Views
of Evans Spring wetland, Roanoke, Virginia
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Generally
forgotten, Evans Spring and some other contiguous parts of “the
Barrens” survive today.
Irreplaceable historically and crucial for successfully mitigating
the potential for flooding of downtown Roanoke, the Barrens wetland
and floodplain
properties are currently for sale or potentially available for sale.
Consequently, a unique and timely opportunity exists to acquire (or
utilize) as much as 120 acres of the prehistoric common for a new cultural
institution
established to teach the public, now generations removed from farming,
how to live safely, healthily, prosperously and peacefully within nature’s
restorative capacity.
Self-governing people are required to make public (and private) investment and
development decisions. If they are to make good choices, it is crucial that they
know how nature works. An internationally-themed nature reserve and botanic garden
established on historic Barrens property would employ science and art creatively
to explore, reveal and consider ancient and historic land use practices. As a
center for life-long learning, it would teach integrated whole systems thinking
and demonstrate profitable contemporary low-impact development strategies for
safe, healthy, environmentally and socially sound development of forest and farm
land and of communities sharing watershed ecosystems.
Nature, history and luck have endowed us with the physical potential for “common
ground” at “the Barrens.” Knowing the right things to do
environmentally and socially is easier than initiating, organizing, coordinating,
sustaining
and integrating voluntary proaction by and among a sufficient number of property
owners and other citizens who share or visit watershed ecosystems. Yet, ultimately,
informed collaborative proaction at cultural scale is the only thing that can
produce the kind of cumulative results that will signify sound environmental
stewardship. |
“The
Barrens” should be reborn as a “common” where people
of good will can engage each other through shared work and life-long
learning in full view of the whole community. Traditional and evolving
cultures, cuisines, plant based medical practices and environmental understandings
of Japan, China, India, Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America and
Indigenous America would be featured in gardens and educational programs.
As a resource in partnership with local schools and institutions of higher
education, “The Barrens” would help define a spine (both
physical and programmatic) for future urban development connecting William
Fleming, the Higher Education Center, the Culinary Institute, downtown,
Jefferson College, the VA-Tech – Carilion Medical School,
Virginia Western and Patrick Henry High School.
The headwaters region
of Virginia is defined as lands in the New, Roanoke and Upper James
river basins near
the Eastern
Continental Divide. It has a structural (topographic) advantage as a place
to practice and teach how to live together on this planet safely, healthily,
prosperously and peacefully. A significant portion of the United States
is physically downstream. (The rest of the world is metaphorically and
historically downstream from these most ancient of mountains and land environments.)
Currently,
polluting industry and agribusiness are not significant components
of the headwaters region’s economy. Education, health care, insurance
and tourism are. Each of the major components of the existing regional
economy benefits from environmental quality.
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By
collaborating to understand, value, protect and enhance their physical
and social environments,
people and businesses of the headwaters region
can benefit
physically, intellectually, spiritually and financially. The potential rewards
are mutually reinforcing.
Providing,
teaching, and communicating proactive environmental and social (including
medical) leadership to a world newly conscious of the need
for “sustainable” global development should be the permanent foundation
for headwaters regional development. [One would literally have to move mountains
to erode it.]
Note: Ten percent of future science funding will be invested in
the emerging interdisciplinary and place-centered field of sustainability science.
The headwaters
region should build on its permanent topographic asset to seize an early lead
in developing, implementing and teaching sustainability science.
We need
both human and financial resources to help secure the Barrens properties
and to help conceptualize, write (or commission) credible
feasibility and business
plans.
As a civil
society institution, Impact+Amplify exists to explore
the creative and the destructive potential of the edge between
nature and culture. Acting
as a catalyst when possible, we seek to work with and through existing
institutions to establish broad context for collaboration and proaction
to send solutions
downstream.
By encouraging
voluntary implementation of integrated, cost-effective low-impact strategies
for development of forest and farm land and for the built
environment at both ecosystemic and cultural scale, we seek to avert disasters
(“natural,” health and social) or to mitigate their potential
for harm. Because nature is integrated, funds proactively invested to make
the
world safer can be leveraged by simultaneously making it healthier, more
prosperous and more peaceful.
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Impact+Amplify
