fordist production Flexi-production

Land-use zoning Sustainable planning

Driving a car Walk–cycle–bus–train

Dump and forget Repair–recycle–reuse

Trauma entertainment Role-model entertainment

Urban expansion Urban revitalization

Sprawl Consolidation

Rebuilding Retrofitting

Push through Work around

Workplace employment Homeplace employment

Network television Local radio

Online telephoning Cellular telephoning

Postal services FAXing and emailing

Impact assessment Impact avoidance

Disposable packaging Reusable packaging

Above all else, acting correctly in a neo-traditional
(neomodern) way, invokes humanity and humility. A key
pragmatic necessity can be identified as employment.
Modernist employment policies engage ‘smart’ people
who can operate sophisticated technologies, leaving vast
numbers unemployed. Neomodern employment policies

would seek also to ‘cleverly’ engage a wider spectrum of

lesser-skilled workers to operate real-work technologies.

The pragmatic litany given above is not directly relevant

to low-income nations, which require a specific-to-them

construct.