6 Tipping the Balance
This book has explored sustainable urban planning principles(the ‘vertically par-
titioned’ ethical, organizational, social, economic, political and environmentalist
structures), following this with a review of practice(the ‘horizontally arrayed’
national-regional-local contexts). Politicians range to and fro across such ‘hori-
zontal’ territories, and up and down the ‘vertical’ structures, rather as musicians
practise scales and chords – each and both with little harmonious effect. The call
put to new millennium politicians in the Anglo settler societies is to connect the
stimulation and logic of the sustainability ethic with their ethos for political sur-
vival, providing a pathway which weaves them back to a basis of socio-political
empowerment, with balanced growth the emphatic underlining. An objective is
to position politicians to see and accept government as the handmaiden of plu-
ralist democracy directed through the ballot box to achieve overall material well-
beingandsocial secureness within a stable habitat. It is important, for all manner
of reasons grounded and proven in both socio-economic science and environ-
mental science, to lay the institutional foundations for sustainable development
withconservation, enabling communities within Anglo settler societies, specifi-
cally, to promenade the wealth of their technology, their tolerant consciousness,
and sensitivity toward their habitat. This has been the through-line.The Ends
Although global issues fall outside the framework adopted for this book, and my
expertise, I engage the right of temerity to shoot home an overview and some
concluding assertions.Following on from the attention to detail in the previous three ‘practice’ chapters is this wide-horizon
overview. Here a flag of conviction about ‘tipping the balance’ is nailed to the mast of social neces-
sity, for fashioning a development process which is relatively far-seeing and sustainable – the para-
digm shift. Not attempting ‘everything’ (a recognition that urban sustainability is somewhat of an
oxymoron!) but ‘something’ balanced, reflecting in Conservation with Development the findings of
science and the social realizations of these better-informed times.