Animals are as important a part of nature as the trees and grass and flowers. There is some evidence, in addition, which suggests that contact with animals may play a vital role in a child’s emotional development.
Yet while it is widely accepted that we need “parks”—at least access to some kind of open space where trees and grass and flowers grow—we do not yet have the same kind of wisdom where sheep, horses, cows, goats, birds, snakes, rabbits, deer, chickens, wildcats, gulls, otters, crabs, fish, frogs, beetles, butterflies, and ants are concerned.
Ann Dreyfus, a family therapist in California, has told us about the way that animals like goats and rabbits help children in their therapy. She finds that children who cannot make contact with people, are nevertheless able to establish contact with these animals. Once this has happened and feelings have started to flow again, the children’s capacity for making contact starts to grow again, and eventually spreads out to family and friends.
But animals are almost missing from cities. In a city there are, broadly speaking, only three kinds of animaclass="underline" pets, vermin, and animals in the zoo. None of these three provides the emotional sustenance nor the ecological connections that are needed. Pets are pleasant, but so humanized that they have no wild free life of their own. And they give human beings little opportunity to experience the animalness of animals. Vermin—rats, cockroaches —are animals which are peculiar to cities and which depend ecologically on miserable and disorganized conditions, so they are naturally considered as enemies. Animals in the zoo are more or less inaccessible to most of the human population—except as
occasional curiosities. Besides, it has been said that animals living under the conditions which a zoo provides are essentially psychotic —that is, entirely disturbed from their usual mode of existence— so that it is probably wrong to keep them there—and certainly they can in no way re-create the missing web of animal life which cities need.
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| Looking in or looking out—what’s the difference? |
It is perfectly possible to reintroduce animals into the natural ecology of cities in a useful and functioning sense, provided that arrangements are made which allow this and do not create a nuisance.
Examples of ecologically useful animals in a city: horses, ponies, donkeys—for local transportation and sport. Pigs—to recycle garbage and for meat. Ducks and chickens—as a source of eggs and meat. Cows—for milk. Goats—milk. Bees—honey and pollination of fruit trees. Birds—to maintain insect balance.
There are essentially two difficulties to overcome, (i) Many of these animals have been driven out of cities by law because they interrupt traffic, leave dung on the street, and carry disease. (2) Many of the animals cannot survive without protection under modern urban conditions. It is necessary to make specific provisions to overcome these difficulties.
Therefore:
Make legal provisions which allow people to keep any animals on their private lots or in private stables. Create a piece of fenced and protected common land, where animals
TOWNS
are free to graze, with grass, trees, and water in it. Make at least one system of movement in the neighborhood which is entirely asphalt-free—where dung can fall freely without needing to be cleaned up.
Make sure that the green areas—green streets (51), accessible green (60)—are all connected to one another to form a continuous swath throughout the city for domestic and wild animals. Place the animal commons near a children’s home and near the local schools, so children can take care of the animals —children’s home (86) ; if there is a lot of dung, make sure that it can be used as a fertilizer—compost (178). . . .
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within the framework of the common land, the clusters and the work communities) encourage transformation of the smallest independent social institutions : the familiesy workgroups, and gathering places.
Fir sty the family, in all its forms;
75. THE FAMILY
76. HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY
77. HOUSE FOR A COUPLE
78. HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON
79. YOUR OWN HOME
THE POETRY OF THE LANGUAGE
greater, and more personal things than any rose—and the poem illuminates the person, and the rose, because of this connection. The connection not only illuminates the words, but also illuminates our actual lives.
O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The same exactly, happens in a building. Consider, for example, the two patterns bathing room (144) and still water (71). One defines a part of a house where you can bathe yourself slowly, with pleasure, perhaps in company - a place to rest your limbs, and to relax. The other is a place in a neighborhood, where this is water to gaze into, perhaps to swim in, where children can sail boats, and splash about, which nourishes those parts of ourselves which rely on water as one of the great elements of the unconscious.
Suppose now, that we make a complex of buildings where individual bathing rooms are somehow connected to a common pond, or lake, or pool—where the bathing room merges with this common place; where there is no sharp distinction between the individual and family processes of the bathing room, and the common pleasure of the common pool. In this place, these two patterns
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. . . assume now, that you have decided to build a house for yourself. If you place it properly, this house can help to form a cluster, or a row of houses, or a hill of houses—house cluster (37), row houses (38), housing hill (39)—or it can help to keep a working community alive—housinc in between (48). This next pattern now gives you some vital information about the social character of the household itself. If you succeed in following this pattern, it will help repair life cycle (26) and household mix (35) in your community.
The nuclear family is not by itself a viable social form.
Until a few years ago, human society was based on the extended family: a family of at least three generations, with parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, all living together in a single or loosely knit multiple household. But today people move hundreds of miles to marry, to find education, and to work. Under these circumstances the only family units which are left are those units called nuclear families: father, mother, and children. And many of these are broken down even further by divorce and separation.
Unfortunately, it seems very likely that the nuclear family is not a viable social form. It is too small. Each person in a nuclear family is too tightly linked to other members of the family; any one relationship which goes sour, even for a few hours, becomes critical; people cannot simply turn away toward uncles, aunts, grandchildren, cousins, brothers. Instead, each difficulty twists the family unit into ever tighter spirals of discomfort; the children become prey to all kinds of dependencies and oedipal neuroses; the parents are so dependent on each other that they are finally forced to separate.