On the purpose of windows
I grew up in Panama City, a quintessentially urban environment. Nature was something you found when leaving the city for the countryside, environmentalism was as profound as refraining from littering, and progress meant more, taller buildings.
And windows, well, they were something you closed when it rained so you didn’t get wet. They were something between you and the noise and the smog outside: barriers to keep the external world and its hostile attempts to harm you at bay. Through them you could limit your dosage of the city’s cacophony of wild intimidation. I did not know what windows were truly for.
I did, however, get a hint. An enormous, spectacularly rich, leafy tree, stood outside my living room window. A veritable verdant microcosm, it was home to animals of many species, which I would watch through the window as they would go about their daily lives in constant, bold interaction with their tiny universe, while it went through its own phases and cycles itself. It kindled my curiosity and my imagination, and it held its ground as a gentle defiant giant, complicit in my silent, mental struggle against the surrounding forces of chaos. Solemn, yet towering: a true token of tenacious redemption for the things beyond, taking the form of unapologetically imposing natural beauty. This is what windows are for, I think to myself in retrospect.
You see, the misconception began with what lay past most windows to which I had access: urban environments. That is to say, the real issue was that we did not understand the purpose of cities. A well-designed city turns a window from a defensive barrier, into an invitation to interact with a welcoming environment. And, like cities, people are systems and will respond to the incentives set in place by the structures around them. By transforming cities through concepts such as renewable energy, efficient public and alternative transportation, optimized buildings and infrastructure, urban food production, and equitable access to resources, we can tap into the advantages inherent to their nature.
Turning our focus to improving urban systems has the potential to reduce carbon emissions, increase social capital, improve the well-being of massive amounts of people, and drive economic growth through optimal resource allocation. When these systems work well, the city transcends from the part of your day that you endure between your job and your home, to become an extension of the latter.
I believe that properly managed, high-density, urban areas will be key to transitioning to a sustainable way of life in the face of a growing global population. Global trends, such as the automation of the agricultural sector, are likely to continue pushing people out of rural areas and into cities, so it is paramount that we focus our efforts on not only preventing them from collapsing under the increasing burdens on their systems, but to optimize these to meet sustainability targets.
My pursuit of studies in Environmental Policy has the goal of expanding my understanding of where the opportunities for improvement exist. It is a rather paradoxical challenge to protect nature by incentivizing city-dwelling, but it is the undeniable path forward.
I am excited to be a part of UNLEASH 2017 and the thousand young, passionate people taking on the sustainability challenges of our generation. Let us turn the world beyond the glass into an invitation to find joy and adventure, and to engage with our environments in a way that preserves them for generations to come. I am looking forward to exchanging ideas, learning and collaborating. It takes a global community to solve global issues, after all.
