The City, Tribes & Petrocollapse

Healthy community is my “thing.” I have been interested in how to build them since I started architecture school in the late 80s. After studying in Florence, Italy, the answer seemed to lie in the city. I love the city and I love living in the middle of it. In Florence (population similar to Spokane’s) you don’t need a car or even a scooter—you can walk the entire length of it in about 30 minutes. I love it when I have to walk to where I need to go. I actually get much needed exercise regularly and I get to participate in the life of a community, not just see it from a car window.

Walking from my apartment in Florence, a mixture of uses and textures surrounded me. Pastry shops, coffee shops, shoe stores, piazze, loggias—the drama of walking through Florence is incredible. I felt a part of something larger, something worthwhile and I barely spoke Italian.

Cities can do that, help you to feel recognized while still remaining anonymous. As Americans we tend to appreciate our anonymity. We also tend to downplay our need to be recognized.

A few weeks ago I went to a presentation by Spokane psychotherapist, Dr. Kent Hoffman on forming bonds with our children. Dr. Hoffman is a leading researcher in “attachment parenting.” I have seen Dr. Hoffman present numerous times in the past six years and am always amazed by the parallels between individual psychological health and the larger community’s.

Dr. Hoffman believes that at our core we are relational beings and to the degree that we feel connected to others we feel safe and secure. When we feel disconnected the pain can be unbearable. Clinical depression will end when an individual begins to feel deeply connected to someone they trust. Our underlying sense of worth comes from our soul being recognized by another.

If the city is a reflection of our consciousness, it is not surprising that so many of us are on some form of anti-depressant. The design of American cities over the past 50 years has been deeply dysfunctional. Neighborhoods where neighbors rarely talk and lot sizes that continue to increase further and further away from the city and from each other show us how little we trust one another. And roads, lots of roads.

Beyond our psychological needs, peak oil is possibly presenting us with another need for community—our survival. Most peak oil gurus, such as James Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and Mike Ruppert state that the single best way to prepare for peak oil is to get to know your neighbors—well. A tight-knit community that knows each other and starts to prepare for potential shortages in energy and food will fare much better than the lone individual trying to escape the perils of a collapsing social fabric. Society may just save us after all.

Another peak oil guru, Jan Lundberg recently wrote an essay entitled, A Return to Tribes. Lundberg believes that, “the future belongs to those who will surmount petrocollapse and adopt time-proven ways of relating to the land and fellow humans.”

For Lundberg the model for the city of the future lies in tribal cultures.

“The only model of sustainability the world has is native, traditional cultures. The dominant culture of commercialism calls them ‘primitive.’ Would you rather be part of a tribe that lives for ten thousand years or more, or be part of a technological consumer culture that appears to have a limited span of perhaps 150 years at most? The Oil Age has been going for about a century. No one knowledgeable puts the oil age past the middle of the 21st century. Some of us see it ending much sooner.”

Apocalyptic visions seem to have the uncanny ability to create the drive to build a more meaningful world. Questions I am currently asking of myself include how to best participate in and help to create the thriving community I have always dreamed of, and how can this group or “tribe” integrate in to and deepen my relationship with myself, my children and my city.

To read Jan Lundberg’s essay go to:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=2.