If the big cities disappeared
By Ricardo Natalichio Read Spanish Version
rdnatali@ecoportal.net
Taken
from Ecoportal
What
would happen if suddenly, throughout the world, all the big cities
disappeared?
Along
with the mega-cities, traffic jams would end; there would be no more
crowding in trains or buses. The skyscrapers would cease to annoy the
clouds; their ultraswift elevators would also disappear.
There
would be no more subways or slums, shopping centers or grand
marquees, lit up like a theater stage. We would again see the sky,
after the smog dissipated. Perhaps we would see the shining stars.
The sun, moon and lightning would become visible.
If
instead of looking upward we looked downward, we would again see the
grass. The earth itself would be before our eyes, because surely it
has remained there all these years, under the asphalt, waiting for us
to become tired of the color gray and eager to see the soil once
again.
There
would be more vegetable gardens and mud flats. We would again listen
to the songs of the birds, we would take naps and have time to enjoy
life. There would be more bicycles, more tricycles.
But
that’s not all. If we looked straight ahead, we’d discover something
else. We’d realize that other people life in the house next door and
in the house across the street. We’d realize that the grocer and the
butcher and the greengrocer can remember our names and that we too
can remember theirs.
We’d
even discover (with amazement) that some of them are even capable of
remembering our preferences, that they have the courtesy to greet us
and even ask about our families.
If the
big cities disappeared, there would be no more dog walkers; synthetic
turf would not exist. Nor would discos, mega-parking lots,
mega-markets, mega-airports; the very word "mega" would
disappear, I believe. There would be less violence, less misery, less
hunger, even less noise.
Governments
would continue to exist, true enough, although we likely would know
every official who represented our town, or at least a friend could
give us a reference. We would elect our leaders because we know them,
and we would replace them if they didn’t govern well.
There
would be more solidarity, less solitude. More neighborhood clubs,
development societies, grazing fields, trees for us to climb, mud
puddles that we could walk through, barefoot. Dawns to delight us and
dusks to fall in love.
All that
and much more would change, if the big cities disappeared. But they
won’t disappear just like that, like a bad dream. They are there and
are the direct consequence of a model of unsustainable development.
We
believe the time has come to change that model for a form of
development that’s on a human scale. With vegetable gardens and
peasants. With rivers and fishermen. With small cities with houses
with gardens and patios, where we all know one another. Time to
change into a model of environmentally sustained development, where
we can all enjoy a dignified life.
Then,
the mega-cities would empty and shrink until only a few remnants
remained, as giant, mute witnesses of a way of life to which mankind
should never return.
Ricardo
Natalichio is editor of Ecoportal. (www.ecoportal.net)
