Resistance to changing the culture we now possess (or possesses us?), a culture that is arguably fatally destructive to the biosphere, includes the argument that we can’t go back to the way we used to live 100 years ago or some other harsher time where we tied our shoes, cleaned floors with mops, and (God forbid) churned butter. We can’t because our knowledge base is far greater including benign or beneficial technologies and practices that could be easily maintained. And we certainly don’t want to go back there due to the many norms and practices that date back 100 years that we don’t want to resurrect such as racism and gender bias. That being said, the era around 1910 possessed a number of attributes that sustainability advocates are pinpointing as being standards that would not only work well within a sustainability framework but also could offer a measure of comfort, ease of living, and familiarity. I will touch on a few below.
Transportation Technology
While we don’t want to return to the leaded fuel dirty emission cars of the early automobile era such as the best selling Model T, nor do we want the rutted, muddy streets typical of this era. However, what we could emulate is the number of cars per capita and how they were used, there are some ideas to consider. Cars and trucks were owned by the wealthy and used for recreation and touring. Few commuters used cars to get from home to workplace and the electric trolley or commuter railroad was the preeminent form of mass transportation. Of course, pedestrians and bicyclists were far more prevalent as our urban form was far more conducive to this type of travel. To transition back to a system where motor vehicles were used primarily for emergency, maintenance, and other limited functional services would be a good start. The use of Zip cars or trucks (or the equivalent) for the average family to take a day trip or move a heavy piano would also be a reasonable scenario. Think of the acres of pavement that could be removed opening up land for other uses if the car were much less a part of our daily lives and not required for every minor trip.
As I indicated, this was the era of the electric trolley and American cities and towns were laced with tracks back in the first decade of the 20th century. Towns as small as 5000 people often had trolley lines. The trolley was a vast improvement over the horsecar that it replaced (including the gifts the horses left behind on the streets). It also truly brought a measure of egalitarianism to human settlements because now nearly everyone could travel everywhere throughout the city. As Hanson and Giuliano proclaim in their 2004 book “The Geography of Urban Transportation”, “The ubiquity and low fare of the electric trolley now provided every resident access to the intracity circulatory system.” By 1907, over 34,000 miles of streetcar lines had been established. These lines admittedly ushered in the first significant era of suburban expansion but the city was still a relatively efficient entity and movement did not consume vast quantities of fossil fuel and pave vast expanses with roads and parking lots. Unfortunately, a cabal of companies led by General Motors contrived to replace this fine system with the very road network we have today so that motor vehicles could predominate and their profit margins would run wild with the conversion. Nevertheless, present day stimulus money could be harnessed to begin the recreation of some of the system that was lost and also to bring back into good operating condition or establish new commuter rail lines and interstate passenger travel that many suggest had been the envy of the world many decades ago.
Urban Form
For thousands of years since the advent of agriculture, the predominant settlement pattern had been the town or city that brought merchants, residents, and small manufacturers together in a cultural symbiosis that was quite functional if not always aesthetically pleasing or clean and sanitary. By the early twentieth century, many of the kinks of urban living had been ironed out through sanitation reform, transportation technology, building design and technology, and other infrastructure such as electricity, roads, and communications. Many of the townscapes and city centers that were developed between the 1870’s and up to World War I are still viable and in many cases very attractive and interesting places to visit, shop, and live. Many of the reinterpretations of American town life developed by new urbanist architects, theme park designers, and shopping center developers focus on this era when seeking to find something that will resonate emotionally with us.
Of greater interest to advocates of sustainability is the viability of this urban pattern as a model for sustainable living. A compact townscape with storefront commercial buildings built up to the sidewalk and one to three levels of offices and residences above is ideal for pedestrian movement. Nearby, small but functional two-family and single-family homes on small parcels surround the commercial core and are still walkable to residents who want products or services available on the Main Street. These surrounding neighborhoods may also have a small store or cafe located on a corner for convenience goods. There would be little need to use a car for everyday activities in a model like this. Need to travel to the next town for work? Hop on the streetcar a few blocks away. What about Thanksgiving with Aunt Mabel in Peoria? They just reestablished the downstate passenger train so tickets are selling now. Regrettably, few local zoning ordinances today allow cities and town to build in this manner and efforts to change this situation are underway (see the Congress for New Urbanism) but have a long way to go before this form of development is legally predominant.
Agriculture
Before agribusiness converted a family dominated profession into a corporate-led industrial practice reliant on petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and other harmful practices well portrayed elsewhere (e.g. Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma), the farm was a place where the producer was sensitive to the land and sought to develop practices designed to sustain the operation and landscape for the long term. Gene Logsdon writes in Energy Bulletin that 100 years ago, agricultural practices were even more sophisticated than they are today and were based on surprisingly advanced scientific principles–much of it based on the handling of manure.
Another best agricultural practice from the early 20th century is rolling the clock back on seed and GMO patenting and marketing restrictions. This is certainly a positive step and reestablishing the use of numerous heirloom varieties and other nutrient rich plants that have “gone out of style” in an effort to create uniformity of size, color, and other characteristics is another positive step that will help us become more biodiverse rather than less.
What we may wish to do is look more closely at an era when there was still much about our society that had successful designs and practices anchored in the long history of human settlement in the Western world and beyond. Yet at that unique time in history, many of the hazards and inconveniences of urban living and household labor had been improved upon. Certainly the ideas developed since 1910 for domestic living and urban design offer many opportunities to “cherry pick” complementary technologies while making this type of community model more sustainable, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly. The fact is that cities and towns established or developed in this era are still in abundance albeit degraded significantly in many cases due to suburban sprawl and the gutting of town centers. They may offer great opportunities to test theories of sustainable urban living at a reasonable scale and position themselves for a more viable future as compared with their suburban counterparts.
