James Tinkham looked out at an orange sun-washed world through the floor-to-ceiling ‘green’ glass spanning the entire west wall of the living room in his apartment on the premier 315th storey of one of Hong Kong’s best apartment complexes in its Yau Tsim Mong district. Best – yes. It was the first residential complex in the world to have met the Architecture 2030 challenge of a carbon-neutral building a good three years before that deadline and had, since, sustained its life cycle as a net-zero, resource-efficient building. It was a favorite of whole-systems thinkers, planners and architects around the globe.
Being a whole-systems thinker and implementer himself, and also having special memories associated with ‘The Zero’ , it would come as no surprise to anyone who knew James, that he had requested to be accommodated in the 1500 square feet comfort of number 090-315 once again. He had spent the early years of his married life here with his significant other at one of those rare times when their respective work had taken them to the same place.
The panorama beyond the glass wall was that of the setting sun which shone through the thicket of tall skyscrapers that receded into the distance and made them resemble barks of trees silhouetted black against the sunlight. There was a busy stream of people commuting by both high-speed rails and walking in air pressure and temperature controlled crossways connecting the various buildings at different elevations. The connections were spider-web like with the buildings and public spaces forming nodal points on these intersecting connections. The world had learned its lessons in biomimicry and taken inspiration from Nature in all her forms to give shape to its own built environment ever since the ‘green’ revolution and sustainable living paradigm had gained momentum in the past century and finally swept the globe in the last forty years.
Loosening his necktie even as he gazed out, James paused mid-motion and reflected at the beautiful juxtaposition of seemingly unchanging Nature and a changed, unrecognizable and evolving man-made environment. He snapped out of his stupor and returned to loosening his necktie, wondering with some surprise at what had led his train of thought to stray and dwell on philosophical matters. Perhaps, it was the beauty of the vista before him. He smiled to himself. That would be more like Seher’s idyllic thought process, not his. In all probability, it was the lecture he had given earlier in the day on A comparative study of systemic approaches to development versus historic resource-consumptive development and probable application in sustaining life in foreign frontiers: Mars and beyond, at Hong Kong Polytechnic University that was playing on his mind. It was a good thing too, he thought parallel, that he would be with Seher and the kids soon – in less than forty-eight hours in fact. Wrapping up his four-month long stay and work stint in Hong Kong, he would travel to Hyderabad, India by high- speed rail (three changes enroute), spend time with his wife until her last workday and together leave for California, USA to celebrate Christmas and usher in 2061 with Zara, Philip and his parents who lived there together. He would be home soon. But again, ‘home’, in this day and age, was not so much a physical entity and geographic location. It was ‘where one found it’, as he remembered a phrase from an oft quoted line that was one of Seher’s favorites by an author from half a century earlier and whose name he always forgot. How did that line go again? Ah! –‘Home is where the heart is, home is where you find it, home is everywhere’. He was not sure about the first part but the second and third parts were certainly true in his opinion. The world had indeed changed since that author had penned it – and changed for the better, he gladly thought. He reflected once again at the global village the world had now become, the collaborative dialogue and partnerships that world governments had initiated about twenty years earlier which led to a beneficial sharing of knowledge, technology, resources and an opening up of borders for productive symbiotic relationships of scholars and industry leaders the world over.
The ping of his coffee-maker, bringing him back to the present, indicated that he could pick up the cup of coffee from its tray which he had ordered and timed to be made and delivered at 5:30 pm knowing he would be back at his apartment by then. Walking back to the sofa with his coffee in one hand, he sat down to give in to the pondering mood he had fallen into (an anomaly for his personality but all rules have exceptions). What had he been thinking about before digressing to how much the world had changed? Yes – home. And the radical shifts in world order that made travel to different parts of the world a normal and regular occurrence in the lives of most professionals. His own area of work for his company which developed whole-systems infrastructure and strategy had taken him to nearly sixty countries in his short ten-year career. Home for these professionals (who made up nearly sixty percent of the world’s workforce) were places like The Zero – an extension of the concept of hotels but more personal and convenient than their erstwhile forerunners. It was a very temporal existence, nomadic in a sense, yet convenient and comfortably so. James’ apartment, furnished to the bare minimum yet with a warm inviting familiarity, helped him and other new-age nomads find home in new and different surroundings. The sparse furniture in his apartment included a sofa set with a low center table, a functional kitchen, a large mosaicked terrace - bounded and closed to control air pressure and temperature with light-weight glass - housing two deck chairs and a small circular table and a bedroom with an accompanying toilet and bathing area. The spaces flowed into each other much like the various cultures of the world which were no longer exclusive to place but fused and melded into one another. Even as James was deliberating, the large glass wall overlooking the terrace and the setting sun, which was also an information panel, came to life with an image of Philip enthusiastically and proudly discussing the next big project he was working on in school while Zara pranced around Philip trying to get her father’s attention. Communication and interaction, which had already developed to quite an extent in his grandfather’s time (and had also helped him keep in touch with his grandparents) was the fiber that helped him keep rooted to his ‘home’ – the people who were an important part of his life and shared it with him. His grandfather’s age was centered on the individual – it had been so for years before his time. His age, in contrast, was about interaction and relationships – be they parts of a natural ecosystem working in sync together or human bonding that fostered positive development. It was indeed a radical shift from those times to this. It also dawned on him all of a sudden that the first part was true – ‘Home was where the heart was’.
Such an age was unthinkable at that time what with the threat of running out of earth’s resources looming large and a bleak scenario for the future of the human race. But something must be said about human enterprise and that collective positive and hopeful spirit, the other side of the avaricious and irresponsible attitude that had gotten them there in the first place, which almost miraculously pulled them out from the depths of that dark chasm they had started to descend.
One of the best examples of this would be the great cities the world over. They were zero-net cities – resource efficient, resource-regenerative, wonderfully alive and bustling with life – artificial ecosystems that succeeded in complementing natural ecosystems. Skyscrapers, though the norm of the day, to accommodate the population explosion that had occurred in the developing nations in the 2000s and had spilled over to this decade, clustered most of the world’s cities. The cities, resultantly, did resemble jungles but not concrete jungles as were their forefathers – these were real green jungles with vegetated walls which went up to an altitude that allowed and supported plant life; forested terraces formed major components of these buildings supporting micro-ecosystems in the process. The crossways at lower altitudes were landscaped, green and healthy and took a cue from their ancestor – the High Line in New York, USA that had opened in 2009-2010. The preservation of natural landscapes which had been an important and contentious part of the earlier century was now a natural extension of every city’s urban program and each individual’s social responsibility.
There was also not too much of a distinction between the erstwhile urban and rural areas in a given place. James’ ancestors had started life in rural settings, wilderness almost, and had moved up the rung to urban settings. The rural areas of 2060 were merely areas with a relatively lesser population density. City infrastructure was also found in rural areas. Life was not too difficult for people who chose to live here. The only difference was the work pattern which did not lead them to move from place to place as most of them were involved in agriculture, permaculture and animal husbandry. This was a comforting thought because economic and social disparities had long since been balanced and the scales were even on both ends. And this must have been the answer to most of the problems plaguing the world earlier. The economy too, like the environment now, was regenerative. It was the New Economy.
It was astounding to see the difference in living patterns that came about from the new pattern language of cities created by a blend of new principles and traditional knowledge of varied world cultures. Mixed-use development it had been called then, it was what was making today’s cities brim with life. Cars were little used, even though they ran on no-fuel green technology because every place on the globe was conveniently connected with state-of-the-art mass transit systems. James’ own journey to India was cheap, easy and fast. Shorter distance commutes were either at walkable distances or again, well connected by inter-city mass transport systems.
The death of landline telephones and cellular phones in the last few years was analogic to the disuse of airplanes and airline travel in the present. Airplanes still ran but not as a means of mass transport. They flew at significantly higher altitudes because of the growth of the built environment vertically but they were not the first choice for travel because there were better and quicker options. Underwater sea route linkages were an important part of long distance travel in this age. Coupled with high-speed rail as well as the option of cars and automobile travel, life was much easier and saved on a lot of time.
Putting aside his empty cup, James started up his information panel to get some work done and look over his preparations for tomorrow’s conference which he would attend from right here in his living room via his information panel. Oh wait, here was a message Seher’s parents had left for him. Their video popped up now with Mr. Alam informing him that he and his wife would be able to travel from their home in El Salvador to spend New Year’s Eve with them after all. “Good”, he exclaimed thinking about how happy Zara and Philip would be to have all their grandparents around them this holiday season. There must be a lot of good karma going around the world, or it was probably the great melting of cultures across the globe that had founded this new living structure of integrated families, extended families and a convivial existence in the best interests of all. At least this new trend had helped do away with those miserable and forlorn old age communities and living centers that had originated in the Western world and had spread roots across the oceans to the other parts of the globe. It was a form of discrimination that had sifted a community by age and siloed that group.
James switched off the video to get busy with work – it was just another day in a bright, new age and a joyous, hopeful world.
