Rethink. Renew. Revolutionize.
On Gregory’s birthday in 2013, we saw one of his favorite artists, Leonard Cohen, perform at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. It was the kick off to Cohen’s “Old Ideas” world tour. We’ve heard his songs a hundred times, and yet they still resonate because their message conveys earned truth. The line “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” comes from his song Anthem, which he sang that night and which I think about frequently as the U.S. faces a catastrophic pandemic and presidency, economic collapse, a reckoning on centuries of racial violence and injustice, and now, in California, a blitzkrieg of wildfires, ‘extreme-heat’ warnings, and rolling power outages.
There are days when hope is in very short supply. The idea that the breaking apart of things can be both illuminating and catalyzing sails through the chaos like a life line.
We’ve always had the right to dream in this country. Now though it feels like we have a duty – that is, if we don’t want this dangerously destabilized time be the beginning of the end of the American experiment. That’s why Cohen’s lyrics are of consequence; they act as a poetic reprieve, offering breathing room to imagine this time not as the beginning of the end but as the cracked and fissured end of the beginning of a deeply flawed but still redeemable experiment.
Now is the perfect time to dream big, to rethink some foundational ideas about where we came from and where we want to go now; stir up some good trouble; and finally endeavor, brick by brick, to build toward an inclusive, equitable, and therefore sustainable future.
At Urban Renewable, it begins where we live (or want to live):
§ In an inclusive rather than exclusive neighborhood – one that’s sustainably integrated, where robust varieties of community tenure and investment; financial wherewithal; cultures; environmental and social practice; and political representation enhance the resiliency and wellbeing of our neighbors and us.
§ In an area that balances commercial and residential occupancy so that grocery stores, banks, retail, and professional services are easily accessible by foot or bicycle; an area that materially supports the continued presence of businesses that have been a mainstay for more than 10 years. As Jane Jacobs said, “We need all kinds of diversity, intricately mingled in mutual support.”
§ In a residence and community that produce rather than merely consumes clean, renewable energy; with regard to design strategies, a residence and community that are actively passive.
§ In a community that privileges rather than ignores the need to redress the legacy of redlining and the resultant racial wealth divide; with regard to development, a community that is not color blind.
§ In an urban environment that promotes 21st-century infrastructure like locally sited green microgrids, so that renewable energy powers neighborhoods historically burdened by toxic and fossil-fueled power generation.
§ In a community that’s connected, bonded by responsibilities as well as rights. Freedom is a beautiful thing but unbounded it’s a menace; it’s also terribly lonely. So much of our current way of life, and our adherence to one-dimensional definitions of founding concepts, work against a real need to belong and to cope as neighbors with the extreme fragility of life. As the country lurches forward, the path is strewn with cracks and fissures but it’s also lit. Taking concrete visionary action to make real slogans like “build back better” would be a great first step.
At the institutional level, we hear a lot of promises and platitudes. On the ground level, where we all actually live, individuals are struggling mightily amidst the nation’s political chaos, continued racial inequities, Covid’s long shadow, and climate-change threats to rethink, renew, and revolutionize. There is precedence for this.
In the article, “How Pandemics wreak Havoc – and Open Minds,” medical historian Gianna Pomata described what emerged from the ruins of Bubonic Plague visited upon Europe in the 14th century, and what is possible now:
“What happens after the Black Death, it’s like a wind—fresh air coming in, the fresh air of common sense….After the Black Death, nothing was the same. What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture. Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new way.”
We have the opportunity to reorganize and reconstruct our communities and our country. There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
