The Challenges of Biodiversity Science (review)

principles of New Urbanism. They referenced restorative practices such as infill development, reclaiming vacant lots, and restoration/reuse of historic buildings. But my 2008 book, reWealth, decried the chasm between New Urbanist principles and practice. New Urbanism is often used as a smoke screen for sprawl projects. Even when applied to inner city redevelopment, New Urbanist projects usually take a non-restorative, overly-commercial, tabula rasa approach. This isn’t surprising it was invented by architects. Most architects want to leave their own mark on the world; a relatively small minority enjoys renovating or restoring the designs of others. This also explains why Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), created by and for architects, insufficiently weights the value of building and site reuse. Light Imprint is called a “handbook” because it’s more about techniques than ideas. There’s little discussion of strategic or programmatic approaches to watershed restoration or community renewal here. It’s largely a catalog of mechanical techniques and product specifications that reduce the negative impact of development on natural systems. Improvement of freshwater quality, freshwater quantity, and freshwater flows is the major focus. It could be argued that this is innately restorative. If applied solely to existing developed areas, this would be true. But, aside from a passing reference to Smart Growth and LEED-ND in the book’s introduction, there’s no such bias here. If we must sprawl, then doing it with a light imprint is certainly superior. But sprawling with green technologies is like inventing a healthier form of cancer, rather than curing it. Ideally, the light imprint approach should have been introduced at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, some 250 years past. One hundred years ago, ecological damage was already so egregious that President Teddy Roosevelt said “the nation behaves well if it treats natural resources as assets that it must turn over to the next generation . increased in value (emphasis mine)” [“The New Nationalism” (1910) cited in the National Edition of the Works of Teddy Roosevelt (NWTR) New York, 1926. ] He was probably the first national politician to call for a restoration economy. Today, planetary contamination and depletion is such that only a restorative approach can lead to a healthier, wealthier, more beautiful future . especially on a finite planet that’s gaining a billion people every 15 years. Doing less damage with a light imprint is noble, but insufficient. Greening our sprawl-and-extraction-based economy merely does the wrong thing better. The foundation of humanity’s wealth-creating machine must shift primarily to restoring the health and capacity of natural resources, and to increasing the health and capacity of the places we’ve already developed via comprehensive revitalization. What the world needs now is a heavy imprint, provided it’s a restorative one. Again, this is a useful, well-produced handbook on a valuable, timely subject. I hesitate to be so critical, as the folks who will buy the Light Imprint Handbook are my fellow tree-huggers. The criticisms offered here are purely from the standpoint of its contribution—or lack thereof— to restorative literature.