08 Nov Beyond NIMBY: Designing Beautiful, Compact, Nuclear-Free Cities

I've heard that it's a "permaculture ideal" to never buy anything that, when it comes time for disposal, you wouldn't want to bury in your own backyard. Though most of us don't adhere to that standard anywhere near 100% of the time, it is a great thing to aim for. Certainly over the years I've eliminated whole product categories by keeping this standard in mind. I've also quit throwing away stuff like newspapers, old rags, and hair clippings that make perfectly good additions to the compost pile.

By the way, while shopping with a friend in the AT&T store the other day, I spotted a shiny bright-pink cellphone cover. Turned out it was made of wood pulp! Presumably it could be safely buried in one's backyard after reaching the end of its useful life.

The word "backyard" in a green context brings to mind that old phrase Not In My Backyard, or NIMBY — once an environmentalist rallying cry; now shorthand for a particularly obnoxious strain of eco elitism. 

Awhile back, folks were protesting a dirty coal plant that had the potential to wreak havoc on Austin's air quality whenever the wind blew in an unfavorable direction. People expressed outrage that this polluter was being allowed to operate "only" 110 miles from our fair city.

I had a contrarian viewpoint: The coal plant ought to be in our very backyard, spewing its consequences right up in our faces. Then we'd be forced to clean up our act, either by drastically reducing our consumption so the coal plant wasn't needed anymore, or by making some quantum innovation in the design of the coal plant.  

Without one of those improvements, the coal plant doesn't belong in ANYONE's backyard. That goes for a lot of the things we humans build, from concentrated animal feeding operations to nuclear power plants. Our rallying cry should be not NIMBY, but NIABY! In some cases it's a matter of scale, but in other cases no scale would be appropriate.

A prime example is nuclear power plants. Is there even a way to have a safe nuclear plant? Some people say yes, but many people say no, and I vote with the latter group. 

A lot of people insist that we need nuclear power. But what would happen if we were to decide that this dangerous form of energy, which generates unthinkably toxic waste and requires a police state to administer, just wasn't an option? What if we were to take nuclear off the table altogether?

Constraint tends to spark innovation. Some of our best creative work emerges from limits on time, money, or other resources. 

Beyond NIMBY: Designing Compact, Nuclear-Free Cities

One of my permaculture design heroes is Richard Register of EcoCity Builders. Here's an excerpt from his article ECOCITY DESIGN FOR DISASTER RESILIENT CITIES:

Nuclear? What nuclear?

As to the nuclear problem, the ecocity would solve much of it by radically reducing demand for energy in the first place. Heating and cooling energy is saved by sharing walls and by thermal inertia in the larger buildings. Transport energy is saved by transit and many more people able to use walking and bicycling because the distances they need to cover are much shorter than in the automobile city. Cars would be replaced by streetcars and larger rail metros and the cross-country electrified service that is already excellent and famous in Japan. Biofuels are a bad deal in competition with food and the last of the world's biodiverse forests, but if used very sparingly, if populations were not overwhelmingly large – and Japan is learning to live prosperously with population stability and even slightly shrinking numbers – biofuels and the last of natural gas could be gradually parsed out to fill in for times when solar and wind are not on line.

Only if we have radical energy conservation could this work – and ecocities are the means to the most progress in that direction. With a clear pattern of priorities based largely on ecocity development, who needs nuclear at all?

Register's descriptions and illustrations of compact human settlements fully integrated with nature are sheer delight to behold. He paints a picture of the kind of world that we'd aim for if we dared. We need to start daring. 

To circle back to the title of this blog: If we don't want something in our backyard, we need to ask ourselves if it belongs in anyone's backyard. And if it doesn't, we need to find a way to do without it. When we get tempted to believe that's impossible — that we just can't live without this thing — we need to remember that constraint sparks innovation.

FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING

ECOCITIES – Richard Register's classic work on the design of jewel-like compact cities, where functionality and beauty meet in a way that's rare in American cities but should be common sense. Manmade waterways integrate with the natural hydrological cycle. Bicycle paths and footpaths connect structures on multiple levels, optimizing comfort and convenience while adding structural stability for disaster-resilience. Think Manhattan meets Avatar! Read more at the Ecocity Builders website.