Good and bad growth: How do we know when we get it wrong?

On CSRwire Talkback, Frances Moore Lappé disputes the contemporary notion that growth is bad. Lappé asserts, conversely, that growth is good, but that the real culprit is waste and scarcity. She describes the opposite of growth as “shrink, shrivel, decline, decrease, die” and suggests that no growth leaves an assumption unchallenged: “...that today’s economy is in fact defined by growth—ever expanding abundance.” Lappé urges us to shed ‘no-growth’ and ‘limits’ and to begin reframing “the challenge as that of aligning with the laws of nature to enhance life; and from there ask, What are the frames about human nature that drive the current waste and destruction within an economy driven by one rule, highest return to existing wealth?”

On Emergent Urbanism, Mathieu Helie writes about the City of Ordos, a literally empty city meant for one million people, a city for sale with only investors buying. Helie states that “no one wants to move to [Ordos] because there is no economy there.” This inner Mongolia city was constructed over a period of five years and sits almost entirely unused. For me, this brings up memories of the 1989 movie Field of Dreams and its mystical mantra, “If you build it, he will come.” Except in this case, the new city glistens with emptiness while the “old” Ordos bustles with people, business and activity. According to Patrick Choranec of Tsinghua University, Ordos is the product of a government idea meant to increase economic activity, which in turn was meant to boost China’s Gross Domestic Product.

So how does this new City of Ordos fit into Lappé’s concept of “aligning with the laws of nature to enhance life”? And does the Orton Family Foundation’s work aim for a similar alignment? If we conducted a Heart & Soul Community Planning test, would the new Ordos pass it? As I ponder this, I wonder whether a city’s Heart & Soul can be manufactured or whether it will one day seep into new Ordos from old Ordos 30 kilometers away. Waste and scarcity come to my mind when I see images of the immaculate, vacant city, although I’m certain that’s not what the Chinese government had in mind when they planned it.

As a planner myself, I wonder how many development applications I may have processed that ended up like miniature versions of this extraordinary yet questionable economic driver. In an effort to create new residences, shopping amenities, roads and highways, what have we abandoned in our old cities? And how instead might the money have been spent to preserve and bolster community Heart & Soul?