Back to the Future

 I just had dinner with my friends K and MJ, who reported on the progress of the house that they are building in southwest Virginia. They plan to retire there when the time is right.

A big part of K and MJ’s plan is getting back to a more simple and satisfying existence. They are looking forward to having animals on their land. (K votes for a goat and a donkey, perhaps a border collie. MJ wants dogs, cats and perhaps a pony for the grandchildren.) Their house is being designed to incorporate natural light and energy-efficiency features, and K and MJ are looking forward to buying produce at the area farmers’ cooperative.

Another friend, JD, has been thinking about starting a new business: helping homeowners to plant and maintain organic produce, including vegetables, herbs and fruits, on their land. I’m enthusiastic about JD’s idea. It is a moneysaver in troubled economic times, counters soil erosion and stormwater runoff by installing vegetation, and offers a better quality of food on the table.

I think that my friends are part of a substantial cultural shift.  People are longing for simplicity and richer connections to the earth, to family, and to community.  As financial institutions and business transactions unravel and as governments struggle to halt the chaos, a return to home, hearth and garden seems more sane, satisfying and secure than braving the uncertainties of the broader world.

Heightened  interest in community and family is also affecting the urban planning and development fields.  In the U.S., the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) advocates the incorporation of agriculture into urban community settings.   Says architect Andres Duany, one of the fathers of new urbanism, “Agriculture is the new golf.”  An organic farm has been incorporated into New Town at St. Charles, a planned community just outside St. Louis.  And one of my clients, Philip Williams– a committed environmentalist and developer, has incorporated his family-owned greenbelt and a tree farm into plans for his Montgomery Farm community outside Dallas.

The Urban Land Institute will conduct a panel on self-sustaining communities at its May 12-13, 2009 green development conference in Los Angeles, addressing how communities might create their own power and water supplies and grow their own food.  In the UK, Prince Charles’s Poundbury is a human-scale, mixed use community that honors environmental responsibility and traditional architecture, and creates a self-sustaining economy by integrating places of work and residence.

As we search for comfort in chaos, the self-sustaining home and the urban village are old ideas made new again.

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