Page 8 RAIN October 1979 regions cont. vehicular neighborhoods is being refined by a mor.e sharply defined convenient driving distance. Just as pedestrian neighborhoods change shape as our freedom to walk changes, so do vehicular neighborhoods. As the range of travel shrinks and our attention turns relatively inward, the number and diversity of neighborhoods necessarily expands and personal ,care intensifies. Spending more time in our neighborhoods and discovering, operationally speaking, that it's all we have, we'll necessarily come to a clearer understanding of our communal living room. Perhaps for seeing it more clearly, we'll begin treating ours (and others') that way. The distance of one tank of gas serves as an interesting focus on this crystallization of new regional awareness. . What is the shaping of this new regionalism likely to be guided by? What personal and social energies will lead it to find its place in the local environment? Who are our scouts? Is there anyone who has taken a special interest in finding healthful new ways of fitting in, in this becoming world? Well, supposedly that's us, those involved with appropriate technology. A.T. is what works, right?-all the way down to the roots of the whole system. But what about all those people who can't yet relate to composting toilets, canning berries or saluting solar collectors? They are still integral parts of the a.t. of the city-parts that center we can take in examining different climates. Related to that and one step further are the climate differences that might occur in a city from neighborhood to neighborhood, or in a more natural setting, the climate differences created by changes in the shape of the landscape. It's an important step to take. Our perception of our local climate usually takes place a step beyond this kind of neighborhood area. We think of neighborhoods cont. Now, the industrial revolution in Europe brought an enormous migration of people from the villages into the cities, concentrating them around large factories. That brought about the most awful human destruction one can imagine. I have no doubt that the immense human tragedies of the late 19th century were in large part a consequence of the total disintegration of the prior social structure caused by bringing people together who had not learned to function with each other. And we have been suffering ever since. New York, or any other large city, still suffers from an influx of people with this problem. It's only if we become sufficiently stable that we can rediscover some prin'ciple of integration that will solve the problems of our cities. This will be through the neighborhoods... . I am convinced that the social support of a person is the most important aspect of human life. By social support I mean have found their niches, that depend on each other, that we depend on, and will still be part of the city as it finds its appro As the range of travel shrinks, our attention turns inward, the number and diversity of neighborhoods expands. priate spot in the new landscape. In discovering that the appropriate response to the environment is really the interest of the whole community and no longer just a special segment of it, will a.t. retain the same meaning it was held? In an important way, I think it will. A.T. is not centrally the specific discoveries we've m_adethose elegant solutions to elegantly framed problems. It is the knack for elegantly framing the problems. A.T. should not serve so much as a model of technology to further develop as it should serve as a model of learning to further develop-not the simple and elegant things to be,found-but ways of looking at complex relationships of things to find in them their natural elegance and simplicity. It won't be quite so much the political work or the selling of a.t. which is of real value, but more that we've richly shared ways of finding-of looking directly at the whole of our particular worlds and seeing what they're good for. . _ What's a city truly good for?, With its complexity, its class systems and social and political segregations that seem to block climates cont. ourselves in a climatic region that usually incorporates hundreds of square miles, even thousands. But in effect, we are often indoqrina~ed into believing climatic regions exist on some sim_ple level of data as that provided by the chamber of commerce. If you ask an outsider what he thinks of the climate in Oregon, he will most often say it rains a lot. In fact, two-thirds of Oregon is one of the driest regions in the country. And the the whole set of forces that relate the per~on to the environment. And when I say environment, I mean physical and social, in which that person lives. I think our society is horrible in completely ignoring that. Increasingly, I am writing about, talking about and preaching about it. There is very little social study about the effect of this "environment." But I introduce it into all aspects of my life. If I become interested in energy, -then I say the most important aspect of the energy problem is that we must not create a more centralized society where human contacts are completely broken up. So I say, let's think energy in terms of social units where people can once more become identified with the place where they live-where human relationships are not lost. For me, it's very clear. .. . Excerpted from the JulrAugust Community Service Newsletter ($5.00 yearly from Community Service, Inc., P.O. Box 243, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387), originally appearing as an interview in the December 1977 issue of Neighborhood, a publication of the New York Urban Coalition, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036. ■
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