Book Review

Book Review: Design for Ecological Democracy by Randolph T. Hester                       

                           Design for Ecological Democracy is a must read for anyone who has an interest in urban design, planning, or the history of American city development. Hester defines fifteen urban design principles that our cities should follow to achieve ecological democracies within our communities and that society as a whole needs to build a sustainable future.  He weaves design principles studied for centuries, fifty years of personal and professional experience, and heavy doses of ecological common sense into a book that looks at urban design from an environmentalist point of view.

                        The fifteen principles that Hester explores are: centeredness, connectedness, fairness, sensible status seeking, sacredness, particularness, selective diversity, density and smallness, limited extent, adaptability, everyday future, naturalness, inhabiting science, reciprocal stewardship, and pacing.  He explains;  in order to attain sustainability in our society we need not just a democracy that considers and incorporates the needs of all people in our society, but a democracy that considers and designs for the needs of our environment.  Ecological design has sustained humans for as long as we have been on earth.  Examples of urban design that harmonize with our environment are abundant throughout or nation’s landscape and history, and Hester testifies to many of projects that he has helped to shape over the years. He has worked  all over the world with many different people and  has discovered that people working together and the issues that arise in doing that, is probably the number one obstacle to establishing an ecological democracy.  The “American Dream” that we in this country have strived for in the past century, presents values that are hard to reconcile with a sustainable environment, Hester explains” The difficulty of working together to improve habitation is exacerbated by at least five powerful and deeply held American values- mobility, affluence, standardization, technology, and specialization, each of which produces side effects that affect city life”.

            The sustainable design techniques that Hester recommends are not revolutionary but more evolutionary. He takes urban design principles that seemed to be lost or discarded, and applies them to current city planning and design. The common problem that He found in most of the projects he has worked on is  when it comes to community building, people have a hard time working together.  Even when people in a community want the same thing, the class, racial, and power structures in our society often leaves us divided and isolated. Hester argues that isolating and divisive social structures leads to isolating and divisive urban design which leads to broken cities and environmental hazards. 

          I think the most interesting part of the book is Hester’s anthropological observations of democracy in parts of our society and the lack of it in other parts. The United States history of oppression and bigotry has, and still shapes the way we design our cities and lives, a fact that many designers actively ignore and society wants to forget. Hester not only explains how this erodes our societal democracy, but connects this to our current ecological and sustainable issues. Hester takes a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to urban design that does not cherry pick our history to fit our current need to be politically correct. He is not afraid to examine our past to help shape our future, and not repeat new patterns of unsustainability.

Bibliography

Randolph T Hester,” Design for Ecological Democracy”, MIT Press 2006