“While we have been making headway in cleaning up our rivers and beaches, the air we breathe and the water we drink . . . we have created trashy inner city settlements where the poor, the vulnerable, the hopeless and the unhinged have been kettled into urban breezeblock ghettoes that have become a breeding ground for disaffection, anger and feral behaviour . . . These rotten environments turn on its head the notion of sustainable development. Sustainability is about much more than water and energy efficiency, insulation and recycling. The human dimension somehow got forgotten. The environment is about the condition in which we all live together, not just the well-connected, the empowered middle class and those with sharp elbows and loud voices.”
I took this photograph of the sluice on the 37-hectare Retenue de Brousseau in Les Landes when walking on the Voie du Puy in April 2009.
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2 comments:
My family come from the East End of London and I well remember the back-to-backs there and in the Old Kent Road that were replaced by tower blocks and rows of flats.
The old places had very poor housing but very good communities, as Nick reeves said, the human dimension got forgotten.
Yes, and we need wonderful readings, like that I heard in church this evening (from Isiah): "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favour."
Martin
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