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27 October 2009
A Place In Space
Finding one's place and space is as much a political and financial stake in the ground as it is an environmental, spiritual and emotional journey that impacts all of humanity. That so many of us, a good half of the world's population, now find their place in space in urban centers, puts the spotlight on the city's powerful potential. Yet most cities are a far cry from the Place in Space Gary Snyder wrote about in his ecological manifesto calling upon each individual to get in ones own skin, reclaim their part of the whole, and revive and thrive as part of the entire encompassing ecosystem. Not only was this call to action proposed as the most beautiful means of survival, it now may be our only path to sustainability and ecological equanimity, as the Earth speaks out with each more powerful hurricane and every inch of rising sea level.
With the blare of the subways and the sirens, its a miracle that anyone in a city like New York can hear the Earth crying out, yet somehow I am able to hear a few words through the rumble that form an unmistakable call to action. What ripples through the concrete and rises above the noise is this inconvenient question 'oh really, is this the best 'yes you can' do?', to which I can hear Mother Earth retorting 'oh yes you can do a hell of a lot more, and you're gonna need to!'. In my ecotopian delusions, Mother Earth speaks with a New York city swagger and resembles Jennifer Holliday in Dreamgirls.
Regardless of which diva you have playing the role of mother nature in your delusion of a socially and ecological just planet, Mother is always right.
As I walk through the streets of this great city, her words taunt me and it is hard to ignore that my place in space has been forever changed. My urban environs are adapting, undergoing a process of erosion the likes of which the city has never seen. And she will never be the same again. A digital graveyard of New York landmarks is now the hubris and soil for a new generation of inhabitants to claim their places in space. In some cases, the soil was rather rich, and what is growing out of it is a genetically modified mess, leaving in its wake many transplants and indigeneous species that are slowly vanishing:
In some extreme cases, rare Manhattan species have been replaced by generic chain restaurants, an invasive species that is not native to the East village environs.
From "Love Saves The Day' to chain restaurant. 
I've even heard some of the elders mutter that they miss the old new york, embittered by the impact the laws of nature are having on them:
I hear them. I feel them. I just recently watched the documentary, Schmatta, the story of my chosen people's plight into the garment industry and its ultimate demise due to the very same root reason for why I don't miss the old new york. The very way that the 'old new york' worked, and every old way of doing business as usual are the very reasons we've gotten into this ecological mess to begin with. What we do with our place in space for the future depends on how we choose to reinvent our urban spaces, or our rural landscapes and wherever else our places in space may be.
The New Urban Ecological Paradigm
There isn't a city on the planet that isn't impacted by some crisis, be it financial, environmental, natural or otherwise. In fact, the very essence of the Earth's natural state is to be in a state of entropy, forever seeking to establish balance. The new urban ecological paradigm calls upon us all to reinvent our places in space, to establish this balance in our urban centers and to become space scientists and change agents, transforming our places in space into the carbon reductive, energy saving and life enhancing ecotopias we can all envision. Do it now, before the next generic species of chain store moves into your hometown and you have to resort to cooking your own meal, yet all that's left is genetically modified produce brought to you by a lab near you (label reads Macau).
Every one of us possesses the spark to reclaim our place and space and to alter their city and state of affairs for the better. For the greener good, I propose my ecotopian solution: take every single big box retail store that is vacant and convert it into a sustainable community center whose mission is to support the community in its sustainable development process. A decade ago, I read about the outsourcing of the American manufacturer's soul in Naomi Klein's No Logo, while I sat in a cafe in Vientiene, Laos, wearing a brand new Anthropologie skirt that I bought for under a dollar at the 'sale' across the way from a no name factory. Today, I can no longer let this fly in my name, reminisce about the old anything, nor can any of us ignore the reality behind the logo and the role we can all play in becoming spacesavers and changemakers. Today, I took my big box retail store conversion proposal straight to Walmart's International Director of Sustainability, and received word from this guy that they'd get back to me.
I'm not waiting for his response, or for the next genetically modified, nutritionless fast food chain store to open up in my neck of the woods and send the proverbial mom and pop packing. My ecotopian future is far more bright than this, and includes every radical possibility we all can crowdsource and cocreate. Now make good use of this online place in space's greatest resource, the comments sections, and post your ecotopian solutions so we can start making it our urban reality today.