The Little Aristocrats

The house and garden on the left is an average American or Australian suburban home. Seen in isolation from the landscapes necessary to sustain it, (which is the way in which most perceive their private property) it seems innocuous; it is however, a paradisiacal illusion. Its true condition is shown in the image on the right whereby the home includes the 58 hectare ecological footprint required to sustain it. Viewed in this way, suburbia’s aristocratic pretensions have become a reality, one now impacting negatively on the whole world – for, if everyone on earth lived this way we would require 5 earths, not to mention a new carbon neutral atmosphere. What this means is that first-world suburbia takes much more than its fair share of the world’s resources and its excess reciprocally equates to others’ deficit. The average (global) ecological footprint for a family of 4 is 8.8 hectares, not 58. For us then to live averagely (another suburban ideal of sorts) we must contract the ecological footprint of the average suburban family by about 86 per cent. On the one hand the obvious way to do this is to impose frugality on first world suburbia. But this would be punitive and therefore unlikely to be successful. Moreover, having seen our fabulous estate, the world now aspires to live as we do and to suppress that desire is impossible. Therefore, perhaps in tandem with some new measures of frugality, the only thing to do is redesign all the systems that constitute our lifestyle so that they have a radically reduced ecological footprint and then make those systems available to the world. That is not a punitive project but rather, an immensely creative and proactive project – one that will preoccupy the 21st century and beyond. That is the unbuilt, or rather “unlandscaped” project.

Text by Richard Weller