Poetry, Optimism and Delight

I am currently doing an online course hosted by the Homes and Communities Academy, which aims to give people a greater understanding of the sustainable communities agenda. I can't help but feel a bit cynical about the idea of sustainable communities - it's a great idea, but I worry about the achievability of maintaining a growing economy and increased standard of living for all without impacting on the environment or adversely affecting future generations' abilities to improve their quality of life...

Anyway, as part of the course I came across this article by Miriam Fitzpatrick, a member of CABE's Urban Panel, on CABE's website. She begins by quoting from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and argues that "sustainability must address our needs as human beings before obsessing over the measurable". I enjoyed her use of the engineer Randall Thomas' definition of sustainability as "poetry, optimism and delight. CO2, water and waste are secondary." She argues that "it is only after raising our spirits as humans that design for sustainability should go on to tackle quantifiable issues such as CO2 emissions."

A strong argument for the arts, I'd say, though the rest of this article does talk more about physical and design issues than raising human sprits, I notice...