Designing for the Life of Community at a Time of Great Change by SWABACK

DESIGNING FOR THE LIFE OF COMMUNITY AT A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE

Vernon D. Swaback FAIA, FAICP Two Worlds Community Foundation

Â© 2017 Two Worlds Community Foundation 7550 East McDonald Drive, Suite A Scottsdale, Arizona 85250 vswaback@swabackpartners.com www.twoworldsfoundation.org Telephone 480.367.2100 Illustrations by Pao Cagnina. Edited by Lynn Gray. ISBN 198-0-9988423-0-1

Preface Architecture, at its highest and finest, is all about the orchestration of relationships in which each and every component is designed to give meaning and life to the whole. This is as true for a modest structure as it is for a cathedral. While we’re beginning to think of architecture at this level, we have yet to grasp that the most critical architecture of all is the relatedness between individuals and groups—which we call Community—and, especially, between all of us and the sole source of life—which we call Nature. The seeds for this more holistic way of seeing have been planted throughout the ages, including those sown and emphasized by an individual who, long after his death, continues to be called “The World’s Greatest Architect” and, more recently, our “First Green” and “First Sustainable” Architect. I’ll never forget this man, Frank Lloyd Wright, who referred to architecture as “the seeing eye for society.” It is with this challenge in mind that what follows goes well beyond what any one, special-case achievement could hope to deliver in order to explore and address what our shared beliefs and endeavors are becoming. This is a continuation of related studies that began more than a half century ago. Seven of these are listed on pages 256-258, each accompanied by the observations made at the time they were published. v

Contents 6 Introduction What is meant by Community and why is it so essential to the success of the full range of our thoughts, plans, and commitments? 15 Setting the Stage Where do we start and why is Community a pursuit that extends from the local to the global?

27 Technologyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gifts and Threats Given the degree to which change is normal, and considering the seemingly magical reach of technology, why talk about its threats?

49 It Takes a Village to Raise a Child The two examples provided include one which starts with the creation of a special place in which to learn and grow, with the other centering on the educational experience in a diversity of settings that already exist. 62 Continuing Care Retirement Communities Having jumped from technology to villages for children, we now jump again to discuss the settings where the average age of the resident is 82. 95 A Generational Time of Great Change While design has long focused on specifically defined needs and desires, the growing needs and opportunities for the future are more general than specific. 113 Our Emerging Shared Use Economy Of all the dominant trends, this has the most to offer with respect to doing more with less, all in concert with pursing the art of community.

123 From the Artless to the Significant This transition is occurring as our design-based focus places a higher value on quality of life and less on the velocity and marginal metrics of production and consumption.

132 High Intention Communities The past provides a collection of richly varied achievements for doing more with less, all in beautiful, purpose-centered environments that can be used to inspire better ways for the future. 145 Living With Frank Lloyd Wright Unlike the majority of books and articles that portray what Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his clients, this chapter focuses on the way of life he designed for himself and others from all over the world, including those who made it their home. 162 The Taliesin Equivalent Five proposals, each inspired by Wright’s example, are portrayed in keeping with his challenge for others to research and do likewise. 197 To Serve and to Celebrate This chapter suggests that among the growing list of billionaires who are pledging to contribute half or more of their net worth to others, there may be very specific individuals who would consider coming along with their gift to research, create, and steward ever-more artful ways of living. 208 For What is Yet to Be: Student and Citizen Visioning Before she became a Justice of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor organized a Visioning party concerning the future of architecture. 214 Two Worlds Community Foundation This Epilogue presents excerpts from a more structured event based on Justice O’Connor’s "Visioning Party" and an overview of the work and mission of the design-based educational Foundation responsible for this book. 235 Bibliography, Index, and About the Author vii

Introduction “Learn to see in the abstract, but not so abstract that you lose your usefulness to society. You are asking infinite questions, man is finite.” —Frank Lloyd Wright

nd so began my overzealous apprenticeship with the world’s greatest architect. Among my most cherished and formative memories are those that are centered around how he lived, for which the following two of his observations stand out above the rest: “It is the relatedness of all things that creates value,” and “Invest wisely in beauty; it will serve you all the days of your life.” In the nearly six decades since hearing these words and experiencing how Wright had put them into action, my colleagues and I have had an extraordinary array of privileged opportunities to apply “the relatedness of all things,” ranging from custom residences and hospitality, institutional, recreational, and corporate facilities to the planning of villages, cities, and Native American nations. Common to all such engagements is the need to coordinate what the individual elements are adding up to becoming— not only for now but into the indefinite future.

The art of community seeks to provide for our needs and desires in ways that connect us to each other and all of us together with the lessons and beauty of Nature. This pursuit extends beyond the design of houses and structures that we can lock and call our own to address the greater environments that we share. In its most general sense, community can be used to convey a kind of bonding, as in, “a community of scholars.” It can also refer to a sense of worship, as in this observation from John Shelby Spong, the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark who, in referring to religion, said, “I see the ecclesia (the church) as a community of people called into life, called into being, called into wholeness, called into God.” And, from Max DePree, the author of Leadership is

an Art and former CEO of the Herman Miller Co.: “To the leader, the word community is magical.” T.S. Eliot, who received both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize, went so far as to question if life can even exist without the context of community. We’re on the verge of understanding that community isn’t only essential to our individual and shared success but to our very survival—never more so than at this time of great and accelerating change. This is further exacerbated by those who believe that the heavy lifting confronted in pursuit of all things human can now be replaced by the miracles of all things technological. The problem with this way of thinking isn’t what it measures but what it ignores.

The art of community that needs our attention includes the interests and desires of all of us, for which the beautiful setting is Planet Earth and beyond. The resources for making it all happen are largely determined by whether we spend our treasure to incarcerate, attack, and defend or to love, cherish, and nurture. While this has always been true, what makes the present a time of great change is the accelerating rate and reach of our human power to create or destroy. And while technology is increasing exponentially, it’s doing so with absolutely no exponentially increasing understanding or guidance. Just as Nature is the source of all we’ve been given, community requires our understanding and stewardship for all that we’re creating and becoming. To see these issues in a longer range and global context, consider this observation from the late Ernest Callenbach, the author of

Ecotopia: “Surveying the whole historical record, including its many passages of folly and despair, we must recognize that human communities manifestly possess the power to recover from misfortune and their own worst mistakes and to begin anew. We can have community instead of loneliness. We can have structures that actually fit the way we want to live. And thus we can achieve a fit habitat for our species.” And, from Lewis Mumford: “A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”

Introduction

Absorption with the more readily available and obvious issues that so easily demand our attention may be an approach that has worked in the past but, for the future, what we need most is anything but obvious. At the very time that we’re trying to keep up with what technology makes possible, we’re becoming ever more aware of its threatening limitations. This includes awakening to the obvious futility of trying to use it to defend or destroy our path to the kind of success that can only be achieved by changing our behavior. To both acknowledge and support trends that are moving in a positive direction, consider the following: 1) We’re beginning to understand, as never before, the ever-growing reach and threats of what technology makes possible; 2) We’re thinking more holistically about education, especially at the early stages when the seeds are planted and nurtured that have the power to influence our cultural understanding, and delivering it in ever-moreengaging ways; 3) We’re designing for unprecedentedly longer lifespans, which includes the need to give more thought to the many individuals who’ve made little or no provisions for this eventuality; 4) We’re acknowledging the evolving dynamics of humanity’s first-ever global civilization coupled with the single-greatest demographic changes in human history; 5) We’re making plans for taking advantage of community-based opportunities that are already occurring by way of shared use to replace and augment ownership; 6) We’re planning, designing, and

providing far more varied, innovative, and holistic ways for doing more with less, and; 7) We’re exploring new ways for the future of philanthropy to go beyond what the giving of money could ever hope to achieve on its own. Sam Keen, PhD, who holds an MA from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate from Princeton University, offered the following: “The time is ripe for men and women to create a new type of community for which there is, as yet, no single name. To get a notion of what I mean, add together this family of words: hearth (a nuclear area, a vital or creative center), hospitality (the cordial and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers), charity (the kindly and sympathetic disposition to aid the needy or suffering), celebration (to honor by engaging in religious, commemorative, or other ceremonies or by refraining from ordinary business), community (a body of individuals organized into a unit with awareness of some unifying trait).” Everything we think and do takes place in a two-worlds reality—the most manipulatable being all that we design and create and the other being the miraculous gifts of the Creation. It’s beyond argument that, for all manner of reasons, we’ve given far more caring attention to what we own than to all we share. We might also agree that, with every additional person who joins us on Planet Earth (a net increase of more than 200,000 new persons each and every day), along with our geometrically increasing consumption 10

Introduction

per capita, everything to do with the shared purpose and art of community becomes an ever-more urgent consideration. In addition to the more obvious threats that we pose to each other, the future requires a willingness to address the far greater complexity of relationships than anything to do with that which is more easily measurable. Unless and until we are able to embrace this most fundamental of all realities, we’ll never get beyond the kinds of conflict that so easily divide and threaten all we hold dear. The make-up of an orchestra provides a working example of why the future requires that we look deeper than easyto-measure standards of equality. Community is every bit as much about the orchestration of life as a symphony is about the orchestration of sound. That which makes the performance of music artful requires that each of the musicians be aware of their interdependent differences. The same analogy applies to all other forms of art including the foreground, background, and accents of a great painting, the strategically choreographed movement of dance, the impact of poetry, and the diversity of a great garden. Clearly, there are many ways to find fault with such analogies if we insist that, when it comes to our human experiences, our only hope for success will always involve the basic acceptance of our being “equal.” When we endeavor to reduce all pursuits and metrics to that of equality, we may create a barrier that is neither helpful nor even possible. 11

The record of all such attempts shows us that a way has never been found to level “up” but always and only to level “down,” which, in the end, serves no one. In a very real sense, community, at its most profound, is the only art form for which we’re all participant-creators. Like the analogy of the orchestra, the highest levels of community are always and only achieved by way of the related insights of its individual participants, each contributing what they’ve prepared themselves to do best. John W. Gardner has explored the preceding in his book,

Excellence: Can we be Equal and Excellent Too?. After making his own observations and quoting those of others, he offers the following, not so much as an answer but in an effort to surround the question of equality with some general sense of the thoughtful: “We are far from having achieved equality of opportunity. In a society in which there are great differences in wealth, power, and status, free schooling may never compensate for the tremendous variations in opportunity represented by home background. Society may insure my child equality of opportunity with every other child, but it can only place before him (and before all other children) the range of opportunities available in this particular society.” In less personal terms and at its highest and most comprehensive level of achievement, the art of community is the meeting place of the pragmatic provisions for our human existence with the cultural pursuits of love, mystery, art, and architecture, all informed and in league with the lessons and gifts of Nature. 12

Introduction

The ultimate measure of all such relationships is behavioral. To suggest the critical and essential nature of this quest, consider the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world’s most respected and an individual that Martin Luther King, Jr. called “an apostle of peace and non-violence.” In the following words, Hanh places community at the very heart of our survival: “It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community—a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.” My hope in presenting what follows is that it may be for you what it has already been for me. Rather than simply sharing an account of what my colleagues and I have been privileged to experience in our commissioned work, I set out to explore what could be learned from the emerging needs and trends for that which is yet to be. Whether you’re a builder/developer who has to think in terms of market cycles or a dedicated futurist, our every experience is occurring on a one-way bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. What follows is an architect/ planner's view from that bridge. Vernon D. Swaback FAIA, FAICP Scottsdale, Arizona

“Big images are often dismissed as visionary and impractical, and the state of mind that often evokes that response is one of the burdens of our society. It is a state of mind that operates out of the belief that significant change cannot, and will not, occur. It is a state of mind that must be overcome, whenever we make important progress in our civilization…” —James W. Rouse

ONE

Setting The Stage “If it is not both uncertain and risky, it is simply not a practical idea for the future. Unless there is a personal commitment to the values of the idea, the necessary effect will not be sustained.” —Peter F. Drucker

twelve-foot-long banner hangs in our studio offices proclaiming, “We are moving from the world of design to the design of the world.” It’s not surprising that among the responses to this assertion are those who think it’s clever to others who see it as the height of arrogance. In truth, it’s simply an acknowledgment of a most fundamental and shared reality. The use of the word “design” goes beyond any of our conscious decisions and actions to include the more pervasive consequences that result from the incalculable costs resulting from both large and small battles, whether we be attackers or defenders. Add to this the world’s lust for everything that money alone can buy along with our increasing ability to transform the gifts of Nature into whatever we wish to produce, market, sell, and—more often than not—discard and replace.

On November 9, 1964 the Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibition under the banner, Architecture Without Architects. It was billed as vernacular architecture that “does not go through fashion cycles,” one that is nearly “unimprovable, since it serves its purpose to perfection.” It would seem highly unlikely that the same could be said about the how, what, and why concerning the market-driven influences and objectives of the present. Furthermore, to address the future of what the great majority of us may experience—including both what we own and, increasingly, all that we share—we start by stating the obvious: To possess a beautiful house in a deteriorating neighborhood would leave much to be desired. The same would be true of a well-maintained group of houses located in a dangerous or troubled district or a highly energized district in a failing city. For much of our history in the United States, it was possible for those of us living in the “greatest nation” to feel separate and apart from those less fortunate. We’re no longer so certain about that feeling, and gone are the days when wars were thought to be winnable battles between nations. Our new awareness is more likely to be focused on the nearconstant battles being waged between political and sectarian interests, and, especially, those individuals and groups that have an ever-increasing access to the instruments of death and destruction. This clearly calls into question what we once counted on as the advantage of our nation’s military might. Whether the time has already come or is right around

Setting the Stage

the corner, the belief in creating impenetrable borders along with the stockpiling of weapons to enforce the peace is becoming less and less viable. This new awareness should make it clear that nothing but the most human-centered values of understanding, creativity, and cooperation—all coming together in the pursuit of community—will be able to save us from our outmoded reliance on the increasingly available-to-all weapons of mass destruction. In short, our ability to live in, help create, and leave for our children a world that works requires nothing short of achieving humanity’s first-ever, local-to-global resolve to design for and live in artful community relationships—not only to do so with each other but for all of us together to have that same relationship with the Creation that created us.

What We Value Rather than rely on any single path to success, this book’s design-based exploration is centered around four observations. The first is that community is the opposite of the consequences of poverty, ignorance, and conflict, all of which, like exploitation and ugliness, are the all-toofamiliar and easy paths of least resistance. The second is that, no matter how amazing and miraculous it may seem, the technology we invent is best viewed as humanity’s latest series of tools, which should be seen as nothing but our increasingly—and now exponentially—amplified ability to create or destroy. The third is that we’re not only living 17

at a time of great change with respect to each other but with respect to life itself. The fourth is a caution that may seem less dramatic, but it relates to the other three. At its fundamentally working best, democracy is all about the art and science of relationships and relatedness, which, as addressed in the Introduction, should never be confused with a mandate for sameness or equality. Sameness is seldom, if ever, the goal of Nature, nor should it ever be one of ours.

The Individual and the Community Sir Lloyd Gerring, born in 1918, wrote 17 highly regarded and groundbreaking books concerning the evolution of our human beliefs and understanding. In one of these books appears this observation: “There is much to be said in favour of acknowledging community responsibility, as we know even to this day, but it also has the negative effect of diminishing individual identity and personal initiative, to say nothing of discouraging a person from taking full responsibility for his/her own destiny.” Gerring clearly understood that the complexity and diversity of community brings with it the very human challenges associated with its stewardship. The art and individuality of community rests on the character and diversity of its individual members. It’s nothing less than each generation’s opportunity to research, design, create, and nurture our human instincts for living in ever-more harmonious ways 18

Setting the Stage

in partnership with Nature, which is the most varied and creative source of all. There’s no way for any of us to give our best in the present without having an unquenchable faith in the future. For that faith to be something more than blind hope, we need to consider matters that lie beyond our reliance on the familiar, including all that can be easily measured, bought, or sold. A critical part of setting the stage for the future requires that we move beyond the arguments between all things practical and all things visionary. These are simply the two, ever-evolving stages of a single reality. No one has joined the two better than Edward de Bono, the author and creative-thinking advisor to major corporations. Here’s one of the ways that he related the visionary with the practical: “It is very clear why non-profit pilot projects in the present are so critical to a sustainable regeneration of the profit sector when the status quo has run its course. Eventually, most structures in society will tend to shorten their thinking horizons. With increasing pressure on funds, there is a need to show results. Showing results means responding to the needs of the moment. Such shortterm thinking puts the emphasis on immediate problemsolving. There is less time for design, for speculation and for the larger issues…In exploration and design work, it may be a long time before things reach a critical mass of sense and value. It is this critical mass which launches new design or a new paradigm.”

The Joyful Necessity of Culture Dedication and creativity, not power or force, produced the vision and work of Shakespeare, Gandhi, Einstein, Schweitzer, Beethoven, and Bach. As for a man who was involved in the extremes of both war and the pursuit of community, consider this long-ago observation from the Five Star General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became a two-term President of the United States of America: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. All of this is to say that we’ve been getting ever closer to what Buckminster Fuller envisioned as the time when our attention would turn from ‘weaponry’ to what he termed ‘livingry.’ And clearly there can be no ‘livingry’ without community, and no community without culture.” The early studies and outreach for this book inspired many wonderful contacts and late-night conversations with interested and creative thinkers. One of these engagements involved a most inspiring woman. After listening to her describe what community meant to her, I asked if she would be willing to put her thoughts in a form that might be shared with others. By way of introduction to her response,

Setting the Stage

which follows, this individual is a Chicago native, a concert violinist, and the founder of a variety of professional groups including symphonies that perform both the standard classical repertoire as well as a special-focus group that performs on period instruments. Her name is Jeri-Lou Zike. Here is how she set the stage for what she shared in a series of observations and which positioned her sense of community, starting with generalizations and working up to considerations that are more culturally specific: “We often settle on the idea that community is a product of where and how we live. Our residential and work environments are certainly communities but of a specific kind. They are, in many ways, the product of our education and social status, and these things, in turn, are deeply connected to our economic status. It is not unusual for people who work together to find themselves living in the same neighborhoods, even in the context of large, sprawling cities. We might call these economically driven communities. Labeling these associations ‘economic’ is not meant to take away from the fact that these collections of people and organizations are real communities based on shared interests, for which I offer the following two examples, one more organic, the other slightly more intentional.” She then followed this in a more spiritual sense, starting with, “Not a place… not a thing… no location… no boundaries,” and then it all began to flow: “When involved in playing chamber music or in an

orchestra that performs without a director (or a dictator), community arises of its own accord. “When extremely gifted people sacrifice themselves to the idea of community, it is a heart thing. This like-minded sense of community begins with listening, not talking or spewing forth ideas but learning from others, not just by hearing but by truly listening in a higher form without feeling any need to respond. “Once this sacrifice of self happens, all other sounds disappear and a collective wave of ideas begins to form without words or explanation. A common goal: playing in the same language of sound, length of notes, pitch, style, swing, flow, and unity. Is there anything higher and greater? Most likely not. Why do so many musicians greet with a hug and a kiss before sitting down to a rehearsal? Why is there a desire, once finished, to use words to convey what we just experienced? “An even higher level of connection is the commitment to a discipline that began when we were just small children. Most gave up much of their childhood going to lessons while finding new and richer forms of expression in their practicing, orchestra rehearsals, and master’s classes. Now we reap the benefits of those lost years. If all that practicing is considered to be a short-term loss, it was for long-term gain. We now have the luxury of being in the company of

Setting the Stage

those who had the same early experience. We now revel in performing and enjoying the art of music for a living, for which we were once teased and made fun of for missing football games, parties, and dances during our childhood, teenage, and college years. Everything about our past and disciplined experience now draws us closer with the bond of our common understanding.” It was most inspiring to hear how this concert violinist both generalized and connected her musicianship to an underlying feeling about community as a shared sense of commitment, interactive achievement, mutual appreciation, and trust. But she had more to say. It was months later that I received the following: “A very different sense of community, which I share with others, is centered around endurance athletics. We connect on a level involving the long haul of physical struggle. We know the hours of alone time, including fighting with negative thoughts. We give each other courage and endorsement and understanding just by wearing a T-shirt associated with the race or wearing a backpack embellished with an Ironman logo. For the true endurance athlete, this is not a bucket-list item but a lifestyle. A collective good emerges from all these long endurance races to perform well by giving our best. A silent knowing and caring emerges for one another’s best interests. A fierce connective energy joins participants into a shared sense of community. We are humbled and respect each other for the greater good of all.”

Engaging the Creative with the Entrepreneurial To expand the idea of personal and group commitment into cultural applications, consider how a small but dedicated group—Chicago’s Haymarket Opera Company—applies this same focused interest to a very early and rare form of opera. What is most significant about this example isn’t just that it provides a home for baroque opera lovers but how a group of individuals uses the power of community to celebrate each success through house concerts, production parties, and just sheer baroque operatic fun. Interestbased community is all about creating opportunities to celebrate shared passions, empowered by the delight and joy of artful interaction.

Setting the Stage

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how you might imagine a concert violinist and a six-time Ironman winner would look, but Jeri-Lou Zike, whose two experiences of community we just shared, is the smiling person in the center of the image below in which sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shown taking her place as the concertmaster of Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haymarket Orchestra. This is a group that creates its own sets along with thoroughly researched replicas of the period costumes, as shown on the facing page. Most amazing of all is that these productions and performances of 300-year-old compositions attract sell-out audiences whose dedicated support and enthusiasm is only rivaled by the cheering crowds at highly competitive sporting events.

Haymarket's young and amazing group has received consistently rave reviews with a nearly perfect record for obtaining support from local arts foundations. During the writing of this book, this acknowledgment became global with the announcement that 18 of Haymarket's vocal artists and instrumental musicians had been invited by the Valletta Baroque International Festival in Malta to represent the United States alongside Europe’s top early-music ensembles. It would be difficult—more like impossible—to think of any greater acknowledgment and honor. The honor was all the more special considering that, unlike the historic culture and experience of the European groups, the Chicago-based Haymarket Opera Orchestra didn't exist until its uncertain beginnings just six years earlier. Now, here they were, a world away, standing in front of Caravaggio's famous altarpiece, "The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist," at the Saint John's Co-Cathedral Oratory.

TWO

Technology’s Gifts and Threats “We are riding a curve of exponential change. This change is unprecedented in human history. It is transforming no less than human nature.” —Joel Garreau

he more impressed we are by what technology is creating, the more we might want to question what it’s capable of becoming. For most, if not all, of human history, the unquestioned technological advances have occurred in the supportive, tool-centered realm of the physical, and all were created for human use. This continues today, but something is being added that’s moving in the direction of creating the kinds of “tools” that “use” us rather than vice versa—so much so that writers and others are sounding the alarm concerning this troubling and emerging reality. More than a century and a half after Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, we see there are now three 27

kinds of people: 1) Those who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe in evolution; 2) those who do but think of it as something that happened in the past, preceding our human arrival, and; 3) those who believe the evolutionary process is both continuing and accelerating. This third category includes well-respected individuals who are advocating on behalf of a digital revolution that will first exceed and then replace what we now know as biology. A not-unreasonable observation and summary of the most listened-to voices in the third category would go something like this: While weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still in the dark concerning what we call the Big Bang that created everything up until now, including all of us, we are, each and every day, more certain that, whatever it was, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now being reshaped by our own discoveries and inventions that are destined to become our self-initiated Big Bang of the future. Needing no greater examples than our pervasive use of everything digital including the self-proliferating reach of the iPhone, both the awareness and the concerns about the march of technology are growing. This is especially true for the parents of young children who are doing their best to put restrictions on the amount of time their children spend online. Others are warning about the possibility of a kind of computer-induced autism. History will show whether these concerns are well-informed or simply without merit, but if we leave it to the future to decide, by then it will be unstoppable.

Technology's Gifts and Threats

What we can know with certainty is that the power and reach of technology is expanding exponentially, including that which is being developed on behalf of the US military. Experimental trials are well along in the pursuit of enhancing the physical abilities of humans to fight and defend as well as in the broader reach of technology to control, exceed, and eventually overcome what some see as nothing more than the limitations of human frailty and judgment. To illustrate how dramatically these thoughts depart from more traditional ways of seeing, we’ll start with a description, provided by Wendell Berry, of what many regard as the baseline of a fundamental reality. Wendell Berry is an award-winning researcher and author who portrays human civilization in terms of our Two Economies—the “Great Economy” and the “Little Economy.” According to Berry, the latter is anything that falls into the category of “factual knowledge, calculations, and manipulation”—a human economy that “can evaluate, distribute, use and preserve things of value, (but) cannot create value.” By extreme contrast, Berry saw the Great Economy as being related to our natural world and the intelligence of the Universe. In his words, “We may transform trees into boards, and boards into chairs, adding value at each transformation. In a good human economy, these transformations would be made by good work, which would be properly valued with the workers properly rewarded. But a good human economy would recognize at the same time that it was dealing all

along with materials and powers that it did not make. It did not make trees, and it did not make the intelligence and talents of the human workers. What the humans have added at every step is artificial, made by art, and though the value of art is critical to human life, it is a secondary value.” Given such assertions, it should be abundantly clear, especially with respect to the marketplace, that what Wendell Berry has described as the roles of the “Great” and the “Little” Economies are being reversed. For those who aren’t ready to surrender to that reversal and continue to be willing to give the world of technology the benefit of the doubt, it could be argued that it isn’t so much a matter of questioning the truth of Berry’s observation as it is simply pursuing what Frank Lloyd Wright long ago advocated as humanity “taking a positive hand in creation.” The difference is that Wright saw the ultimate human objective as becoming Nature’s partner not its replacement.

Technology and the Puzzling Pursuit of Community If it were possible, by the wave of a technological wand, to stop all wars, eliminate poverty, replace ignorance with caring and intellectual mastery, give all humans the visual appeal of a Venus or an Adonis and the physical prowess of an Olympian, all without any individual or group effort, would you wave that wand? The question goes to the heart of what we value and how we think about our human 30

Technology's Gifts and Threats

purpose—both as individuals and in groups. As we enter the unchartered and fast-changing realities made possible by technology, might it not be the height of wisdom to go beyond the kind of questions that are easy to address and consider those that are more holistically challenging? While many are asking these questions for the first time, the subject is anything but new. In 1989, I was given a book that I regarded then—and for most of the intervening years—to be more of a curiosity than anything to inspire my more serious inquiry. The book, Are you a Transhuman?, was written by FM-2030 (his actual name), who’s described on the cover as “America’s Foremost Futurist.” I never gave the book’s content much thought—at least that was how I considered it—until I came across Radical Evolution: Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to be Human, a book written 16 years later by Joel Garreau, someone I’ve met and respect. Before reading the first page of his book, I looked through its 34page index hoping to find listings related to the realm or idea of community, but they were nowhere to be found. Instead, what jumped out were the book’s 19 references to “transhumanism,” including the excerpts below, all indicating or implying transhumanism’s significance, not just for the future of technology but, more fundamentally, for what it suggests about life itself.

“The gulf between what engineers are actually creating today and what ordinary readers might find believable is significant. It is the first challenge to make sense of this world unfolding before us, in which we face the biggest change in tens of thousands of years in what it means to be human. “This cultural revolution in which we are immersed is no more a tale of bits and bytes than the story of Galileo is about paired lenses. In the Renaissance, the big deal was not telescopes. It was about realizing that the Earth is a minor planet revolving around an unexceptional star in an unfashionable part of the universe. Today, the story is no less attitude-adjusting. It is about the defining cultural, social, and political issues of our age. It is about human transformation.” Garreau’s observations discredit the roles of architecture, planning, and, ultimately, community or, at least, change them forever. Why bother designing with respect for the subtleties of human inspiration and behavior if the future is going to be designed and controlled by technology? Before addressing this question, consider these further promises based on technology’s growing reach: The union between human and technological has been most dramatically addressed by Ray Kurzweil, whose past inventions are significant and whose current positions are

Technology's Gifts and Threats

impressively convincing as set forth in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. His other writings include Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (with Tommy Grossman, MD) and The

Age of Spiritual Machines. In addition to his writings and crusading for a very different and amazing future, Kurzweil currently serves as Google’s Director of Engineering and as the Chancellor of Singularity University. At the core of his message is that the day is coming when we’ll have the choice to live forever, at which time we’ll no longer be biological but may still be human. Furthermore, he’s suggested that we’re most likely the only Beings in the universe for which our destiny will one day serve as our conscience.

The Promise of Abundance Buckminster Fuller was a dear friend and pioneering hero to those who not only have faith in the future in general but with respect to design and technology in particular. His faith in technology—over anything having to do with, for example, political judgment—was made unmistakably clear in one of his familiar refrains: “If we were to shut down all the activities of industry, within six months, the world’s people would all starve to death. If, on the other hand, all of the world’s politicians were put into orbit, no one would know they were gone!” The promise of Fuller’s vision has been given new life by the 33

science-based optimism chronicled by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler in both their 2012 book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, and, three years later, in, Bold: How to Create Wealth and Impact the World. Fuller’s faith as advanced into the digital age is clearly set forth in the following two sentences taken from Diamandis’s and Kotler’s first book: “Imagine a world of nine billion people with clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and nonpolluting, ubiquitous energy. Building this better world is humanity’s greatest challenge.” Inspired by the comprehensive nature of what these authors ask us to imagine, I, in my typical fashion, went immediately to the index, feeling certain that, given what I’d just read, I’d be directed to passages focused on the design and behavioral role of community. Instead, I found only this single entry: “Community computer center.” What I did find to be most engaging was this illustration from Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think: “Over the past 150,000 years, Homo sapiens evolved in a world that was local and linear, but today’s environment is global and exponential. In our ancestor’s world of the local, most everything that happened in their day happened within a day’s walk. In their linear environment, change was excruciatingly slow. Life from one generation to the next was effectively the same, and when change did arrive, it was always followed by a linear progression. To give a sense of

Technology's Gifts and Threats

the difference, if I take thirty linear steps (calling one step a meter) from the front door of my Santa Monica home, I end up thirty meters away. However, if I take thirty exponential steps (one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on), I end up a billion meters away, or, effectively, lapping the globe twenty-six times.”

Life Beyond the Digital Our greatest mistake would be to assume that statements like the following imply that what it once took the genius of a Shakespeare or an Einstein to produce can now be achieved by all: “Today, a street stall in Mumbai can access more information, maps, statistics, academic papers, price trends, futures markets, and data than a US president could only a few decades ago.” The unmistakable intent of this observation is to suggest we should be sufficiently impressed with technology that we move in the direction of being willing to equate the greatness and wisdom of the past with today’s easy-to-access accumulation of information. This, on its own, is obviously worrisome, but more troubling is the degree to which our notion of reality has already been seduced and replaced by the virtual. To regain my faith in the future, I’ve long appreciated and now share the following wisdom from Professor Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, where she’s both the founder and director of the “MIR Initiative on 35

Technology and Self ” and a licensed clinical psychologist. The title of and graphic on the cover of her book, shown on the facing page, offers a visual summary of concerns. Eight individuals—four children and four adults—are each shown in the increasingly typical, bent-forward posture of looking diagonally down. For those who don’t get the imagery, the book’s title says it all: Alone Together: Why We Expect

More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Nothing is more reassuring than that someone with Professor Turkle’s wisdom and understanding can still write this: “Communities are constituted by physical proximity, shared concerns, real consequences, and common responsibilities. Its members help each other in the most productive ways… We need children who are given time and protection to experience childhood. We need communities.” Many of us are aware of Moore’s Law, which predicted that the processor chips that determine the range of computational power would double in speed every 18 months. This has held true for decades and only now is beginning to break down due to manufacturing applications pending the development of quantum computing. However, given our focus on the art of community, a useful and certainly relevant observation would be to acknowledge that there is no Moore’s Law for predicting the doubling of wise and caring behavior. Nor is there an equivalent Moore’s Law for keeping us from annihilating each other. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to accept both the limitations and

For a simple example of what connects us in one way while disconnecting us in others, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of trip and fall injuries. As portrayed on the cover of this book, the hand-held devices that now connect us to the new reality have taken our attention away from where we are and where weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not only spending less time with each other, we are spending less and less time with our own physical reality. 37

threats that are made possible when our most impressive tools meet up with the variety of our not-always-benign human intentions. While it was technology that made 9/11 possible, it was human beliefs and behaviors that lead to its ultimate and tragic outcome. There are two basic applications of technology—both of which may appear worthy if not miraculous—but they’re not the same. The first extends our human abilities and tendencies—including machines required for flight and the operation of satellites along with wireless and digital transmission. These are all amplifiers of our interests and desires. The second raises the question of whether the expanding abilities made possible by what we’ve invented will be used for good or ill. We’re impressed that a computer outperformed the world’s best player in a game of chess. Greater insight may be provided by finding out how the world’s most powerful computer might play a different game—for example, asking it to answer a few questions. For example: Dear Computer: Given the very latest and growing reach of your computational power—not only that which is imaginable in the present but using your digital ability to call upon the technological wisdom concerning the future—please tell us:

Technology's Gifts and Threats

1) Will we be able to produce, with computers, art of the caliber of Shakespeare, Bach, and Rembrandt, who had only the biological technology of their hearts, minds, and hands? Or, perhaps, how would the accomplishments of these men have been greater if they had computers? 2) Given your answer to the first question, how will we humans now become wiser and more creative, and how will the ever-more-powerful reach of technology bridge the gap between fundamentalist religions and beliefs that not only divide us in the present but threaten our future existence using the ways and means made possible by what you have to offer? 3) Please describe, in terms that we biologically limited humans might find easy to imagine, how your promise of eternal life, as an option for all, will be experienced when that becomes our new reality, and, in terms of our continually increasing powers, what comes after that. These questions have nothing to do with being either frivolous or confrontational with respect to the prophecies of Ray Kurzweil and others. They’ve been raised for two very basic reasons. The first is, if there are good and productive answers, it would certainly be reasonable, if not urgent, to know what they are. The second and far more important reason—and one that I regard to be a threat to the future—includes anything that takes our focus off making the world work in the here and now. We should have no quarrel with anyone’s great faith in future blessings

made possible by technology unless it serves to diminish or replace our willingness to do the far less glamourous kind of heavy lifting required to address the physical, economic, and behavioral problems of the present.

Learning from the Wisdom of Experience We humans have gone through threatening times and, with the benefit of hindsight, some of what were thought to be the solutions of the past can now be understood to be nothing but silly. As a pre-teen living in Chicago during the so-called “duck and cover” crusades, whenever we heard air-raid sirens announcing the imminent threat of an atomic bomb attack, we were to duck down and get under our school desks in order to protect ourselves from the radiation. (As though that would help!) Years later, Russia and the United States agreed to keep the peace by way of a high-level agreement known as “MAD,” which stood for “Mutually Assured Destruction.” If we come to our senses and play our cards right, might we be able to start moving in the direction of “AWE”: “Artfully Wondrous Environments?” Crusading in that direction are the many voices in the past that have yet to be listened to or understood. In 1945, Emery Reeves wrote The Anatomy of Peace, in which he offered this observation: “There is not the slightest hope that we can possibly solve any of our vital problems until we rise above dogmatic nation-centric conceptions 40

Technology's Gifts and Threats

and realize that, in order to understand the political, economic, and social problems of this highly integrated and industrialized world, we have to shift our standpoint and see all the nations and national matters in motion, in their interrelated functions, rotating according to the same laws without any fixed points created by our own imagination for our own convenience.” Rather than seeing this as anything radical, Reeves was simply stating that striving for peace requires what our own Alexander Hamilton wrote in his Federalist Paper No. 6: “To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of the ages.” I would hope, by now or at least soon, we’ll begin to accept that our new “neighborhood” is planet Earth. In light of the foregoing insights from both Emery Reeves and Alexander Hamilton, consider this observation from another observer who would likely think of technology as being an ever-more-powerful tool but certainly not an answer in itself. The former US Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger, summed up his global effort on behalf of peace with this single sentence: “The vision of a world community based on justice, not power, is the necessity of our age… the test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.” The most challenging task for the future will be to accept that technology will increase exponentially in all areas where

technology can reign while never forgetting that any hope for a successful way of life will always remain a very human and behaviorally centered quest. And, given this reality, the most important achievement will be the extent to which we learn to respect and care for both nature and each other— which is a pretty good definition of community. In less dazzling but far more troublesome ways, we easily recognize unaddressed problems associated with poverty, injustice, unemployment, and crime as well as the host of issues associated with local to global conflict. More subtle, by far, are the potential problems associated with what we would consider to be progress. Returning to Joel Garreau’s assertion that we’re “riding a curve of exponential change that is transforming human nature,” we might at least want to look more closely at the nature of this progress. According to Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center, “If the US has a national religion, the closest thing to it is faith in technology,” but “technology is not seen as a panacea for fixing the environment.” Because we’ve come to relate technological breakthroughs with the creation of instant billionaires, I offer the following three, differing views from individuals whose words might interest us in a broader sense. The first two writers are well known. The third view—which might, one day, become equally if not far more compelling—is from a book written by a native of South Carolina, who, in a small-format,

Technology's Gifts and Threats

84-page book, writes with an extraordinary grasp of the founding histories of the arts, religion, and science. In a 1917 letter to a friend, Albert Einstein wrote, “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” He also wrote, “It is appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.” Even more shocking with respect to what others are predicting about technology replacing biology while still remaining human are these prophetic words written more than seven decades ago in by C.S. Lewis: “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. We shall…be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it? For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make of other men what they please.” The last excerpt was written more than a half century ago by James H. Burroughs of Conway, South Carolina, a man revered far more for his work as an artist than as a writer. To include his observations in a class with Albert Einstein and C.S. Lewis is a faith-inspiring hope that our small towns everywhere might be so blessed with the kind of grassroots wisdom exemplified by the following: “For years, an idea has haunted me. Now I am possessed by it, and it leads me to write these thoughts. With a pine cone and a hickory

nut for paperweights and the sky for a ceiling, Nature and I collaborate, and the best passages are hers. In America, our rivers and streams are choked by a noxious scum of sewage and a froth of detergents, and millions of birds fall victim to a chemical holocaust directed against the insects that are their food supply. The noble old folk-pleasures of angling and fowling are equipped with lures and weapons of cruel and cunning efficiency. Everywhere Nature is exploited and ravaged, and the landscape so littered with beer cans that Mother Nature looks like a slovenly wench in metallic haircurlers. For himself (and he is the summation of Nature), man has devised the supreme desecration: the crowning achievement of technology, the nuclear bomb.”

As Technology Increases, Will the Social Order Decline? Both the question above and what follows are from a February 6, 2014 paper by Tim Wu. Mr. Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the director of the Poliak Center for the First Amendment at the Columbia Journalism School. In his paper, Mr. Wu states: “The technological evolution is more important to humanity’s near future than biological evolution; nowadays, it is not the biological chisel but the technological chainsaw that is most quickly redefining what it means to be human. The devices we use change the way we live much faster than any contest among genes… Assuming that we really are evolving as we wear or 44

Technology's Gifts and Threats

inhabit more technological prosthetics—like ever-smarter phones, helpful glasses, and brainy cars—here’s the big question: Will that type of evolution take us in desirable directions, as we usually assume to be true of biological evolution?” Some, like Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly, believe the answer is a resounding “yes.” In his book, What Technology Wants, Kelly writes: “Technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency; Increasing opportunity; Increasing emergence; Increasing complexity; Increasing diversity; Increasing specialization; Increasing ubiquity; Increasing freedom; Increasing mutualism; Increasing beauty; Increasing sentience; Increasing structure; Increasing the ability of evolution.” Being less than satisfied with such bravado, we return to the insights of Tim Wu: “We can test the ‘Increasing’ theory by taking a quick trip up north to an isolated area south of the Hudson Bay. Here live the Oji-Cree, a people numbering about thirty thousand who inhabit a cold and desolate land roughly the size of Germany. The good news is that, nowadays, the Oji-Cree no longer face the threat of winter starvation, which regularly killed people in earlier times. They can more easily import and store the food they need, and they enjoy pleasures like sweets and alcohol. Life has become more comfortable. The constant labor of canoeing or snowshoeing has been eliminated by outboard engines

and snowmobiles. Television made it north in the nineteeneighties, and it has proved enormously popular. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But, in the main, the Oji-Cree story is not a happy one. Since the arrival of new technologies, the population has suffered a massive increase in morbid obesity, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Social problems are rampant: idleness, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide have reached some of the highest levels on Earth. Diabetes, in particular, has become so common (affecting forty percent of the population) that researchers think that many children, after exposure in the womb, are born with an increased predisposition to the disease. Childhood obesity is widespread, and ten-year-olds sometimes appear middleaged. Recently, the Chief of a small Oji-Cree community estimated that half of his adult population was addicted to OxyContin or other painkillers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Technology is not the only cause of these changes, but scientists have made clear that it is a driving factor. In previous times, the Oji-Cree lifestyle required daily workouts that rivaled those of a professional athlete. In the early 20th century, writes one researcher, walking up to 100 km/day was not uncommon. But those days are over, replaced by modern comforts. Despite the introduction of modern medicine, the health outcomes of the Oji-Cree have declined in ways that will not be easy to reverse. The OjiCree are literally being killed by technological advances.â&#x20AC;? In addition to the warnings from individuals like Einstein, 46

Technology's Gifts and Threats

C.S. Lewis, James H. Burroughs, and Tim Wu, consider these contemporaneous concerns from Professor Steven Hawking. During an interview on the BBC, Hawking warned that, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Lastly, the muchrevered Elon Musk has noted that, in the longer-term, “Artificial Intelligence is our biggest existential threat.” Much of this focus on technology may seem more abstract than personal. To get a little closer to home, consider this testimony that appeared on the April 17, 2016, NBC television program “60 Minutes” in a segment that featured a group of German “hackers.” To summarize, the hackers demonstrated that the only thing needed to access an individual’s 24/7 whereabouts is to have that person’s cell phone number. There’s no need for an access code, and it doesn’t matter whether the cell phone is on or off for hackers to have both visual and voice access. In the words of John Hering, one of the hackers interviewed, “We live in a world where we can’t trust the technology we create.” Even if we could one day devise fail-safe protection from digital attacks, we’d still have to face the consequences resulting from the damage our addiction to technology is causing to ourselves in terms of our creativity, our wellbeing, and our humanity. This issue requires no speculation about the future but only a greater awareness concerning the present. Why commit to the discipline of learning how to

play a musical instrument when we can buy ones that play themselves? A related example is children who say they want to play indoors because that’s where the electrical outlets are. Perhaps the day will come when the physical presence of schools and universities, concert halls, art galleries, or even the mystery and majesty associated with the sights and sounds of Nature will become nothing more than a digital memory. If that happens, we’ll not only lose our great artists, we’ll lose our greatest minds, including people like the man who discovered E=mc2, who said, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger... is as good as dead... Behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly...”

THREE

It Takes a Village “Above all we need, particularly as children, the reassuring presence of a visible community, an intimate group that enfolds us with understanding and love, and that becomes an object of our spontaneous loyalty, as a criterion and point of reference for the rest of the human race.” —Lewis Mumford

rom early and scathing writings like Paul Goodman’s

Compulsory Miseducation and Growing Up Absurd

to the more recent accounts of the mysterious disappearance of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100-million grant to public schools in Newark, New Jersey, one might be inclined to ask if the structure of the educational system is designed more to serve as the recipient of massive funding than for the purpose of educating. A related question asks, To what extent have our institutions based their qualifications on easy-to-rank test scores as opposed to more holistic—and, therefore, difficult-tomeasure—accomplishments? At the lowest grade levels, isn’t the obvious problem that “standardized tests” are given

to anything but “standardized children,” which certainly deserves our concern? And, at the highest level, what about Walt Whitman’s counsel that, “Wisdom cannot finally be tested in the schools. Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.” Outside the entrenched levels of bureaucracy, we may all sense that formal education needs something more than what can be tested in schools. Why else would books be titled and speeches given that are focused on the axiom, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child”? We like saying these words. They seem both right and obvious. But where are these villages? Are they taking everyone in, or are they ignoring those who could profit the most in favor of those whose test scores will make the school look good? And, if they were to take everyone in, would their managerial structure and teaching skills know how to deal with the disparities among the students? Once again quoting Edward de Bono, in his 1976 book, Teaching

Thinking, he wrote, “Education sets up its own exams to test how well it is preparing pupils for those exams. Nor must we forget the ‘archway effect,’ which states that if a stream of brilliant people goes towards an archway, then from that archway will emerge a stream of brilliant people, even if the archway has done no more than straddle their passage.” Whether we’re interested in questions like these may be an indication of whether we’re sufficiently aware to care about the future of our children, which is obviously inseparable from the future of our country and beyond.

It Takes a Village

In addition to it taking a village to raise a child, it not only requires money but also a wise and strategic use of whatever funding is available. A great deal of attention was given to the $100-million-dollar grant that the founder of Facebook contributed to help New Jersey’s public school system. Zuckerberg’s generosity was matched by others, ultimately doubling the amount of his contribution. Unfortunately, the intention and hope that motivated the gift of $200 million didn’t make it to the finish line. This sad story was first chronicled by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, then related by Business Insider, and was further addressed in Dale Russakoff ’s book, The Prize. Instead of developing a model for saving American education, the story turned out to be about the disappearance of $200 million, all spent during a fiveyear period involving, among other issues, $1000-a-day consultations with little to show for solving the problems of our most prevalent approach to education. And now Mr. Zuckerberg has pledged 99 percent of his Facebook stock—which, at the time of his announcement, was worth $45 billion. The announcement was made with neither a timeline nor specifics concerning its intended purpose, which reminded me of a wealthy and quite wise individual who said, “It is far easier to accumulate a fortune than to know what to do with it.”

The StarShine Effect There are many fine and well-endowed schools that could be referenced here, but because our focus is on community— which only works if it includes everyone—what follows is an account of a K-12 school that’s all about the nurturing of children in very challenging circumstances. Despite the uncommon commitment of its founder and all others involved, there hasn’t been a day in StarShine Academy’s twelve-year history that it hasn’t had to face financial issues, and never more so than at the present. The school’s first location was described as having the highest number of school drop-outs, the highest rate of teen pregnancies, and the greatest number of drive-by shootings. It has since moved and expanded to a better location where it continues to welcome the kinds of individuals who face a wide array of challenges. Trish McCarty, the school’s founder, was a banker before she became an educator, but neither title begins to suggest what motivates her and makes her so effective. Her dedication reminds me of a question Frank Lloyd Wright once posed to a group of his apprentices: “Do any of you know the definition of an idea?” The sense in which the question was asked didn’t seem to suggest that he wanted either a quick or eager response. After a brief and uneasy pause, he added a second question, only this time with a more forceful intention: “Have any of you ever had an idea”… He paused and then delivered, with a kind of operatic crescendo, “Has 52

It Takes a Village

an idea ever had you — one that simply wouldn’t let go?” Returning to Trish McCarty, she’s clearly an individual for whom the “idea” of K-12 education has her and won’t let go. In our very first meeting, more than a decade after the school's founding, what I remember most is the caring sense with which she said, “If we can’t reach these kids, we’re going to lose our country.” And as for it taking a village to raise a child, on day one, when she had almost nothing to offer in terms of what might be considered to be the most basic kinds of facilities for operating a school, by way of her magic, she’d clearly created a village. While much has been accomplished since that first meeting, what remains constant is the unquenchable faith she uses to create bridges that seem to make it both possible and easier to cross over all kinds of barriers, including severely inadequate funding. Here, in brief, is a history of StarShine’s past twelve years along with some sense of the seeds that continue to be planted for that which is yet to be. Having had nothing to do with education, Ms. McCarty’s new commitment was initiated by the devastating events of September 11, 2001. It triggered the long-ago words of her father, a dedicated United States Air Force patriot who wanted the best future for his children. Specifically, she remembers him saying, “Our country is on a road to failure because of the lack of properly educating our youth.”

Inspired by these words, she soon added her own, which she has since presented to audiences all over the world: “The K-12 system of education needs far more than piecemeal reforms. What it needs is a systematic overhaul coupled with well-articulated and tactical strategies for implementing the needed changes. Sustainability and economic development begin with a child’s learned behavior. If we indeed want a better world, we must begin with the individual child. As long as one person is educated to be angry, fearful, or hopeless, we are all at risk.”

Ideas Before Funding Unlike the multi-million-dollar grants that have been given to major institutions and named after their grantors, StarShine Academy began and continues to operate with little money but with an abundance of commitment, enthusiasm, and ideas. These are the kinds of ideas that, like the unseen rudder of a great ship, determine the direction of all else. And it’s in the realm of ideas that Trish McCarty and StarShine Academy are getting a most powerful, nonmonetary kind of attention. As an example of the school’s direction, the word “holistic,” which is almost unheard of in relation to K-12 education, is used in all StarShine materials. This caused an angry response from the Arizona Charter Board, resulting in their formally accusing StarShine of wasting academic dollars on activities like student-centered gardening. The 54

It Takes a Village

aggravation and harm caused to StarShine by the Charter Board escalated until, in 2011, the School’s directors felt that the only way to protect its integrity was to file suit. The court was sufficiently outraged by the evidence presented that, after only one day, it ruled in StarShine’s favor. Having begun as a local initiative by way of its own ideasbased magnetism, the StarShine story has gone global. Trish McCarty has addressed the World Economic Initiative Summit at the United Nations regarding K-12 education’s impact on economic growth in the world. She and her staff have researched and made use of the decades of studies that document the relationships among quality education and the economy and the reduction in crime in both villages and nations. She was asked and accepted an invitation to train 800 teachers in Liberia. This country had been in a civil war for over twenty years and was trying to bring development and stability back to its people. She conferred with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who became the first woman in Africa to be elected to serve as president of her country. McCarty believes that children must first learn what it means to take care—not only of their school but of their country and each other. Her visit to Liberia had an immediate impact in that direction. The resultant community benefits have had a positive outcome in matters as simple as having teachers and students picking up trash and removing graffiti from the walls of their classrooms.

For the past five years, StarShine has been developing its â&#x20AC;&#x153;StarShine School in a Boxâ&#x20AC;? as a scalable solution to what children all over the world need to know in order to become healthy, happy, and contributing members of society. The School in a Box idea is centered around the tactics and strategies necessary to teach and learn self-motivation. This includes self-realization along with financial literacy, art, music, health, and brain- and heart-based learning, all involving community interaction and development. As Trish McCarty views it, "Everywhere in nature we see and experience a natural order of intelligence and beauty, always longing to burst forth. Children, especially, feel and respond to this harmony and long to join in and share the gifts they were born to have and give. They are eager to learn and create success when they feel that it is safe and possible to do so. This requires compassionate, connected, caring and authentic power, communicated in ways that transcend the barriers of language, culture, socio-economic status and more. Beauty, art, music, cleanliness, structure, and order are all about creating an environment that extends beyond the reach of words."

It Takes a Village

StarShineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Founder, Trish McCarty, delivering a speech in June, 2015 for the World Economic Initiative Summit of International Business Leaders at the United Nations on behalf of its office of Communication and Global Teaching and Learning.

Working in the garden is a regular experience at StarShine, all designed for teaching health and wellbeing. Knowing how to grow food greatly encourages people to believe they will always have enough.

These visiting nuns from Vietnam communicated with the children, not with words, but with love, as they could not speak English.

There’s no language barrier where children are involved. These children in were simply happy that the StarShine method had come to them. StarShine Academy partnered with the Walton Family Foundation to help a small fishing village in Puerto Peñasco. Working to improve the outcomes for students in the local schools, the goal was to achieve economic and social impact beyond or in addition to common test scores. It began as a very small endeavor involving only two teachers in two classrooms. Prior to the beginning of the training, news spread throughout the town and, on the first meeting, 38 teachers attended along with the mayor’s wife, all eager to implement changes that would benefit their kids. Parents—often single mothers—came to the schools to help paint the walls. The once-dominant presence of trash and graffiti was removed. Gardens were created at every school. Students taught other students. Music was played and sung. It was the StarShine Effect in action. 58

It Takes a Village

When the City Becomes the Campus Beacon Academy is a high school located in the Evanston area of Chicago. Its “campus” is built on the notion of facilitating and providing access to opportunities throughout the entire city. Community schooling typically refers to opening up schools to the assistance and support of parents and other members of the community. That which influences Beacon is different, one might say even inverted—it’s about taking the school out into the community. Through partnerships with area arts, education, business, not-for-profit, and athletic organizations, the school not only encourages but expects students to develop their passions, inspired by the dedicated work of others. One of its four core values states: “At Beacon Academy, students are expected to reach outside of the traditional classroom to connect with experts in the community and to collaborate with students, teachers, and researchers across the globe.” This is a community school in the strongest sense, with partnerships across the educational spectrum. Students at Beacon Academy study theater with a local theater company and learn the demands of small-business enterprises through internships. They work on cuttingedge research projects with local university professors, and they pursue sports through a local YMCA. In all of these instances, the kids not only find opportunities to further their passions but they come to know what it means to

participate in and be part of organizations outside the walls of a traditional high school. And, of course, all of these connections support the goals of both neighborhood and regional organizations. Being deeply imbued with the energy and commitment of the greater community, Beacon Academy has turned out to be highly successful, not only because an entrepreneurial and dedicated group helped build a strong foundation but because they created something that engages the spirit, energy, and complexity of daily life. Before Beacon Academy was able to open its doors in the fall of 2014, a local educational economist had already expressed his skepticism. With a hasty and somewhat sarcastic “good luck,” this expert noted that the area was saturated with educational options and, thus, there was no room for another high school. Despite his doubting words, the school has become, by anyone’s measure, a huge success. What the expert in the economics of education wasn’t able to imagine (and so much about community is about tapping into imagination) is that students and families yearn for something connected, intimate, and communityminded. It’s these elements that unite and prove the power of interest-based educators—often against all odds.

C ARING L O VE COM M ITMENT HU M ILITY U NITY UNDERSTA N DING CREAT I VITY PAR T ICIPATION JO Y

FOUR

Continuing Care Retirement Communities “Not only does education continue when schooling ends, but it is not confined to what may be studied in adult education courses. The world is an incomparable classroom, and life is a memorable teacher for those who aren’t afraid of her.” —John W. Gardner

aving addressed what it takes to raise a child, we now jump over everything in between to focus on what it takes to care for and nurture our elders. Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) aren’t only significant for what they have to offer to a specific age group but as living laboratories for how these same disciplines and considerations might be extended to address the wider arena of planning for community in general. What we once thought of as retirement has blossomed into a new vitality. So-called senior citizens are the fastest growing segment of our population, with various services for the elderly having doubled and tripled in recent years.

CCRCs are devoted entirely to this growing demographic and bursting with potential for more integrated ways to serve a market that, within the next three decades, will become the single largest age group. To long for retirement is understandable, especially if work is divorced from one’s interests or is back-breaking or even life-threatening. A century ago, this was a pretty accurate description for most workers—nearly all of whom were men—and dying on the job wasn’t uncommon. But what happens when work becomes inseparable from what we desire and who we are? Dramatic examples of work-as-life are everywhere, with some of the most notable being writers, teachers, scientists, orchestra conductors, musicians, designers, architects, and artists of all kinds. If we not only built things to earn a living but also loved building, would we ever stop pursuing our craft? If we were not only teachers but we loved learning, would we ever stop reaching out for new discoveries? If we were not only musicians but also loved music, would we ever stop practicing? Someone once asked the great cellist, Pablo Casals, when in his nineties why he continued to practice. He answered simply, “I think I am getting better.” In his 91st year, Frank Lloyd Wright said, “One of the things I like most about myself is that I can still learn something.” Such sentiments are now echoing throughout the retirement programs of colleges and universities, which have relevance to the educators and alumni as well as to the general public.

There are many reasons for this new reality, not the least of which is that medical research points to mental exercise having benefits for the mind just as physical exercise has long been known to have for the body. Many people have stated their version of, “When death finds you, may it find you fully alive.” While that’s something we might wish could be true for all of us, it’s not likely to be something any of us can achieve on our own. Nor will our interactions by way of computer-based technologies ever replace the stimulation of human contact or the inspiration of environmental beauty. It doesn’t seem to matter how involved or energized we may be in our youth. If that spirit doesn’t continue, neither will our vitality. Nicholas Murray Butler, who served as president of Columbia University in the 1900s and later received a Nobel Prize, put this into a most chilling perspective. Referring to what he too often saw in the lives of his students, his observation was: “Dead at 30, buried at 60.” This sentiment was echoed decades later by Norman Cousins, who said, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Author and researcher Thom Hartman describes how easily this withering away can take place and how important the shared sense of community is for avoiding the decline of vitality: “The work of community serves as a galvanizing point, a shared effort that is, in the simple act of doing

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

it, a living out of the vision. There are parallels to this in individual life as well. When a person doesn’t feel a sense of mission or purpose, their life often slides rudderless toward a dull, cardboard-like existence. People who have a sense of mission about their work are happier, more motivated, more productive, and more likely to remain healthy—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.” This not only calls upon us to do our part as individuals but to engage in life-enriching relationships with others in ways that can be encouraged by the environmental and spatial design in which our daily activities take place. No one has ever described this connection better than Frank Lloyd Wright: “Whether people are fully conscious of this or not, they actually derive countenance and sustenance from the atmosphere of the people and things they live in or with. They are rooted in them just as a plant is to the soil in which it is planted.” In addition to their own focused purpose, today’s CCRCs represent a rich and varied opportunity for thinking about how we program, strategize, and design for community in general. CCRCs are not only richly complex with respect to their own pursuits but they offer an experiential study concerning the needs of their target market, including valuable insights and lessons for wider application. More specifically, rather than the idea of home consisting of lifelong friends and relatives, everything to do with the design, atmosphere, and services of the CCRCs must help to engage 65

individuals who are, at first, new and total strangers into a very different but rich sense of community.

Considerations for Tomorrow 1. The CCRCs that get most of our attention, simply by the cost of their operations, exclude approximately 90 percent of those who fall within the targeted age group. 2. The historic longevity of CCRC residents is continually increasing. 3. For all manner of reasons, including the changing nature of work along with the ever-growing body of studies regarding mental health and vitality, our currently held ideas concerning retirement will become less and less desirable or even possible. 4. CCRCs will be among the first programmed communities to take advantage of the more varied, safe, and convenient transportation opportunities that will increasingly replace the now more costly and troublesome experience of owning a car. This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t because the residents canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t drive but because of the economy of on-call, portal-to-portal vehicles along with not having to worry about maintenance or finding places to park. 5. In ways that will influence societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall range of choices, what CCRCs have to offer to the elderly will merge into more seamless and special

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

opportunities for how we design general provisions for all ages and stages.

An awakening in this direction has been clearly acknowledged and symbolized by a group of CCRC leaders. At a March, 2015 meeting in Boston, they made it official that the name “Continuing Care Retirement Communities” (CCRCs) would be changed to “Life Plan Communities” (LPCs).

It’s only a matter of time before the word “community” will be all we need to convey not only a degree of intention but a deeply held sense of commitment. Having said this, for the remainder of this book we’ll continue to use the more familiar reference to the CCRC description. The future will provide us with an increasingly individual variety of living arrangements. And while demographics are useful, they’re not destiny. The dominant market for CCRCs has been historically limited to those who already live in the selected area. This will be less true as CCRCs begin to embrace ever-younger age groups, especially those located in highly desired “magnet” or tourist areas.

Personal and Shared Amenities In CCRCs, the difficulty in programming everything from the variety of dining experiences to education, entertainment, and physical fitness has been largely due to the nature of the CCRC as a moving target—moving 67

generally in the direction of an ever-increasing amount of the shared space per apartment unit. For good reasons, the desired objective has been to attract and inspire the residents to take greater advantage of the inspirational and physical amenities for living more fully, including a healthy association with others. At the same time, for reasons of economy, there will always be the search for innovative ways of doing more with less. One of the most interesting issues regarding the type and quality of special and shared provisions is to question who and what is behind the historically expanding, cost-adding amenities. Is it the judgment of the potential residents or that of their children, who want to feel that they’ve made or helped to make all decisions in their parents’ best interests? This is a perceptual contest between how something appears at first glance and how it will live for those who make it their full-time home. While the subject deserves more study, it seems pretty clear that the expanding facilities have been more obviously designed to get a favorable approval from the children. To broaden our own studies, we sought out the views of those for whom life in a CCRC has been their long-term experience. This search began with informal interviews followed by more specific and written exchanges. The following response was selected—and is included here in full—because it offers an overview of the individual’s life,

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

the last twenty-one years of which were lived entirely within a CCRC. Her account includes the death of her spouse along with a sense of her own unknown and unknowable future. Another reason for selecting her response is that she includes a description of her way of life before moving to a CCRC and the extent to which she expressed her concerns and became a highly contributing member to her now communal way of living. Lastly, she addresses the complexity of feelings that occur when people residing in the independent units begin to think about or experience the daily life of those in the community who require assisted living.

Life as Viewed by a Long-term Resident â&#x20AC;&#x153;My husband and I were married in 1951. Our first child was born and passed away in March of the following year. Between that time and 1969, our family grew to include five children. We lived in a three-flat building. The first floor was occupied by my parents, the second by one of my aunts and grandmother, and the third by my husband and our five children. Our three groups helped each other in many ways including sharing some of our meals together, especially at parties and holiday gatherings. We shared our back yard for the childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recreation and play including a sand box, swing, and slide set along with a large, set-up swimming pool for the summers and contouring the ground for an ice rink in the winters. 69

“I gave piano lessons in my home for thirty students each week with twice yearly recitals. Our extended family had always enjoyed much pleasure together, but the time came when we began to think about moving to the suburbs where the schools offered a better fit our children’s needs. By that time, my aunt and grandmother had passed away and my mother was not used to living without having her family close by. Her displeasure encouraged us in 1974 to buy a house in the suburbs, which again would be a place we could share. “In our new home, my family lived on the floor above my parent’s studio apartment, where we all enjoyed and found the arrangement to be very satisfactory. That all changed when my dad passed away, leaving my mother dreading the thought of being left alone. At the same time, my husband’s arthritis was worsening, making stairs in the house along with the normal kinds of repairs, maintenance, and lawn work too much for him to handle. By then, our children had married and were living elsewhere. Mother had a stroke after which she was moved to a nursing home where she remained for the rest of her life. This left my husband and me living alone in a house with two kitchens, three baths, five bedrooms, two dining rooms, and a large laundry room—all too much room and too much work, inside and out, and all unnecessary and unwanted.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

It was Time to Downsize “The idea of moving to a retirement home sounded attractive, which was reinforced by our visits to check them out in person. In 1994, with only a brochure to view for the location we wanted because the facility had not yet been constructed, we signed up for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment on the third floor, complete with a deck and lovely view out to the surrounding grounds and gardens. As we planned for our new life, there would be no cooking, no cleaning, and, in place of the surroundings of suburbia, which can feel a bit isolating, we looked forward to the potential of meeting new friends who would be living in the other apartments. By 1996, these thoughts had come to fruition with my husband and I enjoying life in our new home. “Sharing meals with others became highly pleasurable experiences, followed by our choice of playing pool, cards or Rummy Q in the Den. We also enjoyed attending singalongs in the Fireside Room, and hymn sings, complete with musical guests of all kinds, all held in our large multi-purpose room. A Sunday Worship Service was started for which I formed and conducted a ladies’ ensemble that continues to this day, nineteen years after its inception. I supported everything to do with the musical programs in three ways (1) by playing either the piano or organ to accompany the singing of hymns, (2) having two of my daughters, who are

concert musicians, participate in our presentations; and, (3) funding and arranging the participation of outside talent. “In 2002, just six years after moving into our new home, my husband passed away. He had arthritis that was little by little taking away his ability to swallow. It was a trauma to go through but nothing like it would have been if we were still living in our former house, which would have necessitated the need to make all kinds of unfamiliar and unwanted adjustments on my own. My life continued in pretty much the same enjoyably predictable way until the day that our executive director informed those of us living on the third floor that management was being forced to turn the area we called home into an Assisted Living floor. He explained that this was made necessary by the demands of potential new residents who insisted that they would only move to a place with that provision, even though there was a full nursing home right across the campus. This felt like a ‘bombshell’ to those of us already here. “Moving in the first time was not easy, and now to consider moving again, even if only to a lower floor, was just as difficult to think about. Luckily for me, the apartment I moved down to was laid out exactly as the one I had to vacate. Although management said they would move everything, I enlisted family members to do the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, all closets and drawers, breakfront along with re-hanging all my photographs, and a lot of other

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

things. It eventually got done, and that was in 2011. Today I have peripheral neuropathy, a condition that is worsening and I am using a walker and cannot walk 10 steps without it. Last week I was given two wheelchairs—a light one for easy lifting into the trunk of a car and a heavy one that I will be able to actually move around myself by rolling the wheels with my hands or by shuffling my feet. I don’t look forward to that, but I foresee it in my future. I continue to have all my own furniture, I am able to play my own piano, listen to my own TV and stereo, can invite guests in to eat at my dining table, and can still enjoy my 20 plants that are sitting on my hall shelf along with those in various places in my apartment and also those on my balcony deck.” Just weeks before this book was going to print, I called this lady. Hearing more about how fully engaged she was, including organizing a variety of community events, arranging music, conducting rehearsals, and putting on concerts, she added, “I’ve never been busier. I love where I live.” The clearest takeaway from all of this is that the level of engagement with others that my correspondent described would have been entirely impossible to achieve with home care, no matter how skillful or elaborate the service might be. Simply stated, to remain fully alive depends on the kind of shared circumstances that make it possible to remain fully engaged. Just as we’ve observed that it takes a village

to raise a child, it takes no less of a village to enrich and bring out the best in the elderly. But that village can have many forms including those that combine stand-alone residences with central facilities. These are now being made available in an ever-richer variety of integrated community settings. In the beginning, because of the special services involved with assisted living and skilled nursing, there was some relatedness between CCRCs and the medical model, which, over time, has fashioned itself more toward the care and quality of a resort. The attraction of this shift was challenged by a woman who visited our office, having just toured one of the Southwest’s most lavishly appointed CCRCs. First she described its amazing likeness to one of our more elegant resorts, which I mistook for an expression of delight until she added, “Who wants to live in a resort? That kind of feeling is certainly not my idea of home!” All this suggests the need for continued exploration into the rich and varied ways for living in community.

Nakoma Sky The programming and design for this community, shown on pages 79-81, represents a coming together of its owner/ operator’s 25 years of operating experience at La Posada in Green Valley, Arizona, in concert with Swaback Partners’ long history of designing for the joys and complexities of community. La Posada is a CCRC comprising independent living, assisted living, Alzheimer’s care, and a nursing home. The goal for the owner/developer’s planned venture 74

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in Oro Valley, Arizona was to stand on the shoulders of its quarter century of trial-and-error experience in Green Valley, all to serve as guidance for their new venture. The corresponding goal for the architect was two-fold. The first was to accommodate the owner/developer’s program, which had been previously applied to a level site, to one that was not only anything but level and also divided into a series of “islands,” resulting in more than half the site being mandated by code to remain in its untouched, natural condition. Last but not least, the property’s existing zoning restricted its use to a maximum of 64 dwellings with a maximum height of no more than 18 feet. Either one of these limitations, by themselves, would have made the property useless for the owners’ purpose. Like all other rezoning attempts, the burden of proof was on the applicant. And, in this case, the requested uses exceeded that which were allowable by the governing code to a pretty-much unimaginable extent. La Posada, as an experienced owner/operator, was responsible for framing everything to do with the program’s physical and operational needs including the overall arrangement of the elements to be considered along with their respective sizes and most appropriate adjacencies. As the architects and planners, our role was to find ways to make the client’s program approvable by the town’s officials by making its three-dimensional reality uncommonly desirable. Anything short of this would have been “dead on arrival.” The thrust of our triple objective was to (1)

accommodate the owner/operator’s highly specific needs and directions, (2) turn the topographically constricted site into an advantage, and (3) create materials for presentation to both the interested citizens and public officials in whatever ways would illustrate the client’s uncommon commitment. Beyond the client’s own needs and objectives, any hoped-for consideration on the part of both the citizens and officials of Oro Valley would have to offer something sufficiently significant for the overall community. The application for rezoning requested that the number of proposed residential units be increased from 64 to 400— nearly six and a half times that allowable by code. A further request was to increase the height limitation from the allowed 18 feet to 75 feet plus another 10 feet for special architectural features, requiring the town to consider an increase of nearly five times the allowable height.

Making it Approvable by Making it Desirable Based on La Posada’s 25-year operational expertise, integrity, and track record along with its commitment to both a high degree of architectural character and the offering of amenities for public use, the application received a positive response from the town’s citizens, its Planning Department, the members of its Planning Commission, and, ultimately, the required approval from Oro Valley’s mayor and town council. The request for the town’s consideration wasn’t only to grant everything needed to achieve La Posada’s objectives 76

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but to do so in ways that offered benefits for the surrounding community. This included a public park and trail system, a multipurpose theater and meeting space along with public daycare and a fifth-level dining experience overlooking the dramatic expanse of the Catalina Mountains that would, at various times, be available to the public. A more general offering was La Posadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commitment to the threedimensional character and quality of the architecture. Other public-use facilities included a series of shops, offices, and galleries immediately adjacent to the signalized entrance into the property. Everything about the concept was based on a weaving together of the needs and objectives of the owner/operator, the public and private uses of the program, the challenging topography of the land, and the logic of its circulation system, with everything designed to take advantage of the sloping siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s panoramic views of the Catalina Mountains, as shown below.

The Program and the Plan

The 79-acre site on the facing page is numbered to indicate the layout of the overall concept, all keyed to the following elements: (1) There are two entrances into the property, but since only one was allowed to be signalized, a decision was made to locate amenities planned for use by the general public immediately available from this entrance, (2) Village Retail, CafĂŠ and Bar, (3) public welcome center, (4) residential cottages, (5) public look-out cabana and telescope, (6) trellised trailhead access with drinking fountains, public restrooms, golf cart parking, and bike racks, (7) community park with splash pad, dog run, shade ramadas, barbecue provisions, and restrooms, (8) public access features including a multipurpose theater and exhibit areas, (9) daycare and outdoor amphitheater, (10) north and south arrival plazas, (11) a village-type arrangement of health and fitness centers, beauty salon, arts and crafts center, technology center, post office, pools, cabanas, gathering areas, and firepits, (12) sweeping views of the majestic mountain range, (13) location of the bar and cafe, chef â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kitchen, and demonstration kitchen on the first level with a fifth-level restaurant and dining terrace focused on a panoramic vista of the Catalina Mountains, (14) 200 apartments with under-building parking, (15) a compound of attached villas, (16) hillside villas, (17) assisted living and memory care arranged around its own garden setting, (18) a centralized location for facilities management requirements, and (19) offices, classrooms, technology rooms, and community pools.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

16 11 19

15 13 14

10 6

5 2 4

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

An Architecture Appropriate to its Setting The above image shows how the spread of the main building was oriented to take advantage of the sweeping view of the Catalina Mountains. To further integrate the main structure with its setting, the design was stepped down at both ends to three and two stories, all further integrated by a series of retaining walls and cascading gardens. The lower image on the facing page illustrates three characteristics designed to create a village sense for both residents and the surrounding community: (1) indoor/ outdoor places that take advantage of the panoramic views, (2) the massed stepping of building heights to create an overall sculptural form, and (3) village-centered, mixed-use, pedestrian-centered walkways and gathering places. 81

Standardized Codes and Ordinances The concept for Nakoma Sky represents a textbook case of the difference between that which can be envisioned by standardized and mandated outcomes—all conveyed in words and numbers—and that which represents a creative search for the special-case solution. We might easily agree to the setting of whatever generic standards have evolved with respect to the overall health, safety, and welfare of the general community, especially when there are no more specific proposals for consideration. The same logic would apply to the special considerations that go into the granting of variances, which municipal Boards of Adjustments approve as long as they’re “not hardships of the applicant’s own making.” Because there are, as yet, no municipal “Boards of Cheerleaders” who have the power to grant approvals for creative, site-specific “Variances for Excellence,” this kind of pursuit must go before the municipality’s planning staff, its appointed planning commissioners, and its duly elected mayor and council. While the burden of proof is on the applicant, such approvals are possible and, as stated, were generously granted in support of the Nakoma Sky concept as illustrated on the preceding pages.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

My colleagues and I have been at the heart of achieving such variances in ways far too diverse to itemize, but there are two observations which are almost always the same. Given the fear that something unwanted may be decided on versus the joy that something uncommonly positive may be achieved, the first observation is that those who take the time to show up and sit through the hearing with the intention to block the approval more often than not far outnumber those who would be there to offer their support. Happily, Oro Valley was an exception. The second observation is one often voiced by the city staff, which goes something like this: â&#x20AC;&#x153;We trust that this particular applicant is both well-motivated and able to deliver the excellence illustrated as part of the application, but if we give our recommendation for approval to you, we will have to give that same consideration to others who may not be either as motivated or able to deliver what you have promised.â&#x20AC;? While this way of seeing is understandable, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a barrier to the caring and creative solution in favor of mediocrity, which requires no special treatment because it all looks so familiar. Other than for those special-case solutions that are able to make it through the roadblocks of doubt, the record of standardized codes is that they tend to prohibit the worst and favor the average while discouraging the creative.

Lakeside at La Loma The plan on the facing page is part of a comprehensive, community-centered study for Sun Health, an Arizonabased, not-for-profit champion for healthy living and superior healthcare. Sun Health's President and CEO, Ron Guziak, refers to Lakeside at La Loma as part of the organization's "Pathways to Population Health" initiative. The aim is to improve the health and wellbeing of an entire population by stepping beyond the current focus of mainstream medicine and public health. Sun Health's focus combines two related but very different pursuits. The first has everything to do with the stewardship and special focus in the expanding reach of its awardwinning CCRCs. The second is its vision for a future that is far more integrated than the typical suburban model of separated provisions.

Sun Health's objectives include a more comprehensive pursuit of community thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not only informed by market research of that which already exists but goes further to expand and express the ever-higher-performing ideas and possibilities for the reach and power of what all our individual needs and possibilities may add up to become. Just as this book was going to press, Lakeside at La Loma was honored by receiving the 2017 Gold Award from the National Association of Home Builders at its annual International Builders Show, which is the top prize for the Best CCRC Master Plan.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

The above plan is one of the many, and on-going land use and circulation studies, that are being explored for Sun Health's totally integrated, 350 acre Community. 85

Lakeside at La Loma, as illustrated in the plan on the preceding page, is shown above with respect to the variety and relatedness of its three-dimensional massing. The community is anchored by a new lake near the center of the property that will act as an irrigation pond for its extensive, resort-oriented landscape. A Pottery Barn, Lighthouse Club, and Dining Pavilion are among the featured amenities to be located along the lakefront.

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

Unlike the high-density complex of buildings in a typical CCRC, Lakeside at La Loma will have more the character of a village, including its own special relationships that will grow over time and all radiate out from a vibrant, mixeduse core. The overall range of uses includes agriculture, retail, commerce, medical, recreation, and entertainment, all complemented by a host of residential options for seniors and active adults resulting in a true "Life Plan Community."

Programming and Designing for Life If there’s one thing to learn from all the great architectural achievements of the past—and, more specifically, from the work and philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright in particular— it’s that the life-centered purpose of architecture cannot be limited to what can be conveyed in drawings. Wright went so far as to express this by proclaiming, “The reality of the building does not consist in its roof and walls but in the space within to be lived in.” By its very nature, the practice of architecture is a business that provides a service. And, when its commitment and vision warrant the distinction, it’s also an art. At its highest level of engagement, architecture becomes a “calling,” one that informs and enriches the outcome. While there’s no formulaic or simple way to express this, consider the following narrative as a generalized example of a way of thinking that we’ve shared with a wide variety of both owner/developers and the general community: “The complexity and depth of our shared vision requires that everyone involved be committed to the overall outcome. This means the ultimate success must go beyond the easy-to-quantify metrics in order to provide for a sense of inspiration that can only and ultimately be measured by the wellbeing of both the surrounding community and those who will make it their home. We’re not just designing buildings; we’re designing a variety of miniature towns along with a range of provisions, both private and shared. 88

Continuing Care Retirement Communities

“How can we make sure that no resident will ever feel a sense of loneliness or sadness? Those who can take care of themselves will do so, but few, if any, of us can live fully without some sense of purpose involving others. In how many ways might the physical and spatial design, coupled with creative programming, be able to inspire and benefit from a new spirit of engagement for both the residents and the talents of others? Imagine a range of students who could offer both hands-on inspiration and coaching with respect to, for example, music, writing, dance, and gardening. Architecture can provide the settings, but only the interaction of caring people is able to provide the richness of community combined with the personal pleasures and privacy that one gets from feeling at home.”

Broadening the Discussion There exist today many well-known arguments against CCRCs in favor of keeping older adults in their own homes, along with the growing availability and variety of service providers that exist to make that possible. Two of the most convincing arguments against the current CCRCs are that their cost structure leaves out 90 percent of those who are in their targeted age group and all manner of reasons— including both needs and desires—given by those who want to remain in their familiar settings. These stated desires aren’t so much a criticism of CCRCs as they are a clear indication of the need and opportunity to expand our thinking about the future. As part of this pursuit, CCRCs 89

are providing a living laboratory that will continue to find ever-more-efficient ways for doing more with less including ways and means for extending services to all manner of places within a variety of campus settings. CCRCs are in the early stages of what has the potential for far greater integration, starting with the village it takes to raise a child at one end to an ever-expanding variety of villages for nurturing adults at the other. And, in between, these communities have much to teach, including a more culturally integrated way of life for all. With respect to housing, what the post-WWII economy first made possible and then made both highly desirable and ever-more costly is about to be replaced with what our 21st-century demographics and technologies are creating for doing more with less. This will result in more opportunities for less cost, more sharing requiring less ownership, fewer fences with more gardens, and, ultimately, a richer sense of culture with less waste. Being smart, green, and sustainable is on its way from being a series of specialties to becoming our everyday, normal ways of living.

The Future as Viewed by an Industry Leader John C. Spooner is the Vice President and CEO of Greystone, one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest and leading authorities on the founding, evolution, planning, and operating of CCRCs. In a recent exchange, cited here in brief, Mr. Spooner 90

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summarized his vision of the past, present, and future of what the coming significant and innovative provisions for community have to offer: “CCRCs are undergoing a programmatic shift from the standard, three-legged stool of housing, services, and healthcare to housing, hospitality, and wellness—all with a far greater interest, exploration, and focus on the livingwell aspects of advanced age. The old-school thinking about residents was expressed in terms of lifespan. The contemporary theology of a CCRC is to focus and think about the healthspan. While we’ll all one day leave this Earth, the greatest variable of all is the degree to which the CCRC can extend the time we’re able to enjoy good health inspired by the physical and behavioral gifts of community. “The CCRC has long been a kind of one-size-fits-all system. The seniors who are now coming into the market have a much more self-directed view of their retirement years, for which they want and expect a lifestyle that offers more individual experiences than those available in the past. “Exposure to the consumer economy, for most of the incoming senior’s lives, has made them more welcoming and far more focused on the value related to their investment. And now, as the American culture moves into the experience economy, this is high on the list of what the new seniors are counting on.

“The cross-category comparison is an offshoot of the way CCRC owners and operators want seniors to think about their offerings as compared to all other retirement housing options. The fluid expectations of seniors are much different today than those of past decades. They compare across categories and want a Nordstrom kind-of experience in senior living with a Starbucks self-choice of services and a catered/spa approach to wellness and healthcare. Those CCRCs that embrace hospitality training, career advancement, and personal growth for their employees will be the ones that stand out as the world-class providers of senior housing. The obvious reason for this is that so much of resident satisfaction has always been and will increasingly be based on the personal commitment of the staff.” John C. Spooner’s wisdom is challenging, inspiring, and focused on the special characteristics that CCRCs are most qualified to offer. From the homebuilder developments in the suburbs to high-density apartments in the central cities, no other existing system is so holistic in its thinking. Furthermore, CCRCs are perfectly positioned to take advantage of emerging societal dynamics. The now-familiar terms like “aging” and “retirement” are already beginning to be replaced in favor of the engagement and vitality that these communities are designed to inspire. From birth to death, to feel fully alive, we all need care, and, for as long as we’re able, to help others. In the words of Albert Schweitzer, the only way to be happy is “to find a way to serve.”

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It could also be said that the best way—if not the only way—to serve is to do so with the benefit of some form of behaviorally enabling structure. At the deepest level of understanding, the attention given to the CCRCs of today, which we now treat as something special, will, in the near future, inform and enrich the programming and planning for all forms of community development, which in turn will inspire and attract a greater variety of investments. Thus, today’s CCRCs aren’t only significant for the services they provide for a specific age group but as a kind of living laboratory offering a much wider variety of provisions for all that is yet to be. The common dominator of all such pursuits is they will address ever-more creative ways for doing more with less.

John C Spooner, CEO Greystone Communities 93

FIVE

A Generational Time of Great Change “Eighty percent of citizens of the United States have never been on an airplane, and sixty percent have never spent a night in a hotel or motel and more than half have never been more than 200 miles from home.” —Hubert Humphrey, Vice President of the United States August 1965

he above, single-sentence summary may seem like ancient history considering the ease with which we now travel both locally, globally, and, occasionally, into space. What in the past would have been regarded as science fiction has become our daily way of life. For another single-sentence summary of this transformation, consider this observation from Vernor Vinge, a retired professor of mathematics at the University of California: “We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on earth.” The books represented on the facing page symbolize the need to give far more thought to the planning for that 95

which is yet to be. To that end, we’ve already considered the world of technology followed by what it takes to raise a child and what it takes to care for our older adults. While change is the norm that’s always been with us, what’s dramatically unlike the past is the idea and acceptance not only of change but the degree and pace at which it’s accelerating. Professor Vinge isn’t alone in his observation. Along with the growing number of others who are outlining their thoughts about the days ahead, Ray Kurzweil has gone further to not only emphasize the range but, more importantly, the rate of change, which he calls human history’s Law of Accelerating Returns. Kurzweil suggests that the progress of the entire 20th century would have been achieved in only twenty years at the rate of advancement seen in the year 2000. In other words, by 2000, the rate of progress was five times faster than the average rate of progress during the entire 20th century. He believes another 20th century’s-worth of progress happened between 2000 and 2014, and that another 20th century’s-worth of progress will happen by 2021. A couple decades later, he believes a 20th century’s-worth of progress will happen multiple times in the same year, and, even later, in less than one month. And because of the Law of Accelerating Returns, Kurzweil believes that the 21st century will achieve 1000 times the progress of the 20th century.

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Questioning the Idea of Progress Given what we’ve already experienced by way of the digital revolution, we may easily agree with Kurzweil’s projections on their own terms, no matter how extraordinary they may seem, but what’s missing? Will the 1000-fold increase in the progress achieved in the 21st century over the 20th make humanity 1000 times more nurturing and humane, or are these simply outdated notions? Drunvalo Melchizedek studied physics and art at the University of California at Berkeley. What distinguishes him most is the degree to which he’s immersed himself in the historical record of the world’s belief systems, including its religious understandings. Combining the wonders of technology with his caring and poetic vision, all leading to the source of his faith, he offers the following summary: “Computers are changing everything—this special love affair between two living atoms, carbon and silicon. The Earth has two eyes and can see in a new way. She can now see much better and farther. If only we can learn to live in peace. If only we can learn not to destroy our environment. I believe, I really believe, that the Great Spirit will give us another chance with this Earth. In fact, perhaps it has already happened, this second chance… If we can control our greed and if we can find a way to live from our hearts, we may make it. It is clear to me that Mother Earth has found a way to save us, the uncaring humans. Assuming this is true, do you know where this new hope is coming from? It is not 97

emerging from our great scientists or our greatest minds; it is coming from our innocent children. They are leading the way, just as the Holy Bible said they would.” In Peter Drucker’s book, Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself, published in 2000, he offers this view of the distant future: “In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.” While I can’t attest to the accuracy of his vision, I welcome the degree to which the highly regarded wisdom of Peter Drucker relates the future of humanity to that which we are rather than the externalities that we invent. I don’t know to what extent the following may grow into other areas of concern, but the United States Navy is once again teaching celestial navigation as an alternative to our dependence on global positioning systems. This observation has nothing to do with the accuracy of technology itself but with that same technology’s ability to shoot down or hack the out-of-range satellites that make the digital positioning possible. While digital positioning systems are clearly more accurate and easier to learn than celestial navigation, they’re just as easy to distort and may be altogether destroyed. 98

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It may be that the ultimate lesson and gain from living at a time of great change will be the extent to which we become increasingly interested in the miraculous nature of our innate human abilities with respect to caring and judgment. At the very time when we’re being entrapped by what digital computation makes possible, it may be that we’ll recommit to learning more of what Nature once provided for both our utilization and understanding that now awaits our rediscovery. Ian L. McHarg was one of the most extraordinary planners and ambassadors for the gifts and insights of Nature. His 1969 publication, Design with Nature, coupled with his life work inspired a whole new way of seeing. I had the pleasure of hearing him give an account of his first awakening to Nature’s process of photosynthesis. He said this caused him to look around—both in amazement and in wanting to share with others this most elegant and unbelievable example of Nature’s seamless connection between the inspiring beauty of form and the production of energy. He looked forward to sharing his awe and wonder with others who would surely be equally amazed. Instead, to his utter disbelief, he found that the miracles he’d just perceived weren’t at all that interesting to others. Fast-forward to a half-century later, where we’ve since learned a great deal more about what Nature makes possible that can be manufactured into all manner of things for sale and use but still with little or no interest and 99

understanding for what all such possibilities are adding up to becoming. Whether by fearing the worst or awakening to the possibilities that await our understanding, when that day comes, Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature will have gone from being the title of a groundbreaking book to a description of the singularity we call “life.”

Return of the Family and the End of Retirement A most effective attorney/advisor and friend has long had a program he calls “Connecting Your Money To Your Life,” which is fast becoming a mantra for a variety of financial consultants in their attempt to attract new clients. The best of such programs work well for those individuals whose assets make the connection possible, but what happens when the growing indicators for a great many would seem to suggest otherwise? The following seven metrics are from the FDIC Outlook, Social Security Administration, US Department of Labor and the US Department of Health and Human Services: 1. The average American is 90 days away from bankruptcy. 2. 97 percent of Americans in retirement will be dependent, to some degree, on family, friends, or the government. 3. A 65-year-old couple retiring today has a 63 percent chance that one of them will live to 90 with a one in seven chance that one will live to 100. As life expectancy increases, today’s retirees will spend 100

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about as much time in retirement as they did in their careers. 4. A 65-year-old retiring today will need approximately $240,000 to cover medical expenses in retirement, even with Medicare coverage. Add to this that two or three meals a day at five dollars per meal for 365 days per year over twenty years is $219,000, just to eat. Adding to this the above $240,000 amounts to $459,000, just to cover the cost for healthcare and meals. 5. The typical pre-retiree household has a retirement savings of $60,000. Another survey estimates that one in five pre-retirees, ages 50 to 64, has less than $5000 in retirement savings. 6. As of July 2005, more than 30 million retired workers were receiving Social Security income, with benefits averaging $960 per month or less than $12,000 per year. Although Social Security is designed only as a supplement to other sources of income, in 2003, the majority of senior Americans relied on Social Security as the source of at least 80 percent of their income. 7. Today Social Security replaces only about 27 percent of our incomes. It will soon pay out more than it collects. By 2037, it will be able to pay out about 78 cents to the dollar and will be unable to cover benefits.

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In addition to the foregoing generalizations, an increasing number of persons age 50 and over are getting divorced, which, in a variety of ways, creates two cost centers to replace the one that was previously shared.

Our Emerging Future 1. With respect to how dominated we are by economics coupled with the possibility for new ways of seeing, consider these words from Stephen Marglin, a Harvard economist and author: “Over the past four hundred years, the ideology of economics has fostered both the self-interested individual and the culture of a market system that has undermined and continues to undermine community.” I’d add to this that scholarly arguments favoring the benefits of centralized cities—which grew out of the Industrial Revolution—as opposed to the more dispersed patterns of development made possible by all manner of subsequent technologies are most likely to be more about personal preference than anything to do with financial or environmentally focused insights. 2. A variety of organizations and publications are reporting that we’re experiencing a growing disinterest in the “things” that money alone can buy in favor of richer, more creative and rewarding personal and shared engagements. Consider the unforeseen degree to which shared use is already 102

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augmenting and replacing ownership wherever it can be shown to provide a richer variety of what we need or desire and is available with less effort and expense. The future is being shaped by everexpanding ways to take advantage of the emergence of embryonic systems like Uber, Airbnb, WeWork, and the now-daily announcements of new, digitally based offeringsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all in keeping with our fastgrowing, shared-use economy. 3. The iPhone, all by itself, was and is a demonstrable example of the emerging multi-purpose, multigenerational means for replacing a host of singlepurpose provisions and technologies. 4. Our current patterns of healthcare, including the increasing cost of operating hospitals on the one hand and a fragmented and outsourced series of specialties on the other, are, by necessity, inspiring more holistic and personal pursuits. The two most obvious reasons for this trend are that no amount of miracle treatments or drugs will ever be able to overcome unhealthy ways of living. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a growing awareness that the ever-more-specialized medical technology thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already threatening to bankrupt individuals, families, and even hospitals could one day bankrupt the nation. And, with respect to their effectiveness, one prominent doctor quipped that the only holistic persons in the hospital are the patients. 103

5. While biologically based families will never lose their meaning, “families” formed by way of shared interests and choice are having a growing influence on how we define “home.” The idea of family will become more of a cultural and spiritual commitment than simply one of biology unless, of course, those related by birth can be both. 6. As already addressed, technological advancements will continue to outpace our wildest imaginations, but let’s never forget that technology’s ever-evolving power provides tools that can be used to create or destroy. Until something unimaginably better comes along, it’s creation itself—i.e. the lessons of Nature—that constitutes the greatest examples of how to design and live in ways that are smart, green, and sustainable. 7. There will be a greater integration between life and work with the emerging CCRCs, as already stated, leading to greater possibilities for wider application. 8. Alternatives to the presently limited range of marketdriven, developer-produced housing will emerge in the form of custom-designed communities just as we now have custom-designed houses, all offering more than what money alone could make possible without a high degree of citizen participation. 9. The present and almost expected norms of retirement will become more the exception than the rule for at least the following three reasons: (1) We’re already 104

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beginning to live decades longer without having made financial or other plans for these additional years. (2) The conditions that existed at the time that Social Security was enacted placed the retirement age at 65. If translated to the realities of today, that equivalent age would be 82. (3) Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re no longer living in a time when the number of still-employed workers is far greater than those who are receiving income from the tax-produced distribution of benefits, and that number is steadily decreasing. In Italy and Spain, the ratio is now one worker to one retiree. 10. The once-strong middle class that depended on the economic growth following WWII is now disappearing as a result of jobs being replaced by technology or outsourced to other countries in pursuit of lower labor rates. 11. The CCRC, as a delivery system for both housing and all related needs, will increasingly influence the reprogramming and redesign of housing in general at less cost to the individual and with far less damage to the environment while providing greater opportunities for the sustaining experiences of the residents. 12. The current use of local gardening and farm-totable delivery systems are moving from a specialty pursuit to becoming more of an everyday norm.

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13.What we now treat and celebrate as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) along with other systems for certifying what we call being smart, green, and sustainable will become far more focused on our human behaviors than the current attention, which is dominantly about specialized materials and systems. In terms of real-world results, 75 percent of the gains toward a sustainable way of life will result from enlightened lifestyles, with only 25 percent of the gains attributed to more effective materials and systems. 14. For a dramatic example of the emerging sharing economy, nothing compares with the meteoric rise and the worldwide impact of Airbnb. As of February 2016, the company had two million listings and a market valuation of $25.5 billion, making it—at least with respect to these metrics—the largest hotel chain in the world with expected annual revenues of $10 billion by 2020. Starting with nothing but an idea, at the end of its first nine years, it had listings in 34,000 cities in 191 countries—all without owning a single apartment. The June 1, 2016 issue of Fortune magazine placed Uber as number one and Airbnb as number 20 of “The 25 Most Important Private Companies," thus positioning both far ahead of multi-generational giants like S.C. Johnson and Son and the 142-year-old Kohler Co. 106

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Overlooked in such economic observations is a rather obvious metric. Airbnb and Uber not only owe their profitability but also their very existence to a host of provisions they didn’t create and for which they bore none of the costs. In the simplest of terms, Airbnb has no costs associated with the design, construction, and 24/7 operation of the places it rents, and Uber has no costs associated with the research, design, manufacturing, and maintenance nor the continuing upgrades to the design, engineering, storage, and marketing of the network of vehicles it provides, without which it would have nothing to offer. This may change, for example, as Uber and others make plans to create their own fleet of self-driving vehicles. While nothing about these observations takes anything away from the services provided by Airbnb, Uber, and the growing list of others, it says a lot about the complexity of a market system which, in so many ways, separates value from cost.

Changing What We Value In his 1989 book Age Wave, Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., asked, “If you knew you would live eight or nine decades would you retire from all work in your fifties or early sixties, bunching all of your leisure time at the end of your life, or would you instead take time off occasionally during your middle years? If there were special activities that you simply didn’t have time for when you were younger—such as learning to 107

play a musical instrument, becoming a gourmet cook, or running in marathons—wouldn’t you like to know that you could have a second chance at these activities later in life?” Ten years later, in his 1999 book, Age Power, Dychtwald answered his own question: “If you look around, you’ll notice that during the past several decades, the elderly have multiplied, growing stronger, richer, and politically tougher. They are returning to the status and control that once was theirs.” Roger Landry, MD, MPH, is the President of Masterpiece Living and author of the following, which is quoted from his book, Live Long, Die Short: A Guide to Authentic

Health and Successful Living: “Throughout our lives, we remain observers, joiners, and seekers of our own twolegged version of mammal. We love to watch each other in airports and on the street. We feel a deep satisfaction when we are part of a group and deep discomfort when we are excluded…Within a village environment, our ancestors were part of the whole; each individual was a small part of a larger organism with a higher purpose. As the village went, so did they… Although we cannot go back to the village environments of our ancestors, if we understand the importance of social connection and work to make it a core element of our modern-day environments, perhaps we can find authentic health and indeed reap the health rewards of our ancestors.” This leads to his observation that “any effort to influence a person’s lifestyle toward one that resulted

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in successful aging had the best results when it took place within the context of a facilitative culture—a culture that was devoid of ageism, a culture that believed that older adults could continue to grow throughout their lives, even with impairments. Basically, where you hung your hat was key to your aging. If the place in which you lived functioned as a cheerleader for you, you flourished.”

Our Dual Worlds of Significance The just-quoted writings of Ken Dychtwald and Roger Landry represent the innate meaning of what we value, learn, discover, and make our own. The other world consists of a strategic composition of externalities that others have in mind for us to “desire.” This is the world of sales and marketing, in which individual "wants" can be placed into categorized needs, behaviors, or desires. All such metrics start with whatever shared patterns of need or desire can be used to turn living “individuals” into targetable “markets.” The more such trends can be observed, the more effective the marketing can be in offering “the latest,” which more often than not is nothing but the endless recycling of the “old.” Men’s ties and lapels get narrower and wider and women’s hemlines go up and down while our taste in housing swings back and forth between the socalled traditional and modern, much of which consists of nothing but whatever superficial mannerisms of the original are both easiest to deliver and adequate to make the sale. 109

A similar but longer-range view of change is chronicled by whatever observable and useful insights might be gleaned from our generational differences, which are most often summarized as in the following categories: The Greatest Generation: This is a term associated with Americans born between 1910 and 1925 who fought in World War II, both those who kept the home front intact during that period and those who returned from the battle lines and went on to build and rebuild the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industries. The Silent Generation: These individuals were born between the two World Wars, and this generation generally includes those born between 1923 and 1944, whose characteristics seemed grave and conventional along with confused morals and an expectation of disappointment while desiring faith. Baby Boomers: This generation was born just after World War II, a time that was distinguished by a fourteen-year increase in the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthrate. In their teen and college years, Baby Boomers were characteristically part of the 1960s counterculture but later became more conservative, eventually giving birth to Generations X and Y. The Hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that emerged between 1945 and 1964 in the United States and spread around the world. This generation is associated with living together, listening to psychedelic rock, embracing the sexual revolution, and using drugs to explore alternative states of consciousness.

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Generation X: These individuals were born between 1961 and 1981 and grew up in the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Most individuals in this generation are children of the Baby Boomers and The Silent Generation. Generation Y: These are the highly publicized “Millennials,” born between 1975 and 1995, who grew up during a time of world-changing events including the rise of mass communication and the Internet. Generation Z: The generation of people living in Western or first-world cultures, generally born between 1995 and 2015. Other names used to refer to this group include “Generation V” (for virtual), “Generation C” (for community or content), “The New Silent Generation,” the “Internet Generation,” the “Homeland Generation,” or even the “Google Generation.”

More on the Millennials The following observations have been selected from a wide variety of sources. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote about the Millennials in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, followed by, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. Strauss and Howe are widely credited with naming the Millennials. Most positively, they also predicted that Millennials would become more like the “civil-minded” GI Generation, with a strong sense of community, both local and global.

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In March 2014, the Pew Research Center issued a report noting that “Millennials in adulthood” are “detached from institutions and network with friends.” The report observes that Millennials are somewhat more upbeat than older adults about America’s future, with 49 percent of Millennials saying the country’s best years are ahead despite being the first in the modern era to have higher levels of student loan debt and unemployment. Fred Bonner is the Samuel De Witt Proctor Chair in Education at Rutgers University and author of Diverse

Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs. Professor Bonner believes that much of the commentary on the Millennial Generation may be partially accurate but overly general, with many of the traits ascribed to Millennials applying primarily to “white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying to super-selective colleges, and who multi-task with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them.” Even though Millennials are joining the workforce during a tough economic time, they’ve remained optimistic. Nine out of ten Millennials surveyed by the Pew Research Center said they currently have enough money or that they will eventually reach their long-term financial goals.

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SIX

Our Emerging Shared Use Economy “Revenue in five key sectors of the sharing economy could reach $335 billion by 2025.” —Price Waterhouse Coopers

ccording to Victor Hugo, “Not all the armies in the world could stop an idea whose time has come.” If he were alive today, he might replace “all the armies in the world” with “all the attorneys in the world” with respect to pioneering ventures like Uber, Airbnb, and a fast-growing list of others. What is beyond argument is that the introduction of shared use isn’t only an idea whose time has come but it’s augmenting and, in many instances, replacing individual ownership. Organizations like Uber and Airbnb are creating whole new industries while altering those that already exist. Their timing could be considered to be most welcome and perhaps even urgent. Producing more fuel-efficient vehicles, may attract buyers and win awards for being “green,” but it does nothing to

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alleviate the time lost in traffic jams or the paving over of our cities and towns with roads, freeways, and parking lots. Neither will it reduce the cost and visual imposition of the two- to four-car garage appendages that dominate the street scenes in our residential neighborhoods. All manner of garages and parking lots are made necessary in order to provide for the estimated 96 percent of the time that these vehicles stand at rest while waiting to serve our needs. To think about a change this fundamental requires that we learn to get beyond our historic love affair with the automobile, which has been induced by everything from the lure of new styling, greater power, and the increasing array of digital devices along with the intoxication of the socalled “new-car smell.” It could be argued that little, if any, of these inducements for personal ownership are focused on the more fundamental idea of getting about. In their own and revered category, there will always be those special vehicles—distinguished by their iconic designs and forward-looking technologies—that will continue to be loved, collected, restored, and valued all the more. The goal isn’t to eliminate whatever vehicles might be designed to serve best, both now and in the future, but simply to increase their effectiveness by decreasing their number, cost, and unnecessary dominance. As for our proverbial love affair, let’s at least acknowledge that there are three settings in which we’re not likely to see

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a new-car commercial designed to stimulate our desires— and this is odd, considering how much time these vehicles spend in each. The three places are: 1) Stalled in traffic; 2) waiting in line for service, and; 3) circling their destinations in search of a place to park, all for the purpose of getting us to wherever it is we need or want to be. To this we might add the typical lineup of suburban garage doors that make it clear that the “homes” for our vehicles are the dominant features of where we live.

From Owned to Shared In addition to the foregoing observations, even more compelling as to why our individual ownership of vehicles has outlived its defensible usefulness comes from viewing the issue in its larger context: • Shared or on-call vehicles of all kinds will be far more convenient and increasingly made more so by an overall and steady decrease not only in the number of vehicles but also a major reduction in cost relating to the now 25 to 60 percent of developed lands given over to roadways and freeways as well as personal and urban garages and parking lots. Some estimates suggest that, given our current utilization, there may exist seven or more parking spaces for every car. • The inefficient, costly, and routine adding of lanes to our freeways will be a practice of the past at the same

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time that some of the existing parking structures are removed to restore the character of the urban fabric that the freeways destroyed. • In the previously referenced June 1, 2016 issue of Fortune magazine, Uber is listed as having a valuation of $62.5 billion—about $10 billion more than Ford Motor Company’s public market value. Uber provides 50 million rides per month in the US. It operates in more than 400 cities around the world. It employs nearly 7000 people, not including its million-plus global network of contracted drivers. At the time these statistics were published, Uber was only six years old and just beginning to grow. • As for its transportation effectiveness, in September, 2014, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sensible City Laboratory released the following numbers based on “UberPool,” a service that allows riders heading in the same direction to share an Uber vehicle: 4.7 million: The estimated reduction of vehicular miles driven during the month of June 2015 in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Paris. 820 metric tons: The calculated amount of carbon dioxide saved from being introduced into the atmosphere as a result of ridesharing.

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365,000: The number of UberPool cars that could replace New York’s nearly two million personal vehicles. Being less than one fifth the current total number, the use of Uber could allow for the eventual reduction of the corresponding amount of paving for roadways and parking along with the amount of fuel and the number of vehicles and drivers required to accommodate and operate the additional 1,585,000 vehicles. 30,000: The number of New Yorkers in 2016 who were signing up for Uber each week.

From Shared to Driverless How inevitable is the advent of shared vehicles and those that are not only shared but driverless? Sebastian Thrun, who headed up Google’s self-driving car research, is now a professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford. He’s among those who predict that the car-selling model of GM will no longer be sustainable when the all-in costs are calculated and made more widely understood along with all kinds of changes and new relationships becoming the norm. A month after I first wrote this paragraph, GM announced it had invested $500 million in the car-sharing company Lyft plus another amount for what it plans to deploy as GM’s own network of self-driving vehicles through its own ridesharing service. This isn’t surprising, considering the following, reported by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Institute: “In 2014, 24.5 percent of 16-year-

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olds had a driver’s license, which was down from 27.5 percent in 2011, 31.1 percent in 2008, and 46.2 percent in 1983.” Our long-standing love affair with the automobile is dividing into two very different categories. The one most associated with “love” will be all about the kind of vehicles that routinely attract high-income bidders at BarrettJackson, Pebble Beach, and other auction venues. All this is to say that the use and cost of personally owned or leased vehicles will begin a steady decline, with the following benefits for all: • At a very human level, the now-painful act of taking away the keys from the elderly will become history along with the multi-million-dollar costs required for the under-building parking garages that are the basic and inconvenient-to-access reality at most CCRCs. • Given the embryonic evidence in favor of driverless vehicles along with the emergence of Uber, Lyft, Car2Go, and other similar providers to follow, it’s both likely and timely that our ever-more-costly dependence on automobiles will be replaced with far fewer vehicles, providing for a greater variety of conveniences at a fraction of the present cost and with multiple benefits including 1) a reduction of the current 30 to 60 percent of urban land that’s now required for garages, roads, and parking; 2) reducing our current rates of air pollution; and 3) 118

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lowering the number of traffic-related accidents; all moving toward 4) opportunities for more carefully considered proximities of related uses replacing the costly waste of both time and money occasioned by the daily back-and-forth commute between home, work, and everything else. • For those who fear that driverless vehicles will result in an increasing number of accidents, consider this hypothetical test. Imagine that computer-guided vehicles become the new standard but you still prefer to drive your own car. Suppose that remains a possibility but only for those specially trained individuals who are able to pass a driver’s test based on the standards set by the computerized navigation systems. How many individuals do you think would qualify?

From Shared and Driverless to Safe and Economic The cover of the March 7, 2016 issue of Time magazine, offered this summary of the prospect of driverless vehicles: “No traffic. No accidents. No deaths. All you have to do is give up your right to drive.” The corresponding article referenced the following statistics: • From 2005 to 2008, there was a 28 percent increase in auto-related fatalities caused by distracted driving. The leading cause of death for those between 15 to 24 years old is auto-related accidents. In 2014, 32,675 119

Americans died in auto accidents and, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, there are 1.3 million traffic fatalities every year. • The average American spends 42 hours per year stuck in traffic, which increases to as much as 82 hours in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, DC. Two summary observations say it all. The first is that this new reality is a high priority for technology giants like Google, Apple, and the already top-achieving Tesla founder, Elon Musk, who envisions that his electronic, selfdriving cars will be available within three years. A second and related observation from Morgan Stanley concludes that “the adoption of driverless cars in the US could save $1.3 trillion a year, including $158 billion in fuel costs, productivity increases of $507 billion, and $488 billion in accident-related savings” for a “total worldwide savings of $5.6 trillion.” As an example of technology run amok and as a way to bring the foregoing technological and cost-centered observations into the design-based relationships of community, consider the image on the facing page. If these floating levels of crossover forms could be judged abstractly as an expression of three-dimensional sculpture, we might very well find them hanging on a gallery wall to be admired. But, if judged in terms of their savage intrusion into the urban fabric, the future will view this as a portrait of madness. 120

Our Emerging Shared Use Economy

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From the Artless to the Significant “True involvement comes when the community and the designers turn the process of planning the city into a work of art.” — Edmund H. Bacon

he reason for juxtaposing the kind of hillside village that we travel thousands of miles to visit and photograph, as shown on the facing page, with the very different character of the subdivision, shown below, is to convey a story that goes well beyond the physical. The lower image is of a development that has passed every requirement demanded by our standardized municipal codes and ordinances. By contrast, the upper image is one of a community that, for almost every reason imaginable with respect to our typical approval process, would be dead on arrival. I make this observation as someone who’s been uncommonly successful in obtaining approvals for specialcase projects, so the observation has nothing to do with the individuals involved in the review process but simply acknowledges the ever-growing layers of codes that are far more about prohibiting the worst than encouraging or even considering the creative. 123

As a specific example, while most jurisdictions allow for applicants to apply for variances outside the stipulations of the basic code requirements, the overriding criterion is that the request for consideration must result from “a hardship not of the applicant’s own making,” which is determined by the cities Board of Adjustments. As already discussed on page 82, we have long advocated that cities and towns create Variances for Excellence to be reviewed by their newly created Boards of Cheerleaders. While this suggestion can be counted on to get a good laugh, it has yet to be seriously considered. To illustrate what I mean, consider these three memorable experiences. The first occurred while driving a friend home from a party. Having never been to his house, as soon as we entered his gated subdivision, I started asking for directions. “Do I turn here?” I inquired, to which he answered, “No.” Approaching the next intersection, I repeated the question and got another “No.” After four such questions and answers, my friend volunteered, “My street is the one with the transformer.” The following week I was asked to pick up an individual at an upper-end apartment complex. I asked for and got this clearly stated answer to my request for how to best locate where she lived: “My apartment is adjacent to the third dumpster,” offered as if this were somehow a normal way to differentiate ones home from the look-alike places surrounding it.

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A third example of characterless development was relayed by a friend who’d recently moved into a new subdivision. Having returned home late one evening, he was confronted by his garage door showing no response to his repeated pushing on the remote-control device in his vehicle to open said garage. No matter how hard or how often he pushed the button, his garage door remained indifferent to his demands. As he continued the fruitless pushing, out of the corner of his eye he detected what seemed to be a correlation between what he was doing and the up-and-down movement of a garage door three houses away. The problem wasn’t the operation of his garage door opener but that he simply couldn’t distinguish his house from all the others. Hearing this account, I was reminded of Wendell Berry’s statement, “If we don’t know where we are, we’re less likely to know who we are.” And Wallace Stegner, who wrote, “No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.” Observations like these aren’t likely to be inspired by transformers, dumpsters, or a line-up of frontfacing, look-alike garage doors.

Asking the Right Questions Albert Einstein said, “We’re not coming up with the right answers, because we’re not asking the right questions.”

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Perhaps the reason for this is two-fold. The first is we don’t ask questions that go beyond what we believe to be possible, which leads to the second: We begin to self-limit anything that exists beyond the obvious. What if we were able to get beyond the most obvious kinds of conclusions in order to ask and explore questions like the following?: 1. Why do we so easily settle for the more typical and short-sighted strategies rather than looking farther to pursue what’s best for creating long-term value? 2. Where might the lack of sufficient funds that leads to doing things in a marginal way be addressed by designing for relationships that are able to accomplish more for less? 3. What alternatives, in response to the physical land use and transportation demands of today, could lead to having more of what we cherish and less of what’s wasteful, injurious, and even deadly? 4. To what extent might we replace our lust for everything from celebrity to the latest technology with looking deeper into the pursuit of significant individual achievements that could be beneficial for more widespread application? 5. How might we come to value and live in ways that broaden our definition of being “rich” to reflect more the quality of one’s contribution to the future and less about the accumulation of things?

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From the Artless to the Significant

Custom Communities Just as we now have custom residences, why not apply the same approach to the pursuit of custom communities? The purpose for doing so would be to create a greater variety of programmatic and design considerations along with alternative financing and delivery systems more tailored to specific needs and desires than those based on the standards and sameness of conventional development. Custom programs for a wide variety of special-focus communities could be programmed around professional offices, conservatories for music, physical fitness centers, arts and crafts studios, religious institutions, and a variety of schools along with coffee houses, bakeries, delis, boutique inns, and other operations that arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dependent on regional or national management for their success. The Internet has enabled new versions of the historic momand-pop enterprises where individuality, knowledge, and personal service are once again both more valued and more possible to deliver. Such one-of-a-kind communities could be small enough to maximize privacy and sufficiently comprehensive to provide for a broader range of amenities. They wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t replace the scale of development required for entertainment retail, concert halls, athletic stadiums, major museums, or other complex urban offerings that are far better suited to more centralized locations. Dramatic examples of the more boutique communities include the

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forested setting of the American Players Theater in rural Wisconsin, the Chautauqua Institute in Western New York, and, of course, Frank Lloyd Wrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high-performance communities set in the remote locations of both Taliesin and Taliesin West.

Seven Considerations for the New Settlements 1. Auto-free neighborhoods served by a variety of shared, on-call vehicles including Uber and whatever Uber-like services emerge in the future. 2. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Commissary,â&#x20AC;? a central storage and distribution outlet for household goods and shared tools for home and grounds maintenance. 3. Landscaping at the level of a botanical garden. 4. Shared pools, paths, trails, fountains, sculpture, and planting for both beauty and produce. 5. For-sale and rental housing designed for families, single parents, and single-person occupancies in both detached and campus-type compounds. 6. Retail and commercial nodes located and designed to serve both the immediate community and surrounding areas. 7. Rather than seeing education, crafts, and culture along with pavilions for pottery, music, dance, and all manner of seminars as various forms of

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specialization, these would be treated as normal provisions for everyday experiences. During a meeting with a most knowledgeable and successful developer, I referred to the many ways that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for and lived in community. My guest’s response was that everything I described sounded a great deal like what he perceived to be the desires of the Millennials. Without presuming to speak on behalf of either Frank Lloyd Wright or an entire demographic, I offer this community-based list of elements that I experienced at the side of the world’s greatest architect:

Convenience, Beauty and Inspiration • Co-creative, custom environments • A sense of one’s “home” extending beyond the “house” • Culture as a way of life • Optimal settings for life and work • The inspiration of collaboration • Lifelong engagement in the midst of creative activity • More gardens, less paving • Fewer vehicle burdens, more vehicle choices • Reduced “hassle miles,” more accessibility • Personal gains through cooperation

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• Greater resources for privacy, individuality, and creativity • Daily living in a village-like work of art In summary, the goal for a more custom approach that goes beyond “development” to the programming of “community” is to create environments of privacy, beauty, involvement, and access to that which is most desired, however general or special. Such communities of the future will emerge quite naturally out of old-fashioned self-interest enriched by the 21st century’s high-performance abilities for doing more with less. Many such places already exist. Both for reasons of desire and economy, individuals and groups will find ever-more-creative ways to innovate, including the use of new methods and materials along with the adaptive reuse of structures that have outlived their original purpose. Custom communities—now made possible by the information age—will provide new forms of the once richlyvaried, live/work, pedestrian-centered environments and multi-generational settings that existed before the demands of production-driven sameness left all that behind.

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From the Artless to the Significant

Moving from the Sustainable to the Regenerative

EDUCATION SCIENCE

TECHNOLOGY

RELIGION

COM MUN ITY

ARCHITECTURE

ECONOMICS

GOVERNANCE PHILOSOPHY

Nature, which is the sole source of life, has no separate departments for the entities shown above. The future will see our present approach to all things sustainable as being somewhere between an embarrassment at its worst and, at its best, an initial a step along the way. Natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clear and present lessons are those of continuous regeneration, for which the living human equivalent is represented by the aspirations and commitments of both individuals and groups. 131

EIGHT

High Intention Communities “The value of community depends on the spiritual and moral stature of its individuals.” —Carl Gustav Jung

ntention-based communities were once the norm and, in a variety of ways, are becoming so again. Steps in this direction include (1) educational campuses that are becoming the settings for a variety of university-seeded villages, (2) the already-mentioned, inevitable evolution of today’s continuing care retirement communities into more comprehensive, all-age environments, and (3) the return of the company town, but this time, unlike those of the past that were occasioned by heavy industries, the new environments are growing out of the fast-changing achievements made possible by miniaturization and all things digital. The examples on pages 134 to 143 are, each in their own way, places that represent artful celebrations of both their time and human purpose. Colonial Williamsburg made no separation between home and work. While nothing might seem to be more normal, if pursued today, this would require 132

the most radical kind of changes to our presently restricted codes that not only favor, but mandate, the separation of all manner of daily needs. The second example holds great promise for replacing the kind of developments that are targeted to â&#x20AC;&#x153;market segmentsâ&#x20AC;? with those designed to suit both the economics and aspirations of their resident/planner/developers. The third is that of a company town in which the vision of its founder in 1890 was such that it lives on today as a functioning place of great beauty. The fourth celebrates sustainability by the adaptive reuse of structures that were built sufficiently well in the 13th century to become beautiful features in the service of their new community purpose. The fifth example combines the adaptive reuse of a hotel that was built in 1891 as a major and functioning feature of a campus setting devoted to the study and celebration of the arts and culture. The result is that, more than 125 years later, it serves as the heart of a pedestrian-centered, car-free village that has long been studied in form but not yet expressed in its highly integrated purpose. The last portrayals are 21st century versions of company towns as settings for the headquarters of high-tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google, and Samsung. While they differ greatly, what they share is the degree to which each example gives extraordinary attention to the environmental influences that best support its mission. Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that what everything we design and build should aspire to achieve? 133

What was once Great Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest American colony continues to symbolize an idea that has much to offer. The original town plan provided for compatibility among places for life and work. Williamsburgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mix of uses represented the total industry of its time including forges, silversmiths, printers, bookbinders, cabinet makers, apothecaries, weavers, millineries, candle and soap shops, bakers, and bootmakers. Fast forward to the 21st century in which municipal ordinances demanding separation of land uses are exceeded only by the private sectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more stringent covenants, conditions, and restrictions. The unintended result is that this also precludes the kinds of complementary relationships that could conserve energy, reduce congestion, and add vitality. 134

High Intention Communities

Resident Developed Communities Much has been written about cohousing as the making of deliberate neighborhoods and communities. More often than not, such writing focuses on the lives of the individuals who join together to participate in some form of communal living. Equally interesting is that cohousing represents an alternative delivery system. Because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an owner-customized process, it changes the ground rules for what is possible to achieve. The scale of cohousing has been too small and complex to attract the interest of conventional developers, thus the participants have been directly engaged in everything from land acquisition and programming to rezoning, design, and construction. The entire process involves a great deal of commitment. The above photo is of the Bakken Cohousing Community in Horsholm, Denmark. 135

The Corporate Village Beginning in 1890 and continuing for more than eight decades, the Spanish textile-producing community of La Colonia Guell consisted of its central work environment, housing for everyone involved, and a rich variety of provisions for daily life. In 1973, shifting dynamics in the textile sector were responsible for the closing of the central factory, but the town was so well designed that its adaptive reuse continues to this day. The timeless brickwork of its buildings, a feature of 19th-century Catalan culture, makes the town an artful treasure. Its founder, who was committed to creating an ideal village, engaged the finest architects of his time. What exists today is living testimony to the sustaining quality of a community designed around the holistic needs and opportunities of an artful way of life.

â&#x20AC;&#x192;

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Colonial Williamsburg Rehabilitation Communities The Convent of Saint Francesco in Cetona, Italy, first built in 1212, is now a community dedicated to the care and rehabilitation of drug addicts and other troubled individuals. Members of the community first restored and now maintain the buildings and grounds. They provide for their own support through earnings from their highly acclaimed service of lunches and dinners as well as from items they make and sell in their gift shop. Everything about their programs radiates the significance and power of community. 138

High Intention Communities

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The Cultural Village Chautauqua, in western New York, is a magical place. Pedestrian-scaled streets are designed for walking and only occasional deliveries; otherwise, there are no cars and no garages. Houses, large and small, single and multi-family, exist side by side in a seamless tapestry of inns, shops, and performance centers, all connected by paths and trails that lead to parks, plazas, and other gathering places. Science, faith, reason, economics, international and national affairs, urban design, literature, dance, and music are all celebrated as integrated components of living with a sense of inquiry and an appreciation for enriching daily life.

The Athenaeum Hotel, built in 1881, was the first hotel in the world to have electric lighting. Nine US Presidents, beginning with Ulysses S. Grant, have visited the community. Among other distinguished guests were Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Duke Ellington, and Marion Anderson. 140

Emergence of the Digital Campus Having looked at the prior examples of community, including La Colonia Guell in Spain, which had a rebirth and is now in its second century, it would be interesting to consider what four of today’s dot.com “villages,” shown on page 143, might become when they each reach that stage in their respective evolutions. Samsung’s campus includes 1.1 million square feet of space for the 2000 employees at its San Jose, California headquarters. It remains to be seen how this will work out, but the company states that the design intent isn’t only to encourage the interaction of its staff but to foster connections with the greater community. Google’s new 1.1-million-square-foot “Googleplex” in Mountain View, California, when added to its existing buildings, will contain 3.1 million square feet. 141

Facebook’s Menlo Park campus in Palo Alto, California was heavily influenced by the company’s founder as evident in these words: “The building itself is pretty simple and isn’t fancy. That’s on purpose. We want our space to feel like a work-in-progress. When you enter our buildings, we want you to feel how much there is left to be done in our mission to connect the world.” Facebook’s community environs include a 3.5-hectare rooftop park with a half-mile walking trail, a coffee stand, and over 400 trees. Again quoting Zuckerberg: “To achieve our objectives, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world—a single room consisting of 434,000 square feet of open space designed to accommodate thousands of people… There are lots of small spaces where people can work together, and it’s easy for people to move and collaborate with anyone here.” Fifteen artists were commissioned to produce artwork for the new building. Announced by Steve Jobs in April 2006, Apple’s fivebillion-dollar new home is a single, circular, four-story 2,800,000-square-foot building. Eighty percent of the site, including its central core, consists of a celebration of gardens and greenery. Every piece of the glass facade is curved to conform to the structure’s circular architecture. Parking is provided for 7400 vehicles, with 5000 of these spaces accommodated in a separate structure and 2400 spaces provided below the circular compound. In the words of Steve Jobs, “It’s a gorgeous way to build something.”

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Samsung

Google

Facebook

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Apple

My first 17 years of life were experienced in Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago. He’s the one on the right. For the next 21 years, my venue for home, work, study, and culture was located at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin and Taliesin West. He’s shown on the left. I’m the kid in the center. The occasion for this photo was the 1965 unveiling of Wright’s “Mile High Building.”

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NINE

Living With Frank Lloyd Wright “To live and work at Taliesin and Taliesin West is to participate in the regenerative spirit of community.” —R. Buckminster Fuller

o share in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was, in many ways, to experience a kind of 24/7 version of today’s “disrupters” like Uber and Airbnb—with the notable difference that, at Taliesin, rather than thinking of these differences from the conventional as anything special, they were regarded as a normal part of everyday life. In addition to the sharing of lodging and vehicles, our most basic experiences were those that now have special names like “daylighting,” “farm-to-table,” and treating work, life, education, and culture as one holistic pursuit. As for retirement, at Taliesin, this would have seemed more like a threat than anything anticipated as the ultimate goal. An article in the November 2, 2015 issue of Forbes magazine appeared under the heading, “What’s on the Millennial

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Mind?” The article quoted a variety of multi-millionaires and billionaires, all under age 30, including one who said, “We want to bring the world closer together by creating connections that never would have existed” along with, “I’m open to being surprised by the future. I want to keep giving a purpose to my past.” Rather than “things,” their emphasis was clearly on the kinds of connections and purpose that may require money but which no amount of money alone could ever make possible without some sense of a generating purpose. Once again, in the live/work/learn and contributing atmosphere of Taliesin, such observations would have been too obvious to mention. While the innovative reach and wonder of the vast record of the houses and buildings that Wright designed for others is what the world knows best, for the benefit of the future, what he designed as a purpose-centered way of life for himself and his associates clearly has the most to offer. As previously stated, many individuals—including architects, scholars, and what Wright called “our typical best citizens”— have long called him “The World’s Greatest Architect.” Add to this that, more recently, he’s being acknowledged as our first “ecological” or “green” architect. The great majority of the world’s individuals and groups know him from his own writings, from the writings of others, and from visiting his work or attending the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibitions that have long traveled all over the world. Far fewer, including those who’ve visited his home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, Taliesin in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Arizona, 146

Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

have any sense of the creative and inspiring way in which he lived, shared, and challenged others who were part of what could be considered his greatest design of all. I’m referring to his design for a way of life that was shared with individuals from all over the world. During my twenty-one years in residence, I had the privilege of living, learning, and growing with individuals from more than twenty-five nations.

The Taliesin Fellowship In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright founded what he called the Taliesin Fellowship as a way to formalize the requests from an increasing number of individuals who wanted to come and work under his tutelage. From the beginning, the Fellowship became a 24/7 home for everyone involved, and the generating magnetism for what produced the key members of his staff. To Wright’s dying day, there were no “employees”, only “apprentices.” Some were referred to as “senior apprentices”, but there were no other titles. In the eighth year of the Taliesin Fellowship, Wright transferred its legal structure into the non-profit Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. To help convey the spirit of what he was working to achieve, the following is an excerpt from his will, dated April 25, 1958. “The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation was formed in 1940 as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of Wisconsin as an outgrowth of the Taliesin Fellowship, which was created in 1932. The purpose of the 147

Fellowship—a cultural endeavor—is that of perpetuating organic architecture and that of the Foundation is, in addition, the encouragement of the fine arts by education and teaching of the art of architecture and collateral crafts…” And, from the Foundation’s Articles of Incorporation: “No part of the net earnings of the corporation shall inure to the benefit of or be distributed to its incorporation, trustees, or officers except that the corporation shall be authorized and empowered to pay reasonable compensation for services rendered and to make payments and distributions in furtherance of its purpose… The articles of Incorporation of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation provide that the Foundation is organized, generally, for charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes, as defined in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended… and specifically for the purpose of operating a school of architecture, creative design, collateral crafts, and related allied arts, with particular emphasis on the furtherance of the teachings of Frank Lloyd Wright in the field of organic architecture.” The articles go on to describe the activities of the school, e.g. “granting degrees, and the erection, use, and operation of structures, buildings, and other facilities, and the performance of agricultural and farming activities, all as have been traditionally associated with the methods and teachings of Frank Lloyd Wright.”

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Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

In addition to the preceding excerpts describing the Foundation’s legal structure, the following is from a January 29, 1951 letter that Wright wrote to his friend, Gerald M. Loeb, a well-known Wall Street trader and broker: “The FLW Foundation has no other meaning than as the soul repository of my life-work for whatever it may be worth for the next hundred years. I have no private fortune. My dependents I can only leave to our Foundation. If the Foundation cannot protect them by protecting itself for another half-century (at least) the result will be tragic: not only a tragedy for my loved ones, I believe, but also to the Cause of Architecture, which I love as a whole with my whole heart.” Wright’s reference to his “dependents” refers to those who remained as both professional designers and live/work stewards of the community as opposed to others who went on to practice architecture all over the world. Six and a half decades after Wright wrote the above, there are those he referred to as dependents who continue to live and work at Taliesin and Taliesin West.

The Power of Faith, Vision, and Commitment Unlike the extraordinary place in history that Wright has long occupied, including the steady stream of books that continue to emerge about his life and work, he was, at several times during his life, considered by many in his profession to be a “has-been.” This was true when, at one point, he 149

lost his Taliesin property to the bank, which, but for the generosity of his friends, would have been lost forever. Four years later, at a time when others in his position might have been playing it safe because funds were scarce, cars weren’t all that reliable, and there were neither freeways nor motels, Wright decided that he and his group would leave their south-central Wisconsin location to journey across the country where they would establish a winter headquarters in the desert Southwest. Because the details of this adventure have been written about extensively by others, I’ll focus on that which offers the most to characterize Wright’s faith in an idea. Traveling the approximately 2000 miles in a caravan of vehicles that were in questionable condition on roads that were about the same, the group found themselves in the mainly empty Arizona desert, where neither plans nor people awaited their arrival. Wright somehow managed to find the person in charge of Arizona State Lands and asked if he had anything for sale. The official responded that he had this one piece of land for which he’d been “waiting for some fool to come along and fall in love with it.” Wright told the gentleman he considered himself qualified to be that person and proceeded to make the purchase.

Doing What Others Would Think Impossible What follows isn't intended as a history of how Wright lived but as a symbolic way to learn about a man who lived beyond the means of anything obvious. He was told there was no 150

Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

road to the property, no electricity, and was assured that not only was there was no water on or near the property, there would never be any. Unfazed by such warnings, Wright and his followers went on to create a home, school, workplace, and cultural way of life for citizen-apprentices from all over the world. We called it “camp,” but that hardly tells the story of a place, which, in addition to the studio that produced houses and buildings that remain revered all over the world, hosted two black-tie events each week for a distinguished array of guests. On Saturday nights, both we and they were entertained by our own chorus and chamber ensemble. On Sundays, the after-dinner entertainment consisted of firstrun movies presented in our own, 150-seat theater cabaret. Now, more than a half century after Wright’s death, an array of scholars and visitors from all over the world, exceeding 100,000 persons each year, continues to visit the buildings and grounds. In addition to Taliesin West itself, fifty-two of Wright's houses and buildings, located from coast to coast in twenty states and in Japan, many of which have been lovingly restored, are all open for guided tours.

Lessons for the Future What today’s visitors don’t see is the connection between how Wright and his apprentices lived with respect for the art of community, both in general and, especially, in ways that relate to the changing demographics that are increasingly shaping both what is possible and what is desirable for the future. Following, in brief, are some of the behaviorally related insights that characterized the Taliesin way of life. 151

In the briefest possible terms, the Taliesin experience was that of a community in which work and life, education, and culture together with entertainment, healthcare, localized food production, minimal water and energy use, learning by doing, eliminating the daily back-and-forth commute between home and work, having daily dialogue with individuals from all over the world, and living in close proximity to the beauty and lessons of Nature occurred as the seamless unfolding of each new day. In many ways, it wasn’t only smart, green, and sustainable, it was a kind of “test-tube” United Nations. While I’d never suggest that what I experienced with Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin be replicated, its many lessons have much to offer for a great variety of applications. Simply stated, the goal would be to explore and connect what can be learned from this very innovative but highly specialized community to the now more general and prevalent needs of an emerging future that’s destined to be very different from our recent past. Not one of my Taliesin colleagues was ever heard to ask, “What are you doing after work?” or “How much vacation time do you have left?” and certainly not, “What are your plans for retirement?” Such questions would be no more likely than for someone to ask, “Have you decided when you’re going to stop living?” Everything was too connected to think of it in such disjointed terms. Activities that were

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routinely shared with others, in addition to the weekly concerts and movies, included special exhibitions and an annual festival of music and dance. These were provided along with the daily activities necessary to conduct an international practice of architecture, and all took place within the architectural masterpieces for which we were its custodial builders. Daily life at Taliesin consisted of living, working, and socializing with individuals from widely varied backgrounds, including those who would be considered by today’s standards to be well below the poverty line and others who were multi-millionaires along with individuals of royal blood. These references to the more obvious “inequalities” of the Taliesin group are made only to point out that, in daily life, what others might consider to be distinguishing features of status were virtually invisible. Taliesin was a “learning community” with no employees, only citizens. All activities were shared, including taking turns cooking and serving meals in the dining room. Every now and then, this would lead to amusing confrontations like the time one of our “royals” refused to serve another because he was of lower status, proclaiming, “a prince does not serve a marquis.” One of our wittier colleagues jumped up and responded with, “What good is it to be a prince in a country where every man is a king!”

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Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

Taliesin in Wisconsin included 5,000 acres. Shown at the top of the page is the farm complex known as “Midway.” To the left are images of the “Hillside” drafting studio and theater along with an exterior view of the overall complex. The dam and waterfall above were created by Wright in the early years and were used to generate the community's sole source of power. Wright’s original Taliesin Estate is shown on the facing page. 155

Taliesin West combines, in a single setting, places for music, theater, work, study, and residences for everyone involved. Everything, including the architecture and its overall relationships, reach well beyond style to inspire culture, service, and learningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; all requirements for a varied and rewarding way of life.

Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

1. Parking 2. Shops 3. Offices 4. Entry forecourt 5. Main office 6. Theater cabaret 7. Music pavilion 8. Fountain 9. Pergola

10. Drafting room 11. Indian rock terrace 12. Pool 13. Private dining 14. Main kitchen 15. Staff dining 16. Guest deck 17. Staff quarters 18. Sunset terrace

19. Garden room 20. Main residence 21. Library 22. Staff quarters 23. Bridge 24. Guest house 25. Atrium 26. Staff quarters 27. Flower gardens 157

The study and practice of architecture, construction, sculpture, pottery, music, cooking, theater, poetry, and dance all occurred as a seamless way of life. 158

The Theater Cabaret shown at the top of the page was the scene of black-tie dinners, concerts, and firstrun movies. The above building, shown under construction, is the Taliesin West Pavilion, for which the builders, choreographers, costume designers, dancers, musicians, and those participating in Wrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architectural practice were all one and the same.

Considerations for the Future While neither Frank Lloyd Wright nor his widow left any plan of succession, there can be no doubt that Wright believed that the combination of his work and his own way of life had much to offer for what he saw coming as a time of great change. With respect to the influences of his life and work, the frontispiece of his last book, A Testament, is blank except for these words from Alfred Lord Tennyson: “Most may raise the flowers now for all have got the seeds.” Wright’s highly integrated way of life and work is the subject explored in the next chapter, starting with the plan of his concept for Broadacre City, shown on the facing page.

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Living with Frank Lloyd Wright

“Broadacre City is significant for the nature of its vision. It could probably not have occurred in just that way in any other country. It seized the American future, embodied in a vision. The remarkable fact is just how visionary it proved to be.” — Peter Hall: Cities of Tomorrow

“Broadacre City is certainly the most American scheme ever devised for our built environment, yet even today… it remains an enigma to most laymen.” — H. Allen Brooks Past President of the Society of Architectural Historians 161

TEN

The Taliesin Equivalent “The dreams that accompany all human actions should be nurtured by the places in which people live.” —Charles W. Moore

t has been more than a century since Frank Lloyd Wright named his Wisconsin estate “Taliesin” and eight and a half decades since his founding of the Taliesin Fellowship. People all over the world know and associate the word and place “Taliesin” with the life and work of its creator, but few are aware of Wright’s reference to “The Taliesin Equivalent.” In leaving us with this reference, it’s clear that Wright hoped the Taliesin idea would influence others to seek their own ideal way of life, much as he had done for himself and others. The unmistakable evidence of his wanting this to be explored is that he identified The Taliesin Equivalent along with 48 other land-use designations as part of his proposal for a new urban form that he called “Broadacre City,” as shown on the prior page. Wright was encouraging the exploration of his own Taliesin example as an inspiration for other, more integrated ways of living. As already presented, the Taliesin idea is one in which its participant-citizens serve as the creator-stewards 162

of an environment that becomes both their home and place of work, study, exploration, and culture. In a multitude of ways, the experience conveyed a sense of stewardship, not only with respect to one’s individual and shared environment but in a symbolic way as a kind of stewardship-partnering with Nature for the future of life. To live in the ways and means of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was to experience a sense of strength and creativity that was greater than what could be achieved by totaling the contribution of its individual members. This wasn’t unlike the dynamics of a winning team or the performance of a great symphony orchestra, the obvious difference being that the experience went beyond a series of special events to achieve a more fundamental and richer way of life. All this may seem a bit too philosophical to adequately describe the great variety of issues that so easily influence or even dominate our lives. My only response is that this was my 24/7 way of life from the age of 17 to 38. For all the reasons mentioned in this book, I now see this laboratory-like experience as being one of increasingly relevant significance for as many applications as there are creatively engaged individuals and interests. To pursue the idea of a Taliesin “Equivalent” cannot be taken to mean “the same as.” For there to be another Taliesin of the kind I witnessed would require that there not only be equivalents to Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife

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but also to the earliest apprentices who remained dedicated to the idea for their entire lives. There would also need to be an equivalent to Wright’s uncommon magnetism, which attracted resident members from all over the world along with a steady stream of guests as prominent and varied as Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen Bomb; Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood; Buckminster Fuller, who remains a hero to many of the most innovative individuals in the present; Henry Luce, the founder of Time,

Life, and Fortune magazines; and his wife, Claire Booth Luce, a playwright who was also the US Ambassador to Italy; as well as artists like Georgia O’Keefe, poets like Carl Sandburg, Hollywood personalities including Elizabeth Taylor; guitarist Jimi Hendrix; Georg Solti, the conductor of the Chicago Symphony; and a host of others. And should all this happen again, it would, like Taliesin itself, spring from circumstances far too special to function as a blueprint for others to imitate. A more generalized opportunity is to consider a wider variety of greener, more economical, more custom, and far more beautiful and rewarding settlements than those being produced by the developer-driven sameness of highvolume production. One such developer summarized his business plan by explaining, “It all comes down to velocity and margin,” meaning, “How fast can I sell what I build and how much of the sales price accrues to me?” A similar but far more thoughtful developer, following his review of a

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proposed concept, responded by saying, “Well, now it all comes down to pursuing the art of the possible.” The following list has been prepared to assist in our thinking beyond the limitations of convention to explore that which might be considered and pursued by way of an idea-driven philosophy and strategy. 1. In as many ways that seem practical to consider, “shared use” would be more dominant than “ownership.” 2. Spaces for work, exercise, study, exhibitions, performance, entertainment, central kitchens, and dining areas would be the most shared, while those for personal space—including sleeping, dressing and hygiene, small kitchens and dining areas— would be as individual as the desires of the citizen/ residents. 3. There would be far fewer cars than the number of residents in favor of shared or on-call vehicles. At the time of the original Taliesin, there could be no dominance of shared use vehicles by Uber, Lyft or other providers, because they didn't yet exist. 4. As much as possible, fruits and vegetables would be grown, harvested, and available on site. 5. Like all other provisions demanded by the design of high-performance ships and aircraft, storage areas would be highly organized and efficiently limited. 165

6. Instead of the more typical division between residents and service people, the residents would be the dominant stewards of their own treasured ways of living. 7. Cultural events would provide for a diversity of resident engagements, with people from outside the community invited as guests. 8. In a variety of ways, there would be little difference between living and working. So-called retirement would represent a change of activity rather than the cessation of work. 9. The use of facilities for education, culture, and making things would be an integral, enriching, and vital feature of daily life. 10. All structures would be designed around climateresponsive considerations including, for example, building materials and systems, water harvesting, solar orientation, solar-devices, and permaculture. 11. To the extent that the community members wished to pursue this direction, designs and artifacts produced on site would be available for sale, both online and in the villageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shops. 12. Considerations for life in a Taliesin Equivalent would be more analogous to the kind of commitment made by those commissioning the design of their own custom residence than, for example, buying a mass-produced house or rental apartment. 166

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13. In addition to the resident base, there would be provisions for accommodating guests including families and friends, educators, visiting scholars, and artists-in-residence along with a changing group of students of all kinds. 14. Other provisions, especially with respect to the larger communities, would include a related series of shops, healthcare, schools, and offices along with provisions for light or high-tech manufacturing. 15. Facilities would be available to accommodate individual forums along with the annual ATEC Festivals, which would become known as the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s acronym for Arts, Technology, Education, and Culture. 16. The overriding goal of all such commitments is to accomplish far more of everything desired for less cost or time wasted as a result of the no-longernecessary separation between life and work.

Frank Lloyd Wright In His Own Words â&#x20AC;&#x153;Normally, the factory, farm, office, store or dwelling, church or theater would be within a ten-minute radius of vast, variegated wayside markets and schools. Food fresh every hour, with manufacturers and markets so placed that each might serve the others effectively, all directly serving appropriate populations living or working in easy range of its neighborhood. No need then for the futile racing 167

to and from any faraway common center, tired out but racing back and forth again to race again tomorrow. No more stalling off time and crucifixion just to keep things from being congested and too ‘big’ because of the pacing of some money-making system eventuating from and into the money-trust. Instead of the big fixations of banking and insurance, there would rise a multiplicity of fluid, small, individual, charming human establishments! Freedom at last economic! “Forever fresh air, food no less fresh, sunlight, good land, green underfoot and appropriate spaciousness round about, people building themselves in addition to fast, regular public transport; these independent in the many small studios and workshops that will abound throughout the city… and no more back and forth haul… Droves of happy, healthy children go to smaller and ever-growing smaller schools. Garden-schools are more numerous and more individual. I see children there in their own little practice-shops working in little individual vegetable and flower gardens… playgrounds, placed where nature periodically stages ‘a beautiful show.’ Raising vegetables and animals of all kinds. Many joys not yet to be known would be a commonplace experience. “I see children’s parents meantime living the free individual life that would enrich the communal life by the very

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changing quality of their own fresh individuality. And last of all but not least, I see beauty in their new life, unafraid of anything outside itself: life that has rediscovered faith in life by faith in itself. All this harmony with nature in varied buildings, work and recreation, spaciously intimate with liberated transport, I see this as the proper life of the community.”

Moving From the Special to the General Two related observations link Wright’s long-ago observations to the present and future. The first is that what he “saw” preceded the Technological Revolution by a half century. The second is, it’s precisely that which our now digital realities make possible that’s needed to realize in ever-more convenient, economical, and sustainable ways not only what Wright made both special and possible to achieve for himself but, now, for society in general. In addition to the fundamental ways and means for accomplishing more with less cost and less time wasted in the back-and-forth commute, the programming and planning for each Taliesin Equivalent would, in a variety of ways, start with an exploration of options for achieving the following: (1) a variety of ways for engaging interested individuals, (2) exploring a range of program elements that could best serve both individual and shared needs, (3) custom methods and systems for accomplishing more with less, (4) placing more of everything needed and accessed on a daily basis within 169

walking distance, including a shared stable of vehicles or reliance on ride-sharing, all resulting in less paving and, like Taliesin West, no garages, (5) a far wider variety of housing provisions from the emerging enthusiasm for the "Tiny House” to whatever innovative concepts might best serve the individual’s needs and desires, and (6) instead of walling off, or in any other way demarking obvious lot lines, having a connecting landscape of flower and vegetable gardens along with pools, recreational courtyards, and whatever other amenities are desired by the fully engaged interests of the citizenry. Together, these six initial commitments aren’t only about economics, convenience, and beauty but they set the stage for the richness and sense of security of a consciously caredfor environment, all initiated by an agreed-upon sense of stewardship as researched, discussed, and determined by the resident-participants. The custom communities envisioned—now made possible by the information age—will lead to new versions of the once typical live/work, pedestrian-centered environments and multi-generational settings that existed before the demands and emergence of our current production-driven sameness. The design goal for a more custom approach to the programming of community will be to create environments of privacy, beauty, and involvement along with convenient access to that which is most desired, however general or

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special. The human goal is to arrange resources in ways that support, inspire, deepen, and add to both individual and collective effectiveness. The community of the future will emerge quite naturally out of old-fashioned self-interest, now enriched by our ever-increasing, 21st-century ways of doing more with less.

High Intention Communities If making a commitment to think more deeply about where and how we live, both privately and with others, werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so critical to the success of our individual and shared futures, few would make the effort. For those who might want to take a positive hand in shaping the kind of environments we call home, a good start would be to consider alternatives for what that might be. My hope with respect to the examples that follow is that they may stir and broaden the imaginations of others concerning the greater possibilities that exist beyond the choices that have been limited by standardization. What each of the examples have in common is that they greatly reduce the wasteful, back-and-forth daily commute between home and work while expanding the on-site provisions for diverse and rewarding ways of living. During my Taliesin years, I thought a lot about the meaning of privacy as opposed to being alone. The joy and richness of privacy is to be alone from something, which, for the moment, can get along without oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence, whereas being alone from nothing isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t privacy but isolation and deprivation.

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From the Production of Housing to the Composition of Community Just as we associate the finest music with the orchestration of its coherent structure and memorable melodies, what we design for where and how we live should convey and inspire its own kind of memorable environments. The difference between the look of community as opposed to housing was first addressed and illustrated as shown in the upper and lower images on page 122.

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While community is clearly a matter of human commitment, in its physical manifestation, it also has a kind of visual or compositional "melody," as illustrated on the facing page. In places planned with this in mind, when you step out of your private living quarters, everything about the surrounding environment should feel like an integral part of your home. To live this way is to feel a sense of stewardship for the overall. Considerations of maintenance and security are enhanced by everything in sight being part of one's personal and shared experience. Five illustrated examples follow, the first of which envisions a series of residences ranging in size from the growing enthusiasm for Tiny Houses to the more traditional twoto four-bedroom units. In place of individually owned backyard poolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which are often far more maintained than usedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there are two central pools and fitness centers. In place of garages, the community includes a series of carports for an array of shared vehicles ranging from small cars and trucks to sedans. Given the integration of home offices coupled with the strategic use of delivery services, commuting for reasons of work or shopping is minimal. With each provision being made more significant by the presence of the others, daily life combines the privacy of one's home with access to a range of amenities within walking distance. These include the kind of provisions that we might more typically associate with an educational campus or resort.

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Compound Entrance Driveway Gardening Storage Central Courtyard Archway Features Family Patios Townhouses "Tiny" Houses Vegetable Gardens Perimeter Pathway Community Pool Guest Accomodations Craft Shops Kitchen/Dining Barn Storage Celebration Lawn Playground Outdoor Movies & Stage Shops Barn & Grazing Area Pasture Solar-Roofed Parking Fitness Center Dog Run Entry Theme Wall

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6 7 The Town Square 8 Orchard and Vegetables 9 Gated Entry 10 Botanical Garden Five Acre Park

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Private K-12 School Animal Sanctuary Stables and Arena Village Workshops Recreation Areas

Ranch Main House 18 hole Putting Course Garden Maze Observatory Custom Residences

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CULTURE VALLEY RANCH 14

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The residential ranch setting shown in the plan on pages 176 and 177 features a town square including a pub, icecream parlor, post office, cinema, music pavilion, and hobby-related shops and studios. These are all adjacent to the town's stables, dressage arena, a five-acre park, and a 15-acre botanical garden. A pair of gatehouses separates the circulation for a private, K-12 school from the rest of the ranch. A series of custom residences is arranged around producing fields, much in the way that houses are placed around the visual amenity of a golf course. For children and adults alike, to experience the environment is to be exposed to a 178

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far deeper sense of the systems and provisions of Nature, in contrast to traditional development patterns that suggest food is produced in a supermarket and trash disappears once itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taken to a landfill. A full palette of housing types and sizes provides for a wide latitude of needs along with the ability to upsize and downsize as provisions for family needs change, all available without having to leave the familiarity of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community. Rather than being considered as a specialty, being smart, green, and sustainable is simply the everyday norm. All buildings are designed with respect to the path of the sun, and no exterior materials are permitted that would cause glare in view of the surrounding structures. 179

The Hacienda Spa idea combines provisions for healthminded guests to attend for a week or more as a feature of its base of full-time residents, most of whom will be users of the facilities, with some becoming involved as owners and operators of the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facilities.

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HACIENDA SPA 1 Hacienda Entrance 2 Arrival Plaza 3 Spa Retreat

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Cattletrack Arts and Culture Compound This 11-acre community has been programmed and designed to include artisans who live and work on site along with a diversity of studio members who reside elsewhere. Unlike easy-to-dismiss visionary thoughts based on reconsidering our more familiar ways of living and working, this example of doing more with less isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only visionary, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already a living reality. The Cattletrack Arts and Culture Compound represents more of a multi-generational commitment than anything to do with the conventions of commercial transactions. Its first adobe structure was designed and built by George Ellis, whose wife was a fifth-grade school teacher in what is now the city of Scottsdale. At the time this community first emerged, there were no other structures for as far as the eye could see. As a way to appreciate the highly special and innovative nature of the Cattletrack community, we need only consider the land use across the street, which consists of one-acre homesites. By extreme contrast, the Cattletrack site not only provides for a great variety of residential provisions but includes special facilities designed for educational seminars, concerts, and live theater along with woodworking studios, workshops for blacksmithing, a foundry, and studios for the printing of hand-crafted art books, all of which are open to the public. Other facilities include studios for dance, ceramics, photography, jewelry, offset printing,

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sculpting, architecture, landscape architecture, engraving, and publishing. The campus also includes a gallery and theater setting for hosting concerts, magic and art shows, movies, live theater, lectures, and presentations focused on the arts and philosophy. Beginning and master’s classes are held for painting, printing, yoga, and dance. What’s most interesting about the Cattletrack Arts and Culture Compound is what it illustrates about the creative spirit that inspires and thrives on diversity. In addition to the already-mentioned activities, the community has been the venue for the design and manufacture of costumes used in classical theaters all over the country. And, last but not least, its historic activities have included the fabrication of both airplanes and the fiberglass body for Mario Andretti’s 1969 race car in which he won his only first-place victory at the Indianapolis 500. History, art, fashion, music, and craft are all in a day’s work when experienced the Cattletrack way, where there’s no division between work, life, and culture, and where a shared sense of celebration is the everyday norm.

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Special Achievements Require Special People During our interview with the indefatigable Janie Ellis, the owner/creator/steward of that which already exists along with all that is yet to be, she stated that the last item on her list of the community’s special features was “zest and enthusiasm.” That this kind of comprehensive commitment to a strategic and artful goal exists is far more likely to be the result of a creative and purpose-driven desire than an abundance of funding. This includes the degree to which materials have been recycled, its car-free pedestrian character, and the range of its special features and programming that are far more ingeniously designed than extravagant. The Cattletrack Arts and Culture Compound exemplifies what’s possible when there’s a commitment to a consciously and creatively designed way of life. It represents the kind of environment that no amount of money, on its own, could ever hope to accomplish. To put this in the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, “It may take a lot of money, but money alone won’t do it.” 185

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1 Street Entrances 2 Art Gallery 3 Theater/Museum 4 Community Amphitheater 5 Live/Work Studios 6 Historic Homestead 7 Conference & Special Events 8 Vehicular/Pedestrian Circulation 9 Event Parking

10 Island Cafe 11 Yoga Studio and Apartments 12 The Rodeo Restaurant 13 Vegetable Gardens 14 The Arizona Canal 15 Residential Compound 16 Guest Parking

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The 21st Century Company Town Two observations provoke the following exploration and illustrations of the 21st century company town. The first is the analogous history of artful places like Colonia Guell, shown on pages 136 and 137. The second is the 21st-century example of what the technology giants have created for their own community-inspired headquarters, illustrated on page 143. Relating all this to the evolution of 21st-century communities, the illustrations on page 190-191 portray the kind of beneficial outcome that could occur as a result of the growing number of billionaires who are taking the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Giving Pledgeâ&#x20AC;? to donate 50 percent or more of their wealth to the public good. Bill and Melinda Gates and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, have pledged 99 percent of the value of their net worth in stock ownership. Warren Buffet said he would do the same and could do so without any changes to his lifestyle. As of March 2017, 158 individuals, ranging in age from 30 to 101 years old and representing 20 different countries, had made the pledge. Surely, among the growing number of the super-rich who are making this and other pledges, there are those who might find it rewarding to not only transfer their monetary wealth but to consider serving as resident stewards for whatever ideas they feel to be either urgent or exciting or both. This could result in the most genuine of all Taliesin Equivalents, in which the individual or individuals who mamke the achievement financially possible would 188

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also contribute by way of personally living and guiding the community’s activities in ways that are culturally extraordinary. This will, of course, only be attractive to those who have amassed wealth as a by-product of their interests rather than great wealth being central to their motivation. The reason for this was put most succinctly by Dee Hock, the late founder and Chairman Emeritus of VISA: “Money alone motivates neither the best people nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit.” While Frank Lloyd Wright sowed the seeds for the Taliesin Community, he also gave his life to nurturing that which he made possible. Just think of what could be accomplished if, among the brilliance of those who’ve pledged their funds to the good of the future, there were those very special individuals who came along with their gifts (as Wright did) to enrich and make the rest of their lives part of “the pledge.” This could produce a positive revolution far beyond the reach of governments to legislate or what money could ever hope to achieve on its own. In the 21st-Century Town, paths for walking, bicycles, wheelchairs, and Segway-like transportation will be far more prevalent than streets and vehicles, and deliveries of goods will supersede the historic notion of “shopping.” The community culture would be one in which wellness and life-long engagement are the norm, with retirement existing only in memory as a no-longer-desired and unhealthy limitation of a fragmented past.

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1 Corporate Headquarters 2 Pedestrian-sensitive Streets 3 Arts District

4 Civic Compound 5 Celebration Park 6 Friendship Gardens

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8 Family Compounds 9 Townhouses 10 Schools / University 11 Reclaimed Water Lagoons

12 Farm Community 13 Green Houses / Aquaponics

14 Residential Compounds 15 "Tiny Houses"

16 Student Housing 17 Tree Farm 18 Dog Park 19 Solar / Wind Power Farms 20 Butterfly Gardens 21 Composting Sites 22 Tree Farm Gazebo

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The company town concept is one of a core employment center surrounded by rings of neighborhoods within walking distance and all connected by flexible and efficient versions of publicly available forms of transportation. The majority of all food is raised within the town itself, which also recycles the majority of its wastes. In place of standardized codes and ordinances, all decisions are given the benefit of the same individually designed-based commitments that inspired the original quest.

In all such communities, ongoing adjustments and changes will be the norm. Inasmuch as artful investments and achievements will also be the norm, there will be nothing like the "two percent for art" requirements nor will being smart, green, and sustainable be treated as anything special. All building features will be designed with respect to the path of the sunâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not only for purposes of shade and shelter but as a way to create artful, sunlit patterns on the buildings and grounds.

Imagine living where everywhere you look is beautiful, everything you see is home, and where walking is the norm and driving the exception. And imagine a future where thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little or no retirement because work and life are inseparable. In many ways and in many special places, that was historically more common than anything exceptional. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re perfectly positioned for that to become so again. 194

SPECIAL PURPOSE CORES

onceptual Dream Plan for Lucky Paws Sanctu

t site specific . presented at Furball 2016

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Each of the prior illustrations of 2 Outdoor Parking Area performance-centered communities 3 The Barn for a rescue horse, pig and goat suggest specific examples of purpose4 Driveway based relationships for enhancing the5 conveniences, commitments, Memorial Gardens and6 joys of home beyond what any volunteers picnics, wal Garden Pasture horse or playing with the pig. one person could achieve on their 7 Visitors Parking own. The plan to the left illustrates 8 Welcome a two-acre coreCourtyard dedicated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, with smallcage-free office for the Foun 9 Cat Cottage storage and restrooms. environment for rescue animals 10 Saint Francis Garden Enclosed and s where area theyfor can be socialized the rabbits to be outdoor, and seating area umbrellas and a butterfly garden. available for adoption. Variations of 11 Recyclables and trash pick up ar this could be integrated into any of Cage Free Dogs House / storage, w the12preceding concepts. station and food storage and preparation for th

13 Play Yard Outdoor fenced yard for the pup exercise and enjoy the weather.

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Entrance 1 14Street Green Planet 2 Service WhereParking possible, solar panels will be installed. 3 Barn for Large Animals Statement: Driveway 4Mission Lucky Paws is a 501c3 non-profit animal shelter that p 5 Memorial Gardens a cage-free living environment to dogs, cats and othe Recreation 6that have been Yard rescued. Lucky Paws animals are Visitor Parking and adopted. 7socialized we are located in Scottsdale and renting a wa Welcome Courtyard 8Today that is for now a temporary home for all animals. Caretaker's Cottage 9Our lease will expire in 2017 and it is time to start loo Saintthat Francis 10a place will beGarden Lucky Pawsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; land and legacy for come. We are looking at options of vacant land or & Trash Pickup 11 Recyclables land, and working hard to get this next phase going. 12 Cage-Free Dog Shelter Without the help of our friends, families and the Play Yard 13community, it will be impossible to accomplish this. thank you so much for being here today supporti Planet" Display 14We"Green

an incredible place. Your contribution is priceless. This brochure is for you to keep, read, share and dre us. We are open to suggestions, ideas and collabora All donations are welcome. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

ELEVEN

To Serve and to Celebrate “I don’t know what else you may do, but what I know for certain is that the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who will have sought and found a way to serve.” —Albert Schweitzer

n 1948, referring to the earth home we all share, Fred Hoyle, the distinguished English astronomer, offered this prophesy: “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose.” We’re now approaching a half century since NASA made it possible to view our oneworld reality, but we’ve yet to become a local-to-global, oneworld community. One of the best options and possibly the only hope for having a positive influence on the global is to develop and more intelligently share the local. The best way to influence the local isn’t to pass well-intentioned laws, codes, and ordinances that are designed to fit all eventualities but to focus on special-purpose proposals, no matter how many special considerations they require.

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Once a new idea can be demonstrated for the positive achievements it represents, the many will follow. If among the most human of all goals is finding a way to be happy, we refer again to Albert Schweitzer, who also said the only way to achieve that goal is to find “a way to serve.” To this we would add that given the nature of our 21st century’s evermore connected relationships, both digitally and physically, either war or we will become obsolete. Whatever it takes for us to arrive at that level of understanding—which I’m confident we will—those in the future will look back and wonder why it took us so long to achieve and enjoy the success that was just waiting for us to make it our everyday reality. The Giving Pledge, referred to on page 188, is specifically focused on billionaires and those who would be billionaires if not for their prior giving. The amount of these and other pledges to follow is so great that they bring to mind two observations—one from Malcomb Forbes and the other from Frank Lloyd Wright, which was quoted in an earlier chapter. Forbes first asked and then responded to his own question with a single word: “What is the answer to 99 out of a 100 questions? Money!” Wright’s answer suggested that there’s more to be considered: “There’s not much of anything that can be accomplished without some money, but money alone won’t do it.”

What Money Alone Can’t Do When John Buchan, the Scottish novelist and historian, 198

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observed, “We can only pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves,” he was clearly talking about something greater than money alone. On May 11, 2015, all it took to claim ownership of the “Les Femmes d’Alger” was $179 million, but before that purchase could be possible, it took the talent and commitment of Pablo Picasso in 1932 to paint it. The life and commitment of Vincent van Gogh illustrates this difference in the extreme. During the last 10 years of his life, van Gogh produced 900 paintings and 1100 drawings and, despite the fact that his own brother was an art dealer, the artist died thinking he was a total failure. Not one of his works was ever sold during his lifetime, yet, during May 2015, a single one of his paintings, “L'Allée des Alyscamps,” was auctioned off for $66.3 million. Furthering what money alone can’t achieve, we again quote professor Stephen A. Marglin, who leaves no doubt about the shortcomings of what Malcolm Forbes had to say about money being the answer to 99 out of 100 questions. In the words of the professor, “Traditional communities are not simply about shared participation in producing and exchanging goods and services but about governing, entertaining, and mourning; and about generating and regenerating people physically, morally, and spiritually.” In The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph E. Stiglitz states that, as of 2014, one percent of the world’s citizens owned nearly half of the world’s wealth. Furthermore, these 199

individuals are on track to soon own as much as the rest of the 99 percent. Clearly this kind of doubling of wealth has nothing to do with what we call “work” and everything to do with what we refer to as “the market.” I cite this observation only to emphasize that, short of a revolution that would very likely do more harm than good for the vast majority, the wellbeing of the world’s citizens will depend more on designing for the art of community than on what money could ever hope to make possible on its own.

Addressing the Task at Hand New voices are emerging with new messages, some of which spring from easily understandable matters of convenience and economy. Joe Gebbia is a designer and cofounder of Airbnb. His message isn’t only on the side of doing more with less, it’s radiating out at a globally exponential scale that can be summarized in just these five words: “Access is the new ownership.” Others are more focused on the comprehensively increasing awareness of life itself. One such individual is Jonathan Kolber, the author of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and, more recently, his book, A Celebration Society, published in 2015, in which he provides a weaving together of what has gotten us to the present with a vision for the future. The following excerpts demonstrate Kolber’s brevity and clarity in presenting an

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overview of the past with a positive prophecy for that which awaits our understanding and all-out commitment. “In pre-industrial societies, children learned a trade through apprenticeship. It was a sensible way to transmit culture and skills, but it no longer served production once industrialization entered the picture. Industrialization and industrial-era models are crumbling around us. In Silicon Valley, there are fast-growing companies with officers in charge of play! They understand that, to attract and keep the kinds of workers they require—workers who think creatively and refuse to function as drones—they need to engage playful tendencies in a way that supports the corporate purpose. However, the prevailing educational system is woefully inadequate to produce these kinds of workers—the kind who truly think outside the proverbial ‘box’ rather than merely talk about it… College was originally developed to cultivate leadership qualities in the upper classes. It therefore offers a very different educational experience than do the lower grades. However, by the time students reach college age, some view it as a much-needed escape from prison while others view it as an extension of the professional preparation that was high school. In very few cases is college viewed as a natural place to explore one’s life purpose. “There is a concept in physics called phase transition. It is the point when a seemingly stable system suddenly transforms

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into something very different—when (for example) ignition happens or water turns to ice. Research into political and ecological systems suggests that similar mechanisms may exist in realms of human society as well… We live in a time when attractive ideas can spread virally over the Internet, becoming memes, reaching millions and even billions. By continuing to grow, one person at a time, we will reach that critical mass…The world hungers for a better approach to production and a more humane way to organize society. We have a unique chance, together, to deliver it.” Every moment in history has presented questions about the future that couldn’t be adequately answered at the time they were asked. What’s different and more urgent about the present is that our planetary awareness combined with the invention of digital computing and nuclear weaponry greatly increase our global-scaled ability to create or destroy. Someday—and that someday may be soon—we’ll expand our system of accounting to be more inspired by the timelessness of Nature than the timeliness of “the deal.” We’re not accustomed to thinking this way and tend to discount those who do, because there’s no financial return or “bottom-line” obviousness between what truly matters and what doesn’t. In a way, this is understandable, but it’s also quite strange because so much of what we value the most fits into the category for which there’s no price. Don’t we pretty much agree that we don’t buy, use, sell, or trade our parents or children? What if we could extend this same

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sense of stewardship to everything from our neighborhoods to that of the planetary home we all share? How long is it going to take to realize the degree to which we’re not only at war with each other but, more collectively, we’re each and every day at war with life itself? The use of money has been and will likely remain that of a transferable form of power and ownership. But even ownership is taking on a new and expanded range of possibilities. Referring again to Joe Gebbia, he’s gone beyond Airbnb to broaden our fundamental measures by asking, “Do we really need to own a house, a car, or a boat? Things that were once available only after years of saving can now be easily accessible through the collaborative.” This brings us back to the ways and means of community. To the extent that it may help to visualize the coming success and opportunities associated with the art of community, might the Uber and Airbnb examples, writ large, lead to everexpanding versions of Frank Lloyd Wright’s way of life in which he shared not only his wealth in monetary terms but also his creative way of living as the basis for empowering the gifts of community?

No Man is an Island This familiar assertion is from the English poet John Dunne’s 1624 work, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, written nearly four centuries before today’s increasingly one-world reality. The need to design for and nurture the 203

art of community is becoming an ever-more significant and urgent objective. No matter how much we may value the safety and security of our differences, the ever-more obvious reality is that we all live and have our being in the same, two-worlds unity. The most obvious is the world that includes everything we can lock and call our own, with the clearest examples being our houses and vehicles along with our places of business and recreation. The world we can only share includes everything from the gifts of Nature to the will and differences of others including other nations, other religions, and even the differences we experience among our own friends and family. Creating the best functionality within these dualities can only be addressed by the art of community, which brings us back to the variety of purposecentered pursuits presented in the prior chapter. Rather than thinking of these programmatic illustrations as a variety of choices, they’re best used to stimulate new ways for exploring and accomplishing something more than what money alone can buy.

Community is Not About Equality Everything from the French Revolution’s mantra of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” to the “All men are created equal” bedrock of the founding documents of the United States has clearly stressed equality, but we too easily misuse the idea. We can and do find ways to make how races are run and games are played to be equally fair for the participants, 204

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but this in no way suggests that there will be equal results. This observation is as true for individual athletes as it is for entire teams. Consider the track-and-field events in which great care is given at the starting line to assure that each and every competitor is given the benefit of an equal start, but no one except the participants is able to determine the unequal crossing of the finish line. In like manner, even if it were mandated to guarantee some form of equality in the economic, sociological, and educational process, differentiation, not sameness wouldn’t be the outcome.

Human Accomplishments: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 rank-orders the top

Charles

Murray’s

exhaustively

researched

twenty individual achievers for each of 21 categories from astronomy, technology, and medicine to music, art, and literature. Two observations are inescapable. The first is that our human story is far more about our differences than anything to do with the pursuit of sameness. The second is that there’s little to connect the accumulation of great financial wealth on its own terms with great human achievement. In the simplest way of seeing, our human purpose isn’t to dictate the equality of sameness but to create, widen, and nurture the pursuit and orchestration of community in as many ways and means as our imaginations and behaviors permit.

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The process of contemplating and nurturing community always comes back to the individual before it can coalesce into the group. It’s not surprising that we’re motivated by what seems right, and nothing seems more right than for everyone to have an equal opportunity, which has led to a host of governmental programs. To this we might add that among our easily shared beliefs is that all such initiatives are generally supported by the “liberals” and opposed by the “conservatives,” but, in a deeper sense, the matter is somewhat daunting to all. Robert Schwartz was an amazing man and clearly known to be a most significant “liberal.” He was one of the wisest individuals I’ve ever had the privilege to know. He served as both the foreign bureau chief for Time magazine and editor of Harper’s magazine, and, in 1963, he became the proprietor and chairman of the Tarrytown Executive Conference Center. The center was located on 26 acres in New York state that was originally the estate of Mary Duke Biddle. It was at this center that Mr. Schwartz hosted and partnered with individuals like the much-quoted Margaret Mead; Herman Kahn, the founder of the Hudson Institute; and Norman Macrony, the deputy editor of The Economist. During our last meeting together—which included Marlon Brando— Bob Schwartz shared this observation, which he delivered

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in a most hesitant voice: “The sad thing for we liberals is that any system that tries to create equality inadvertently destroys initiative.” In Chapter Five, we made reference to Stephen A. Marglin’s

The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community. Add to this Jack Beatty’s observation in his The World According to Peter Drucker: “Drucker has insisted on the need for a strong, noneconomic society to make ‘inequality appear far less intolerable’ and to shore people up against the nihilism of the market. Inequality grows, nihilism thrives. A social space where money doesn’t rule—we have never needed it more.” The community described in Chapter Nine, in which I lived, worked, studied, and thrived, was clearly a society not only where money didn’t rule but was rarely discussed.

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TWELVE

For What is Yet to Be: Student and Citizen Visioning “None of us lives at the point where the Creation began, but every one of us lives at a point where Creation continues.” —Scott Russell Sanders

ell before she was appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor invited a group of friends to a wine and cheese party with the announced purpose of discussing “The Future of Architecture.” She invited me to both frame the purpose of the gathering, followed by facilitating the discussion. What has remained with me all these years is how rare the occasion was. Everyone was committed to not only giving their best but to also challenging and encouraging all others to do the same. Argument had little value because there were no opponents. Like the art of design, the atmosphere was all about exploration. Persons who simply helped to clarify someone else’s thoughts were as valuable as those who advanced their own ideas. There was no agenda. We 208

were all practicing what it felt like to imagine a reality beyond anything more obviously evident in the present. It is thrilling to think what could be accomplished if that same spirit of shared exploration and encouragement were to become the dominant atmosphere of all public discourse. In place of arrogant assumptions of insight, the pursuits would be more modest, yet more powerful in the sense of asking each other better and better questions. Instead of pretending to know and fighting to defend any preconceived notions, we would openly share our doubts. Our fears could become springboards from which to explore and learn from each other. Inspired by this memory of what Justice Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor occasioned, just think how interesting it might be to go beyond that which is dished-out by the evening news, to host a gathering of individuals for the purpose of discussing far deeper matters, both concerning our own interests, along with those relating to the explorations in this book, for which the following might be topics of common interest: Looking Back and Forth: Those in attendance would be asked to share their stories, starting with whatever they have found to be most interesting along with their hopes and dreams for themselves, their children and beyond. Setting a New Course: What do you expect from the future? What continues as is, and what changes?

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Technologyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gifts and Threats: How do you feel about those who are counting on being able to live forever, or inhabit other planets, or technology replacing biology? What is it about technology that has made your life richer as opposed to that which inspires your concerns? It Takes a Village: What interests you most about the difference between your own early education from that which you have subsequently experienced or heard about from others? What more would you like to learn? Continuing Care Retirement Communities (Life Plan Communities): How do you see what they are now and what they might become? Do you agree with those who want to remain in their own homes and why? What might your thoughts be about exploring options, including those that are beyond that which already exist? Living at a Time of Great Change: What are your reasons for optimism or pessimism? How aware are you of the kind of changes being predicted by others, as opposed to what you might prefer to see differently? Being Smart, Green and Sustainable: This is certainly a hot topic for all kinds of specialists, but to what extent has it affected your own life? From Custom Homes to Custom Communities: Can you imagine conditions that might enrich your life, by way of 210

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custom designed communities, equal to, or more significant than that offered by having a custom designed house? What I can pass on from the event hosted by Justice Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, is that just as soon as those in attendance heard the introductory comments they all had something that they were eager to share or to ask. And more often than not, what they had to say inspired all manner of responses from the others. The participants observed that, given some measure of prompting, the subject of community experiences, that affect us everyday, makes for a fascinating topic that many, if not most, have never discussed.

Living in Two Worlds Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing new about living, thinking, and working in two worlds. Every major industry depends on its research and development activities to provide direction for its future. Most religions have their own, two-worlds views for addressing the here and now quite seamlessly with the hereafter. No thoughtful person expects the future to be like the past. Thus, for all who are able to think in these terms, rather than being something special, two-worlds thinking is nothing but our daily reality. However, that's not the whole story. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a difference between Reality with a capital "R" and the far more obvious reality of what occurs at all manifestations of the marketplace where resale, i.e. the ability to get in and 211

out of the market quickly with financial gain, is far more motivational than any other consideration. This is certainly an understandable idea in what we call "making money." Reality with a capital "R" goes beyond all such metrics to embrace the fundamental source of all that we call Nature. To again paraphrase Bucky Fuller, Nature has no separate marketplace departments and yet it represents the highest market value of all, which we call life. Among all its other details, the writing of this book was motivated by somewhat difficult-to-address themes including the need to get beyond the over-simplified notion of "equality," which is the essential threshold for addressing the ongoing principal of everything from artful living to the lessons of Nature. Consistent with its title, everything in this book has been written and illustrated with the intent to inspire the programming, development, and nurturing of artfully sustainable, high-performance settlements, for which examples are given in Chapters 8, 9, and 10. The understanding that all such directions start with and require a kind of visionary dialogue provides the purpose for Chapters 11, 12 and the following Epilogue. This concept of the future goes beyond a more artful sense of development to address the fundamental necessity of doing more with less. If any of this is something that you find interesting, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be happy to hear from you.

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Becoming Involved To express your interest, ask questions, or make suggestions concerning this work, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, you may contact the Foundation in any of the following ways: Website: twoworldsfoundation.org or swabackpartners.com Email: vswaback@swabackpartners.com Phone: 480.367.2100 Mailing Address: Two Worlds Community Foundation 7550 East McDonald Drive, Suite A Scottsdale, Arizona 85250

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EPILOGUE

Two Worlds Community Foundation “The most creative people on the planet are those that frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.” —Rob Brenzy

any years after the gathering described in Chapter 12, a more structured session was held for which the participants had been specifically selected because of their interest or expertise in a variety of areas relating to the environment and the future. The proceedings were observed by Karen Werner, a professional writer and editor, who was retained to chronicle the January 18, 2000 discussion. The following is her account. “This invitation conveys an idea just far enough to either turn you on or off as to its intentions.” That was how the letter started. Written by Vernon Swaback, it was a clarion call to convene a coalition of the willing, a group of some of the busiest and most engaged individuals on Earth.

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Residing in seven states and five countries, the recipients were asked to attend a day-long session in Scottsdale, called the Two Worlds Forum, with little to explain why it would be worth their time. There would be no agenda, no structure, and no moderator. Instead, the group would be asked to share and respond to each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past experiences while presenting their own feelings and hopes for a desired future. As the invitation stated, the search would be for both long- term visions and strategies as well as for notions about incremental steps in positive directions. Chaos would be welcome. Each participant was asked to forward a brief statement concerning their interests and knowledge along with a short biography and one or more related items to be shared including articles, cartoons, charts, or statistics. These materials were assembled into binders and shipped back to the participants for their review. Swaback and his team had prepared a series of related image boards and presentations to focus and empower the Forumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purpose. (The title following the name of each participant below is that held by the participant at the time of the Forum.) Among the participant-presenters were: Richard Bowers and Sam Campana, Scottsdaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s City Manager and Mayor; Richard Daley, the Executive Director of the Arizona-

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Sonoran Desert Museum; Max DePree, Chairman Emeritus, Herman Miller, Inc. and member of Fortune magazine’s business Hall of Fame; Gloria Feldt, national president of Planned Parenthood; Pam Hait, an award-winning author and journalist; Brent Herrington, Vice President of the premier DMB development company; George Land, general systems scientist, author of Grow or Die, and consultant to Fortune 500 companies; Rev. Culver H. Nelson, founder and 50-year senior minister at the Church of the Beatitudes and creative force behind the founding of the Beatitudes CCRC; Dr. James Schamadan, CEO of Scottsdale Health Systems and specialist in both covert military strategies and the handling of explosive ordnance and hazardous/radioactive chemicals; David Hankins, who has his doctorate in and has studied quantum chemistry, and, under the name Jim Carson, is a celebrated western artist; Lynne Twist, who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a global reach for ending hunger, preservation of the world’s rain forests, and the emergence of women in leadership, and; Steve Wilson, journalist, editor, Peace Corps volunteer in the Palau Islands of Micronesia, and professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State of University.

A Sampling of the Shared Observations Steve M. Wilson: “The central premise of the forum is that the level of dialogue about our community’s future

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needs elevating and, once lifted, it’s likely to lead to a better outcome. I agree with the need. Discussions about growth and development are routinely obstructed by self-interests, stereotyping, short-term vision, along with black and white thinking. If people are both able and willing to communicate more clearly, open their minds, and consider new ideas, it seems reasonable to expect better results.” Brent E. Herrington: “For many of us, the most formative and life-shaping experiences of childhood were completely intertwined with the community. This included the neighbors we knew, the friends we made, the pets we adopted, the churches we attended, the paths we walked, the trees we climbed, the prejudices we endured, the behavior of adults we admired, the adventures we shared, the scandals we heard and whispered about, the teachers we loved and feared, the dares we took, the bullying we gave and received on our way to learning compassion, the contests we won and lost, the chores we performed, the small treasures we coveted from the neighborhood stores… These were the experiences that shaped our beliefs, colored our perceptions, and defined our character. By extension, these experiences, common to many of us, provide the underpinnings for the cultural values and civic standards that bind us together.

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“Families are the building blocks of our communities, and communities are the building blocks of our nation. Yet, today, the American community is in crisis. The closeknit neighborhoods of the past have given way to desolate, lifeless suburbs. The need to create better communities has never been more urgent.” The Rev. Culver (Bill) Nelson: “Truth is what you do. It isn’t an ideological mindset much less a sectarian passion. This is so simply because acting a belief is the only final test of its truth. Power is ephemeral and is only consequential to the current generation. Influence survives and is commonly more important to a future generation than its own. Power dies easily, influence does not. Humans are at their best when they remember the future that images a dream and shapes it into existence. “When humans look back upon their own lives, a certain pattern seems to exist or persist, giving them the feeling that their life was predetermined. No such feeling exists when one seriously regards the future. It’s open. Freedom for the future is increasingly self-evident. God has created a world to create itself.” Richard Bowers: “There are no inexorable forces. We’re all involved in a “cosmic dance.” The unrelenting tug-of-war between yin and yang defines our struggle for balance not certainty. Consumerism is the most pervasive influence

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and contradiction in our pursuit of peace and meaning. It drives us, defines us, reduces us, and inspires us. “The remarkable beauty and capacity of the human spirit, if nurtured, can be of greater service to society than we imagine. Self-interest too often triumphs over the common good. We must raise the quality and character of public talk as a requisite for healthy, sustainable communities. It takes courage to do so. Our relationships to each other, to nature, to future generations, and to the children among us need a vision.” George Land: “After over thirty-five years of research and decades of consulting with business and governments, I’ve concluded that our greatest opportunity for the future lies in recovering the open heart and mind that we all knew as children. For centuries, our cultures and schools have taught our children a form of thinking that severely limits our capacity to imagine, to choose, and to relate. In an era of globalization and of accelerating, turbulent, and unpredictable change, these repressed skills and attitudes are those most required to create the family of interdependent humankind. We see the results all around us—from violence in our schools to global religious and ethnic conflicts. These all result from a single source—the pervasive teaching of judgmental thinking that separates us from those who are somehow different. More’s the pity

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that we bring all of this home, abandoning authenticity, constantly judging ourselves, and then projecting those harsh judgments on others. Mountains of research show that organizations—from families to large businesses— can create cultures that foster deep trust, love, and active imagination. Creative, authentic, heartfelt leadership is one of the great challenges of our time.” Max De Pree: “The behavior of leaders must be understood as a preserving principle of society. It’s not a position. Leadership, to borrow a phrase from John Henry Newman’s

The Idea of a University, is a “habit of mind.” Leadership is not limited to appointed leaders but devolves on all kinds of people at all kinds of times. In this sense, then, let me suggest who I believe some of these leaders are: • Those from whom we learn • Those who influence the setting of society’s agenda • Those who have visions • Those who acknowledge the authenticity of persons • Those who create • Those who set standards • Those, like Rosa Parks, who endow us with surprising legacies • Those who meet the needs of followers • Those whose behavior and words positively reinforce the best of our society 220

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• Those who trumpet the breaking up and the breaking down of civility • Those who offer hope and those who say there is no hope • Those who are the givers, those who are the takers • Those who scrutinize • Those who ask the painful and necessary questions • Those, like Mother Teresa, who create trust • Those who understand and actively pursue fairness • Those who, in our lives, are a safe place • Those who accept responsibility for their behavior Leaders should be able to stand alone, take the heat, bear the pain, tell the truth, and do what’s right.” David Hankins: “Nature is inexorable. Economics and religion are not, but, in practice, they may be nearly so. Religion and economics are more complex. Life on Earth is controlled overwhelmingly by them. We’re all subsets of the Universe. The components of our molecules and atoms have been around since the Universe’s ‘inception.’ As such, we know a lot about the Universe through the combination of our conscious mind and our unconscious mind. Art is a reflection in a medium of our sense of the truth of the Universe. Art and science are the same. Einstein’s theories are as great an art as Mozart’s best music. Prejudice is 221

central to our character and is essential to our free thought, but behavior must be regulated within the law. The enforcement of politically correct dogma, especially with a double standard, is tyranny over the mind of man. Tyranny is the sociopolitical application of untruth. If man were to always strive to say what’s true, tyranny couldn’t exist.” Gloria Feldt: “At the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, nearly 180 countries acknowledged that women’s health was central to agriculture, environmental erosion, local and global economics, public health, and disease management, and, of course, population stability. There’s a definite gender power shift toward greater equilibrium of shared power— economically, in government, and in the home. Women everywhere are challenging traditional, male-dominated cultures and governments in pursuit of social and economic justice and the means to obtain it. The global gender power shift coincides with “Youth-Quake.” One billion human beings are reaching prime reproductive age. They are the largest generation in history, with another two billion behind them. The direction that our global century takes, as well as everyone’s quality of life, will be determined in large part by the young women of this generation, the reproductive decisions they make, and the opportunities they take to include men in those decisions.”

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Editor’s Note: In the 17 years between the Two Worlds Forum and the publishing of this book, the human population has grown by one and a half billion, with people under 25 making up 42 percent of the total. Pam Hait: “Fast Company magazine posed some intriguing facts and questions regarding what we’ve been discussing. For example, if we’re making so much progress, how do we account for so much fear of destruction? If our quality of life is so evolved, why are so many people scrambling to simplify and downshift their lives? If we’re living in an era of dizzying individual freedom, control, and choice, why do we feel so bad? Clearly, my children and grandchildren will inherit the cultural and technical advantages of living in the most global of societies. But, if we don’t raise the level of dialogue, rediscover our ability to connect and cooperate with each other, and put an end to mindless violence, they’ll be citizens of a planet where no one feels safe. My overriding fear is that if we continue in our downward spiral, my children and grandchildren will inherit a world where suspicion replaces trust and violence is the coin of the realm. If this should happen, my grandson and granddaughter will never know the thrill of walking alone down the street to school or riding their bikes on their own to explore the neighborhood or town.”

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Sam Campana: “Etched over the Schubert Theater in Chicago is the passage, Only art endures. What do we know of pre-history other than the sculpture plucked from shelters in Malta that predated Mesopotamia by 2000 years or the spirited drawings in a cave in France? Straw soldiers from primitive hogans, mysterious Stonehenge, treasures from pyramids, an army of soldiers buried in the fields of rural China—these images tantalize, invoke cultures, illuminate, and romance us. In the past two decades, we’ve reveled in public art prepared for public consumption along our public rights-of-way, incorporated into the mundane of required infrastructure, and integrated into the heretofore invisible wastewater-treatment facilities, manhole covers, solid-waste sites, and electrical substations, inserting quality of life, thoughtful, whimsical, site-specific fine art into our everyday lives! “This is a new, uniquely American phenomenon. The vanilla of vast roadways might evaporate, murals might mask mediocre walls, and attention might be drawn to the excitement of a major sculpture instead of an empty wasteland. We’re empowering our cultural creators. Artists envision the future, dream the untold, paint the unseen, sculpt the imaginary. It’s the history of civilization, the role of public policy, the endurance of art.” Lynne Twist: “An ancient prophecy about our time: The South American shamans believe that the earth, which they

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call Pachamama, moves in rhythmic cycles of 500 years. These cycles are called pachakutis. There’s a prophecy that says that the tenth pachakuti will be a time of balance and light. The hallmark of the tenth pachakuti will be the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of the eagle and the condor. The shamans say that the people of the eagle are those who live in their heads. They’re people of the intellect. They’re people who, by this time in evolution, will have developed technologies that astound and marvel all humanity. The technological prowess and intellectual potency of the eagles will be at a kind of unprecedented zenith, and along with that will come material wealth beyond imagination. At the same time, the eagles, the people of the modern world, will be spiritually impoverished to their peril. “The people of the condor refers to the indigenous people of the Earth. They’re those who live in their hearts and through their five senses. The prophecy says that the condors will be highly evolved in their relationship with the natural world and the world of intuition and wisdom. They’ll have spiritual wealth beyond their imagination; however, by this time in evolution, they’ll begin to be materially impoverished to their peril. “It ‘s said that the tenth pachakuti is when the eagle and the condor rejoin as one and fly together in the same sky, wing to wing. The tenth pachakuti has just begun, and the prophecy says that this is the time when the world will come into balance and light.” 225

Richard Daley: “Homo sapiens, a late-comer on the evolutionary stage, is a species that, compared to many other animals, can’t see all that well, can’t run all that fast, isn’t well camouflaged, isn’t very strong, can neither breathe underwater nor fly unassisted, and isn’t very adapted for many environments. And yet, this species, our own, has become the dominant species in all of evolutionary time. This has happened because we have the capacity to learn from experience and to solve complex problems. What’s new is that by way of our ingenuity, we’ve become the first living, geophysical force. We’ve developed technology and habits that can affect global climate, we’ve caused mass extinctions of other species, and we’ve depleted our very resource pool. We’ve even created weapons of mass destruction that can spell the end of our species and many others simultaneously. And, we’ve been so successful at eliminating the natural controls on our own size that we’ve set in motion an increase that may well bring those natural controls back into play in unimaginable ways. “The 21st century will be the defining moment for Homo sapiens and tens of thousands of our sister species. We’ll determine whether or not we can restrain ourselves sufficiently to allow for human life and civilization to continue—either at all or in a way that allows a reasonable semblance of a decent standard of living for many, if not most, people. Will our ingenuity allow for technological

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solutions to problems of resource depletion, species extinction, and the myriad associated problems? It may help. In fact, technology is the only thing that may buy us time to transition to a sustainable world by serving us in four ways: 1. Reducing the per-person impact on the environment; 2. Raising the living standards of the poorest to a sustaining level; 3. Allowing us to study and monitor our impacts more precisely and more quickly than ever; and 4. Improving our ability to communicate and inform others of the global nature of our problems. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But technology is our new alchemy. We want to trust that this technology, coupled with a global market economy, will magically solve our problems and we wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to face the consequences of massive species extinctions that threaten the ability of the planet to sustain life. Aristotle noted the relationship between perception and ethics. Today we must change our perception of being separate from Nature to that of not only being inseparable from Nature but also inextricably linked to the processes of life itself. "Knowledge may be power, but information has no power for good without a motivating and convincing demonstration to illustrate its life-sustaining purpose. It can also be dangerous, like the reach of the internet to provide all the information necessary to build and deploy

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a variety of destructive weapons. Or the vast amount of urgent information that went into killing the estimated 175,000,000 to 250,000,000 individuals who have died in world conflicts since the start of the first World War, along with our present, ever-more sophisticated ways for continuing the carnage. The Two Worlds Community Foundation’s mission is to create an urgency for life-sustaining design by way of educating, illustrating, and accelerating the transition from humanity’s self-defeating trajectories to that of co-creating with nature and each other. In addition to its publications, the Foundation’s activities include design services for other non-profits and community-based explorations by way of competitions and presentations. The photos on the facing page were taken at a Two Worlds Community Foundation presentation in the Pavilion at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. The speaker in the upper left photo, is Jeff Stein, President of the Cosanti Foundation.

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Juried Competitions THE ARIZONA

CHALLENGE

International Awards Ceremony “We’re facing a future unlike anything the United States has

ever known. We’re not going to be able to be as indulgent or as wasteful as in the past. The goal is not simply to be different, but to do more with less by design. We want to use design to solve very real human problems.”

The Ecological The Arizona Challenge is a program of the 501(c)3

Two Worlds Community Foundation

A CELEBRATION OF IDEAS

Community The Arizona Challenge is an International Student Competition focused on a positive future for how we design and live in ecological beauty inspired by Arizona’s special Announcing a multi-disciplinary design competition spirit and energy. open to all currently enrolled students at any college or The next step in this process is a series of design forums,or open to the public and university in the U.S.A, Canada Mexico. held throughout Arizona’s Centennial Year. The educational role of the Two Worlds Community Foundation is to explore, design and present a range of possible futures.

The focus of the competition is to go beyond yesterday’s concerns between, centralized cities more inventive, sustainable, and livable for all ages and stages of life. and suburbs between automobiles and A challenge to envisionand the future of the Navajo Nation by way of design. transit, all Mayor in order to and focus on the precedent 230 Please join Phoenix Phil Gordon Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman, as we welcome Essay competition open toofNavajo students whorevolution are currently registered of the digital andand in thesetting Teams fromdynamics the University Arizona; China’s Qingdao Technological University any program, at any college or university and in good standing. humanity’s first-ever global civilization.

THE NAVAJO CHALLENGE We see Arizona as the most fertile environment for the kind of fresh thinking that is

Two Worlds Community Foundation

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“The Arizona Challenge has created an innovative and anticipatory platform to achieve new forms of urbanization through the capacities of design as thinking strategy. The platform has created, in its ﬁrst phase, designs that foster new social integrations, economies, and ecologies that were once invisible. All of the entries demonstrate clearly the alternatives that exist for our cities and communities beyond the status quo.” — Daniel Ibanez, Harvard Graduate School of Design

“The warm welcome to the Two Worlds Community Foundation was most generous, and the opportunity provided was so inspirational, especially for a student entering the professional ﬁeld during such a crucial time for environmental awareness. The Two Worlds Foundation is truly inﬂuential and on its way to accomplishing many great things for our future communities.” — Dana Decuzzi, University of Arizona

Clockwise from top right: Paolo Soleri, Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman and Vernon Swaback, The winning team from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Anxiao and Zhaosong from Quindao University in China, the awards reception at Arizona State University, and above: A work session at the University of Arizona.

Two Worlds Community Foundation

Designing with Nature Vernon D. Swaback, FAIA, FAICP

The Future is Now.indd 1

6/28/05 12:13:33 AM

233

Community development is a custom creation.

Yet highways are widely and justifiably seen

This requires responses to physical features,

as disruptive to communities. But public

the regional economy, social traditions, design

transportation, patronized by only one American

opportunities, and an array of other local

in twenty, does not serve as an alternative to

influences. A Myriad of Choices provides a guide

cars. The Necessity of Roads takes a clear-eyed

to responding in the most authentic ways for each

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s No Such Thing as

Twins Identical IdenticalTwins

look at contemporary road building and transit

experiences with a view to improving regional transportation in the most effective ways.

...

A Civic Handbook for Community Leaders in Minneapolis. He was principal planner for the Tom Martinson, a director of the Two Worlds

Community Foundation, is a city-planning consultant with an international practice based

Minneapolis City Coordinator, and over the past three decades has worked throughout the United manager for the US$15 billion Bonifacio Global City in Manila and was author, most recently, of The Atlas of American Architecture (Rizzoli, 2009).

that every community enhances its personality

...

and thus attractiveness on its own terms.

A Myriad of Choices

Tom Martinson, a director of the Two Worlds Community Foundation, is a city-planning consultant with an international practice based in Minneapolis. He was principal planner for the Minneapolis City Coordinator, and over the past three decades has worked throughout the United

The Necessity of

States and Pacific Rim Asia. He served as planning

Roads

manager for the US$15 billion Bonifacio Global City in Manila and was author, most recently,

of The Atlas of American Architecture (Rizzoli, 2009).

Tom Martinson

Two Worlds Community Foundation

Tom Martinson

States and Pacific Rim Asia. He served as planning

region, city, suburb, and neighborhood, with a goal

A MYRIAD OF CHOICES

Transportation is basic to living a good life.

A Handbook of Responses for Community Leaders Tom Martinson Two Worlds Community Foundation

The nine books on the prior page and the six shown above, have two things in common. They have all been written by directors of the Two Worlds Community Foundation, and they, each in their own way, explore the designed relationships that determine the environmental character and quality of all that greatly influences the ways, means and quality of everyday life. 234

Bibliography Anthony, Mitch. The New Retirementality. Hoboken, NJ, 2014. Ball, M. Scott. Livable Communities for an Aging Population. Hoboken, NJ. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Beatty, Jack, and Peter F. Drucker. The World According to Peter Drucker. New York: Free, 1998. Bellah, Robert Neelly. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California, 1985. Block, Peter. Community, The Structure of Belonging. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2008. Block, Peter. The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2002. Botsman, Rachel, and Roo Rogers. What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harper Business, 2010. Burgess, Phil. Reboot! What to do When Your Career is Over but You Life Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Victoria, B.C.: Friesen Press, 2011. Carstensen, Laura. A Long Bright Future â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. New York: Public Affairs, 2009. Colvin, Geoff. Flow: Humans are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015. Cox, Harvey. The Future of Faith. New York: Harper One, 2009.

235

Day, Christopher. Places of the Soul: Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art. New York: Architectural Press, 2004. de, Blij, Harm J. Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America : Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2005. Diamandis, Peter H., and Steven Kotler. Abundance: The Future Is Better than You Think. New York: Free Press, 2012. Diamandis, Peter H., and Steven Kotler. Bold, How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Drucker, Peter F. The End of Economic Man, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995. Durrett, Charles and Kathryn McCamnnt. Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2011. Durrett, Charles. The Senior Cohousing Handbook. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2009. Dychtwald, Ken. Age Wave, How the Most Important Trend of Our Time Will Change Your Future. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Dychwald, Maddy. Cycles, How We Will Live, Work, and Buy. New York: Free Press, 2003. Eisler, Riane. The Chalice & The Blade, Our History, Our Future. New York: HarperCollins, 1987, 1995. Enriquez, Juan. As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth. New York: Crown Business, 2001. 236

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Enriquez, Juan. The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future. New York: Crown, 2005 Farrell, Chris. Unretirement, How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014. Farson, Richard. The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything. Norcross, Georgia: Greenway Communications, 2008. FM-2030. Are You a TRANSHUMAN? New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1989. Friedman, Avi. Innovative Houses, Concepts for Sustainable Living. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2013. Fuller, R. Buckminster. Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity. Toronto: Bantam, 1969. Gardner, Dan. Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Are next to Worthless, and You Can Do Better. New York, NY: Dutton, 2011. Gardner, James. The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2007. Gardner, John. Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981. Garfeau, Joel. Radical Evolution, The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; And What it Means to be Human. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. Geering, Lloyd. Christianity Without God. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2002.

237

Girardet, Herbert. Cities People Planet: Livable Cities for a Sustainable World: Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.,2004. Goodman, Paul and Percival. Communitas, Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. New York: Random House, 1947. Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Mis-Education and The Community of Scholars. New York: Vintage Books, 1962, 1964. Goodman, Paul. Growing Up Absurd. New York: The New York Review of Books, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959. Grierson, Bruce. What Makes Olga Run, The Mystery of the 90-Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Happier Lives. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 2014. Greenfield, Susan. Mind Change, How Digital Technologies are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains. New York: Random House, 2015. Greger, MD, Michael. How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease. New York: Flatiron Books, 2015. Gwande, Atul. Being Mortal. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014. Hansen, James. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Harari, Yuual Noah. Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind. New York: HarperCollins, 2015. Hartmann, Thom. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Too Late. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.

238

Bibligraphy

Hartmann, Thom. The Prophet’s Way: A Guide to Living in the Now. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1997 & 2004. Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Hock, Dee. Birth of the Chaordic Age. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1999. International Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. Architecture for an Aging Population. Victoria, B.C.: Images Publishing, 2014. James, William. The Will to Believe. New York: Dover Publications, 1956. Jones, Robert. God, Galileo and Geering: A Faith for the 21st Century. Santa Rosa, California: Polebridge Press, 2005. Keller, Suzanne. Community: Pursuing the Dream, Living the Reality. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. Klinenberg, Eric. Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. New York: Penguin, 2012. Kolber, Jonathan. A Celebrational Society. Incenti Publishing, 2015. Kolber, Jonathan. A Celebration Society. Inciti Publishing, 2015. Kotkin, Joel. The Next 100 Million: America in 2050. New York: The Penguin Press, 2010. Kundo, Marie. The Life – Changing Magic of Tidying Up – The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2014.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin Group. 2015. Landry, Roger. Live Long, Die Short. A Guide to Authentic Health and Successful Aging. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2014. York: Penguin Group, 2005. Laurent, Clint. Tomorrow's World: A Look at the Demographic and Socio-Economic Structure of the World in 2032. Singapore (Asia): John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Luce, Edward. Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2012. Magnus, George. The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World. Singapore: John Wiley and Sons (Asia), 2009. Marglin, Stephen A. The Dismal Science: How Thinking like an Economist Undermines Community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008. Martinson, Tom. The Atlas of American Architecture: 2000 Years of Architecture, City Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Civil Engineering. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2009. McCarty, Trish A. The StarShine Effect, Teaching that Happiness is Success. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2007. McKnight, John and Peter Block. The Abundant Community, Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler, 2010, 2012.

240

Bibligraphy

Melchizedek, Drunvalo. The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life: Volume 2. Flagstaff, AZ: Light Technology Publishing, 2000. Myers, Norman and Jennifer Kent. The New Gaia Atlas of Planet Management. London: Gaia Books, 2005. Millburn, Joshua Fields. Everything That Remains. Asymmetrical Press, 2014. Mitchell, Dr. Edgar. The Way of the Explorer, An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey through the Material and Mystical Worlds. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2008. Musk, Elon. Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. New York: HarperCollins, 2015. Neuwirth, Robert. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World. New York: Routledge, 2005. Nisbett, Richard E. The Geography of Thought: How Asian’s and Westerners Think Differently… and Why. New York: Free Press, 2003. Orr, David W. The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Violence has Declined. New York: Penguin Books, 2011 Poo, Al-Jen. The Age of Dignity, Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. New York: The New Press, 2015. Reves, Emery. The Anatomy of Peace,. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946. Robinson, Ken. Creative Schools, The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education. New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.

Rybczynski, Witold. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World. New York: Scribner, 1995. Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan. Not in Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Name, Confronting Religious Violence. New York: Schocken, 2015. Sanders, Scott Russell. Writing from the Center. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana: University Press, 1995. Schmidt, Eric, and Jared Cohen. The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. London: John Murray, 2013. Schumacher, E. F. Small Is Beautiful; Economics as If People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Smolan, Rick, and Jennifer Erwitt. The Human Face of Big Data. Sausalito, CA: Against All Odds Productions, 2012. Speth, James G. Red Sky at Morning: American and the Crisis of the Global Environment. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. Speth, James G. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Spong, John Shelby. A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001. Swaback, Vernon D. The Creative Community: Designing for Life. Victoria, Australia: Image Publishing Group, 2003. Swaback, Vernon D. Frank Lloyd Wrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Unfinished Work. Scottsdale: Two Worlds Community Foundation, 2014.

242

Bibligraphy

Taliesin: Newspaper Columns by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, 1934-1937. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Taylor, Paul. The Next America â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Boomers, Millenials, and the Looming Generational Showdown. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014. Thackara, John. In the Bubble, Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2006. Todd, Nancy Jack, and John. From Eco-Cities to Living Machines, Principles of Ecological Design. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1993. Tomalty, Roger, and Aimee Madsen. Cosanti, The Studios of Paolo Soleri. Meyer, Arizona: Cosanti, 2012. Townsend, Anthony M. Smart Cities, Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together, Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Turner, Frederick. The Culture of Hope, A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Wallman, James. Stuffocation, Why Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever. New York: Spiegel and Grace, 2013. Wann, David. Reinventing Community: Stories from the Walkways of Cohousing. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Pub., 2005.

243

Wilson, Edward O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Wilson, Edward O. The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: Liveright, 2013. Woodson, Robert L. The Triumph of Joseph, How Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods. New York: The Free Press, 1998. Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Living City. New York: Horizon Press, 1958. Wright, Robert. Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004.

244

INDEX Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think 34

Beethoven, Ludvig Von 20

Adonis 30

Biddle, Mary Duke 206

Africa 55

Age Power 108

Berry, Wendell 29, 30, 125 Big Bang 28

Age Wave 107

Bold: How to Create Wealth and Impact the World 34

Airbnb 145, 200, 203

Bonner, Fred 112

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other 36, 37

Bowers, Richard 215, 218

American Players Theater 128

Broadacre City 160, 161, 162

Apple 120, 133, 142, 143

Buchan, John 198

Architecture without Architects 16 Arizona Charter Board 54 Artfully Wondrous Environments 40

Brando, Marlon 206 Brenzy, Rob 214 Buddha 13 Burroughs, James H. 43, 47

Business Insider 51 Butler, Nicholas Murray 64 Callenbach, Ernest 8

Artificial Intelligence 47, 117

Campana, Sam 215, 224, 252

Bach, Johann Sebastian 20, 39

Car2Go 118 Caravaggio 26

Bacon, Edmund H. 123

Carson, Jim 216

Bakken Cohousing 135

Casals, Pablo 63

Barrett-Jackson 118

Catalan Culture 136

BBC (British Broadcasting Company) 47

Catalina Mountains 77, 78, 81

Beacon Academy 59, 60

245

Chamber Music 21

Dychtwald, Ken 107-109

Chautauqua 128, 140

E = MC2 48

Chicago, Illinois 21, 24-26, 40, 59, 144, 224, 260

Economist Magazine 206

Colonia Guell 136, 141, 188

Einstein, Albert 35, 43, 47, 125, 221

Colonial Williamsburg 132, 134 Columbia Law School 44 Columbia University 64 Community Computer Center 34

Compulsory Miseducation

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 20 Eliot, T.S. 7 Evolution 27, 28 Facebook 51, 133, 142, 143 Farm-to-Table 105, 145

FDIC Outlook 100

Convent of St. Francesco 138, 139

Federalist Paper No. Six 41

Conway, South Carolina 43

FM-2030 31

Cousins, Norman 64 Daley, Richard 215, 226 Daley, Richard J. 144

Feldt, Gloria 216, 222

Forbes Magazine 145 Forbes, Malcomb 198, 199 Ford Motor Co. 116

Fortune Magazine 106, 116,

Darwin, Charles 27

164, 216

deBono, Edward 19, 50 DePree, Max 7, 216, 220

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation 147-149

Design with Nature 99

French Revolution 204

Diamandis, Peter H. 34

Fuller, R. Buckminster 20, 33, 145, 164, 254

Driverless Cars 117-120 Drucker, Peter F. 15, 98, 207 Dunne, John 203 246

Ecotopia 8

Galileo 32 Gandhi, Mahatma 20, 254

Index

Gardner, John W. 12, 62 Garreau, Joel 27, 31, 32, 42 Gebbia, Joe 200, 203 General Motors 117 German Hackers 47 Gerring, Sir Lloyd 18 The Giving Pledge 188, 198

High Intention Communities 171 Howe, Neil 111 Hoyle, Fred 197 Hudson Bay 45 Hudson Institute 206 Hugo, Victor 113

Goodman, Paul 49

Humphrey, Hubert 95

Google 117, 120, 133, 141, 143

Hydrogen Bomb 164 Industrial Revolution 102

Grossman, MD, Tommy 33

Internet 98, 111, 127, 202

Growing Up Absurd 49

iPhone 28, 103

Hait, Pam 216, 223

Ironman 23, 25

Hamilton, Alexander 41

Jung, Carl Gustav 132

Hanh, Thich Nhat 13

Kahn, Herman 206

Hankins, David 216, 221

Keen, Sam 10

Harper's Magazine 206

Keeter, Scott 42

Hartman, Thom 64

Kelly, Kevin 45

Harvard 102

King, Jr., Martin Luther 13

Harvard Divinity School 10

Kissinger, Henry A. 41

Hawking, Steven 47

Kohler Co. 106

Haymarket Opera Company 24-26

Kotler, Steven 34

Hendrix, Jimi 164

Kuralt, Charles 252, 254

Hering, John 47 Herman Miller Co. 7

Kolber, Jonathan 200 Kurzweil, Ray 32, 33, 39, 96, 97

Herrington, Brent 216, 217 247

L'Allee des Alyscamps 199

McCarty, Trisha 52-58

Land, George 216, 219

McHarg, Ian L. 99, 100

Landry, Roger 108, 109

Meade, Margaret 206

La Posada 74-82

Medicare coverage 101

Law of Accelerating Returns

Melchizedek, Drunvalo 97

LEED Certification 106 Les Femmes d'Alger 199 Lewis, C.S. 43, 46 Liberia 55

Life 164 Life Plan Communities 67, 210 Loeb, Gerald M. 149 Los Angeles 116, 120 Luce, Claire Booth 164 Luce, Henry 164 Lyft 117, 118, 165 Macrony, Norman 206 Malta 26, 224

Moore’s Law 36 Morgan Stanley 120 Mother Earth 97 Mother Nature 44 Mother Teresa 221 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 221 Mumbai 35 Mumford, Lewis 8, 49 Murray, Charles 205 Museum of Modern Art 16 Musk, Elon 47, 120 Mutually Assured Destruction 40

Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself 98

Nakoma Sky 74-82

Marcus, Ruth 51

Nature 15, 18, 19, 99, 131, 163, 179, 202, 204, 212

Marglin, Stephen 102, 199, 206 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 35, 116 Materpiece Living 108 248

Mexico 58

NASA 197

NBC: “60 Minutes” 47 Nelson, Culver H. 216, 218 Netanyahu, Benjamin 252

Index

New Jersey Public Schools 51

Renaissance 32

New York 116, 117, 120, 128, 140, 206

Russakoff, Dale 51

Nobel Prize 7, 64, 199 Nordstrom 92 O'Connor, Justice Sandra Day 208, 209, 211

Rouse, James W. 14 Rutgers University 112 Samsung 133, 141, 143 Sandburg, Carl 164 Sanders, Scott Russell 208

O'Keefe, Georgia 164

San Francisco 116

Oak Park Studio 146

Sanger, Margaret 164

Oji-Cree 45, 46

Schamadan, Dr. James 216

Orchestra 12, 163

S.C. Johnson and Son 106

Origin of Species 27

School in a Box 56

Oro Valley 75, 76, 83

Schwartz, Robert 206

Paris 116

Schweitzer, Albert 20, 92, 197, 198

Parks, Rosa 220 Pebble Beach Auctions 118 Pew Research Institute 42, 112 Picasso, Pablo 199 Planned Parenthood 164 Poliak Center 44 Price Waterhouse Coopers 113 Princeton University 10 Pulitzer Prize 7 Reeves, Emery 40, 41

Shakespeare, William 20, 35, 39 Shelby, John 7 Singularity University 33 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson 55 Social Security Administration 100 Social Security Income 101 Solti, George 164 Spong, John Shelby 7 Spooner, John 90-93

249

Stanford University 117 Starbucks 92 StarShine Academy 54-58 StarShine Effect 52 Stegner, Wallace 125 Stein, Jeff 228, 229 Stiglitz, Joseph E. 199 St. Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Co-Cathedral 26 Strauss, William 111 Taliesin 128, 144-146, 149, 150, 153, 155, 162, 165 Taliesin Equivalent 162, 166, 169, 188 Taliesin Fellowship 147, 162

Transhuman 31 Twist, Lynne 216, 224 Two Worlds Forum 215, 223 Turkle, Sherry 35-37 Uber 103, 106, 107, 113, 116-118, 128, 145, 165, 203 UberPool 116, 117 United Nations 55, 57, 212 United States 16, 20, 26, 40, 95, 110, 204 United States Airforce 53 United States Navy 98

Taliesin Life 152, 153

University of California 95

Taliesin West 128, 144-146, 149, 151, 158, 159, 170, 228, 260

University of California at Berkeley 97 University of Michigan 117

Tarrytown Executive Conference Center 206

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 100

Taylor, Elizabeth 164

U.S. Department of Labor 100

Teaching Thinking 50 Tesla 120

The Abolition of Man 43 The Anatomy of Peace 40 The Prize 51

250

Time Magazine 119, 164,

206

Valletta Baroque Music Festival 26 van Gogh, Vincent 199 van Rijn, Rembrandt 39 Venus 30

Index

Vietnam 57 Vinge, Vernon 95, 96 Wall Street 149 Walton Family Foundation 58 Washington, D.C. 120

Washington Post 51 WeWork 103 Werner, Karen 214 Whitman, Walt 50 Wilson, Steve 216

Wired 45 Wodeman, Cody 252, 254 World Economic Initiative 55, 57 World Health Organization 120 Wright, Frank Lloyd 6, 30, 52, 63, 65, 88, 128, 129, 144-152, 155, 159, 160, 162-164, 167, 169, 185, 189, 198, 203, 255, 260 Wu, Tim 44, 45 Zen Masters 13 Zike, Jeri-Lou 21, 25 Zuckerberg, Mark 49, 51, 142, 188

251

There is nothing quite so rewarding than to see one’s work reach out into unexpected places. I knew nothing about the above until someone sent me a copy of an international newspaper that featured this photo of Sam Campana, the Mayor of Scottsdale, presenting a copy of one of my earlier books, Designing the Future, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. And, with respect to the observation on the facing page from Charles Kuralt, an even greater— or, at least, a different kind of—surprise occurred when I was sent a photo of my neighbor, Cody Wodeman, reading one of my prior works, as shown on page 254.

252

"Communities are all different, but I know when I'm in one. People speak to their neighbors by name, sometimes also to their neighbor's dogs. No one is a stranger for very long. " â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Charles Kuralt

253

Thank you, Charles Kuralt, for reminding us to speak to our neighbors—including Cody Wodeman, a faithful contributor to the spirit of community—and our neighbor’s dogs.

And Cody thanks you, Mahatma Gandhi, for telling the world, “That the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by how it treats its animals.”

254

FROM THE SHORT TERM OBVIOUS TO THE LONG TERM ARTFUL Price Ownership For Sale or Rent Expedient Code-Driven Sameness Production Controls Commodities Exclusive Housing

NONSENSICAL RETREAT

• • • • • • • • •

Value Stewardship Shared Use Comprehensive Orchestrated Artfulness Creativity Informs Human Values Inclusive Community

PRESENTLY "PROFITABLE"

ALL PROGRESS HAPPENS HERE

“Invest wisely in beauty. It will serve you all the days of your life.” — Frank Lloyd Wright 255

About the Author Vernon D. Swaback has been inducted into the College of Fellows by both the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of Swaback Partners, Architecture and Planning; and Studio V, Interior Design. He is the President of the non-profit Cattletrack Arts and Preservation, and the Founder and Chairman of the 501(c)3 Two Worlds Community Foundation. He has accompanied his firm’s professional practice with an exploratory crusading on behalf of what our individual, design-based commitments are adding up to becoming, which has resulted in the following testimonials of Vernon Swaback’s books, shown in bold:

1970: Production Dwellings an Opportunity for Excellence, published by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “The Swaback Solution – Frank Lloyd Wright would have approved.” — Wolf von Eckhart, Architectural Critic for the Washington Post

1997: Designing the Future, published by Arizona State University. “Swaback’s vision of a reinvented transitional place in which we can live together with the natural environment as cultures did before us is both inspirational and insightful.” — Antoine Predock, FAIA 256

2003: The Creative Community, Designing for Life “This book is a scream from the heart against the horrors of 20th- and 21st-century urban sprawl and a plea for sensibility to be brought into the equation.” — Jennifer Verrall, The Age, Victoria, Australia “Vernon Swaback combines grand aesthetic visions with a realistic grasp of the need to alter the world through incremental change. Because he practices what he preaches, his views carry far more than a purely theoretical weight. Leaders in all cities and regions now grappling with how to influence the future of their communities will surely profit from this book.” — Anthony Downs, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

2005: The Custom Home: Dreams, Desire, and Design “This book can be appreciated on several levels…At its deepest level, it is an invitation to explore our own dreams about life made more rewarding by way of design.” — Roger Schluntz, FAIA, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico

2007: Creating Value: Smart Development and Green Design Published by the Urban Land Institute and recipient of the Silver Award from the National Association of Real Estate Educators. 257

2009: Believing in Beauty “A profoundly optimistic book that reaffirms timeless values in the pursuit of a fulfilling life…Vernon Swaback challenges the reader-citizen to rise above convention, as he envisions beauty in sweeping terms, as the kind of world we should and can have… while reminding us that we all have a role in designing a future that works.” — Tom Martinson, International City Planner, Author of The Atlas of American Architecture: 2000 Years of

Architecture, City Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Civil Engineering 2014: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unfinished Work “Vern Swaback epitomizes the indefatigable student of both history and contemporary events. He gathers wisdom and inspiration from a host of disciplines and in the process reminds us of our potential to design the world we would wish to inhabit in the present and leave for generations to follow.” — Wellington (Duke) Reiter, FAIA, Senior Vice President of the Arizona State University Foundation, past President of the Art Institute of Chicago and faculty at the MIT Department of Architecture.

258

To share in the world of Frank Lloyd Wright was to be immersed in the spirit of architecture as a sacred trust between our human pursuits and the gifts of the Creation, which he saw as being the body of God. When he counseled his apprentices to "learn from the one great book of Nature," he was referring to the essential qualities of a sustainably beautiful way of life. In his last year, when he said, "I'll probably die with my work half done," he was referring to something far more holistic than designing for an ever-greater array of houses and buildings. Everything I've been able to consider, study, and share with others has grown from the seeds he both planted and nurtured by his mentoring life and work. Vernon D. Swaback, FAIA, FAICP 259

Each moment with Frank Lloyd Wright occasioned something memorable. The upper left photo was taken at a Chicago television studio. He was directing me to make changes to a model of his “Unified Home and Farm.” Knowing this might happen, I came prepared with all the proper tools. But when the show’s director asked if I could explain to Wright that this was live television, I had to tell him there wasn’t much of anything I could explain to the world’s greatest architect. The black-and-white photo was taken by a visitor at Taliesin West. I was describing a proposal and asking Wright for his approval, which he granted. In the bottom left photo, he’s sitting at my desk making changes to the drawings for one of his houses. Six decades later, the inspiration and related work continues. 260

The Studio compound is the headquarters for: Swaback Partners, architecture, planning, and interior design Studio.V Interior Architecture and Design and the 501 (c)(3) Two Worlds Community Foundation 261