Urban Planning – What does it take to create a sustainable community? /vs Human Extinction

Short answer? It depends on who is in the community.

People need to be able to access their daily needs. Food, water, transportation, mail, activities for them and their kids, schools, jobs, parks, restaurants…. you know – convenience.

People want to feel like they have a support network for when they want a coffee with a friend, a babysitter when they need a date night, and those moments of hazard. When they need an EMT, a cop, a doctor’s office or clinic, a hospital, and a coroner. They want to know that help will arrive quickly. you know…. comfort. Security.

People want to know that their community doesn’t get shot up everyday, that they don’t live in an area that will get carpet bombed soon. That they don’t live near things that terrorists like to blow up. And we may have that in North America for the larger part, most years, but that isn’t a fact in every community, in every country.

Then along comes a pandemic….

And communities that had a good system in place were able to buffer their residents. Carry on for the most part in their daily activities. Maybe switch to online school and work.

But nothing significant changed for them.

In poorer, more fragile communities things collapsed. And they’re still collapsed.

In some ways that collapse needed to happen. The world we live in now doesn’t serve everyone, (reserves, ghettoes, refugee camps) nor is it sustainable (the earth itself is in crisis). Yet the top 1% are invested in it’s continuing as it is. And so are the govts (taxes, lobbies).

And the people are invested in keeping their jobs, their homes, their communities and finding a time machine that takes them back to Oct 2019. To resume life as it was then.

But time machines don’t exist….. yet. Picking the date of Oct 2019, knowing what we know now, is that the right one? If we bypass this pandemic, the earth and it’s people are still in crisis. And another pandemic will be coming soon enough. So really, what would that change? If anything?

It’s like being in a maze. You know what the start (creation of our species) and finish (extinction of our species) are, and you’re just trying to get thru it with the least amount of damage. Hoping that the extinction doesn’t come when you and your children are here fighting the battle. And these days seeing all the signs that that hope isn’t as sure as you thought.

And you might have some ideas of what would get you and your family and friends out, but if you can’t influence the world, then all you can hope for is a gentler way of passing your remaining time. Fully aware that the clock is running out.

People usually think of me as Pollyanna, so this must come as a surprise for me to see the negative end and no way around it. I’m not sure that it is an end though…..

It will be of humanity being on earth. Don’t get me wrong. But most people believe in something larger than us, whatever you call it.

• Maybe we will find another planet to start ruining with our selfishness in time to save some of us.
• Maybe aliens will come and fix the worst of the harms.
• Maybe there is a hereafter where the good will see Nirvana and the bad will see retribution &/or healing.

Or maybe we’ll just be erased when the time is up. Living thru water wars, mass migration and mass extinction, sterility, food becoming more and more scarce as the earth gets drier, flammable, or submersed in salt water…..

What do you see happening?