Sustainable Living - a very old idea

 That was crushed in favor of "development" and financial motives that supported the generation of wealth rather than the quality of life for a community. Before the oil boom and exploitation of coal to feed the furnaces of the burgeoning industrial age, there was sustainable living.  So ponder this... most of human existence has been under a low energy (water wheels and oxen pulled plow) regime and today's overconsumption with all of its complexity is really a very small blip in time. We are headed back there.  

An idea known as Broadacre City was one of many such ideas espoused by victorians albeit ahead of its time.  

Although Frank Lloyd Wright tried to claim ownership of such planning, a contemporary by the name of Wijdeveld was probably a bigger contributor to the inspiration. 

The historical record is often inaccurate, edited or just plain falsified to support some new agenda.  That is nothing new, so be wary when you read about "history" - it's best taken with a dose of many alternate views of the event. The idea of sustainable living has been promoted so many times in our past, with all of its quality of life attributes.  Think of where we could be right now if these ideas had been supported by governance and not bull dozed into oblivion to chase a buck.  We are all guilty.  Cheap energy was the easy button and it was sure to be exploited in many ways.   

In the short FLW book cited below, and to put it in prospective; FLW's Broadacre City, represented the view of a man born in the late 1800's.  A person who had no idea cheap oil and energy were to enable cities to grow into unsustainable monstrosities, pollution to spiral, wars to be funded and fought and all the other unintended consequences that would shape our modern lives.  A person from this era had one foot clearly planted in a time where sustainable living was the only option.  FLW sees the growth of modernism and the concrete jungle as an assault on intellectual honesty.  The dependency on machines, and the generation of wealth based upon plunder of the land was simply obscene to FLW.  So put on your turn of the last century contextual thinking cap and enjoy the read below! I think it is oddly prescient. 

Here is a fun read on the "City".     

Nothing new under the sun and much to be learned from the sensibilities of the pre or early industrial age thinkers as pertaining to the evolution of the community etal.