Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

increasing number of new developments that include wild places specifically for kids to play—where they could dig, or build a pond or build a little fort. “The fear just wasn’t there,” he says. “We also noticed that there was less resentment toward parents—we seldom heard kids saying, ‘Oh, my Mom won’t let me go anywhere.’ Maybe part of this is cultural; you see fewer commercial messages to kids there. But a lot of the reason is design. Now that we’re back in the U.S., and have small children of our own, we’re much more aware of the importance of creating a different way of living, one more connected to nature.”

While many Americans may consider such ecotopian thinking bizarre, even threatening, green urbanism in Western Europe proves that an alternative urban future is possible and practical, and has given hope to pioneers in American cities who agree with McDonough that cities should be “sheltering; cleansing of air, water, and spirit; and restorative and replenishing of the planet, rather than fundamentally extractive and damaging.” Who knows? If such thinking spreads, Huck might even come home to the territories.

The Return of Green America

Two decades ago, I visited Michael Corbett where he lived, in the future. Corbett and his wife, Judy, had bought seventy acres of tomato fields in the college town of Davis, California, in 1975. There, they built Village Homes, the first fully solar-powered housing development in America, and one of the modern world’s first examples of green urbanism.

As Corbett escorted me around this two-hundred-home neighborhood, I was struck by the inside-out nature of the place. In Village Homes, garages were tucked out of sight; homes pointed inward, toward open green space, walkways, and bike paths. In a typical planned community, then and now, you find martially trimmed postage-stamp yards and covenants that prohibit or restrict variations on the developer’s original theme. At Village Homes, I saw a profusion of flowers and vegetable gardens. Grapevines on roofs thickened in the summer, providing shade, and thinned in the winter, letting the sun’s rays through. Residents were producing nearly as much edible food as the original farmer had. Instead of a gate or wall, orchards surrounded this community. Corbett’s teenage daughter, Lisa, elaborated: “We’ve got a group of kids called ‘the harvesters.’ The orchards are set aside for the kids; we go out and pick the nuts and sell them at a farmer’s market at the gazebo in the center of the village.”

As we walked through the development, Corbett stopped at the far edge. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he pointed beyond the almond trees at the periphery and across the street, to a condominium development that was not part of Village Homes. Its surfaces were almost entirely white stucco, glaring in the sun. A small child pumped his tricycle slowly across a white cement parking lot. “Look at that kid over there,” Corbett said. “He’s kind of limited where he can go, isn’t he? Where’s he going to go?”

Recently, I asked Corbett if he had any observations about the behavior of the young people who had grown up at Village Homes or about their parents. “The parents loved it here because their kids were easy to watch; there was no through-traffic, so it was safe. The kids really got involved with the gardens, and harvesting the fruit from the orchard. They developed a respect for where food came from. The junior high kids were particularly interested in gardening—they started gardening on their own. This was less true of the high school kids. Interesting—not once in twenty years have I seen the kids who live here throw a tomato or fruit at anyone else.”

Not once?

“Not once. Kids from outside Village Homes did it, but our kids chased them out.”

By nearly every measure, Village Homes succeeded. From the time Village Homes was launched, people lined up to move in. Among them: liberals, conservatives, libertarians (including economist Milton Friedman’s daughter); this was never a counterculture commune. In 2003, a professor of Environmental Science at University of California, Davis, told CBS’s Charles Osgood that the typical Village Homes resident’s energy bill was a third to a half that paid by residents in surrounding neighborhoods. Developers and architects from around the world visited Village Homes. And as the years passed, similar eco-communities started springing up across parts of Western Europe, where green design is now considered mainstream.

But in one crucial way, Village Homes did not succeed. In America, no commercial developer, to Corbett’s knowledge, has replicated the Village Homes concept, a fact that deeply disappoints him. He places some of the blame on the exterior cosmetics of his own design. But the morning is young. The influence of urban naturalists and environmentalists is on the increase, particularly in the Northwest. The naturalist and nature writer Robert Michael Pyle praised Portland urban naturalist Mike Houck for launching an effort to involve the arts community in refreshing the cities and devoting himself to urban stream restoration. “When streams are rescued from the storm drains, they are said (delightfully) to be ‘daylighted.’ We are finally discovering the link between our biophilia and our future,” writes Pyle. Portland’s international “Country in the City” conference pushes for urban ecological diversity and encourages the dedication of urban Northwesterners to the wild salmon.

Timothy Beatley reports an array of U.S. experiments in green urbanism. The city of Davis now requires new developments to be connected to a greenway/bikeway system that extends through the city. “An important objective is that elementary schoolchildren be able to travel by bike from their homes to schools and parks without having to cross major roads,” according to Beatley. In Oregon, Portland’s Greenspaces program calls for the creation of a regional system of parks, natural areas, greenways, and trails for both wildlife and people. A 1997 study by Portland State University students identified a third of downtown Portland’s roofs that could be converted to greenroof design. Such conversions could potentially reduce the volume of combined sewer overflow by up to