In the 1960s the Western world finally began to recognize and address some of the big urban sustainability challenges created by industrialization. Laws were passed to check urban plagues like deadly smog and unchecked water pollution. Substandard housing and institutionalized inequality were met with urban development projects and civil rights legislation. Choked city centers started to reclaim their streets from automobiles and create thriving pedestrian and bicycle zones.

By 1970, the phrase "think globally, act locally" had been coined, the first image of the whole Earth from space had been published around the world, and it was safe to say that a major shift was underway in our thinking about our relationship with each other and the planet. The oil crisis of 1973-1974 was the first big test of this new-found awareness. Faced with a major disruption in one of the most important fuels powering local and national economies, what would our response be?

We know the story all too well: There was a brief swell of interest in renewable energy, conservation and alternative transportation -- and a few important policies like automobile fuel standards were set -- but by and large things went back to 'normal' after a glut of cheap oil hit markets in the 1980s. Instead of recognizing the crisis as a warning sign of our unsustainable relationship with oil, we mostly saw it as a problem of not enough oil. So we hunkered down and worked like mad to ensure that our access to oil would be ensured for the future.

Our myopia didn't stop with oil. Especially in the United States, we proved quite good at focusing on individual urban problems and coming up with narrow but flawed solutions in 70s and 80s. Pedestrian malls and bike lanes were built, only to fail miserably because the transportation and land use trends weren't there to support them. We passed all manner of state and local pollution regulations, but created a new generation of environmental justice problems. We continued with post-war style "urban renewal" and highway projects that wiped out vibrant communities in the names of progress and revitalization.

Today many of our cities are truly revitalizing, but many more remain under-invested. And with peak oil and climate change at the doorstep, we're very clearly paying the price for that failure to address our energy dependence in the 1970s. The lessons -- and the paths towards better solutions -- are the same today as they were at the dawn of that difficult decade. We have to look at the broader context of the challenges we face. We have to understand how ecological, social and economic considerations are all necessarily linked. We have to approach even the biggest of problems with an understanding of how the smallest of actions can help solve it or make it worse.

We blew our opportunity in the 1970s to meet complex global problems with millions of local solutions, but on the bright side we've since had a few decades to learn our lessons. Let's hope we put them to practice this time around.

Photo Credits:
DISCARDED TIRE IN FORMER LOG STORAGE POND AT CROWN ZELLERBACH MILL. PULP WASTE WATER CLARIFIER IN BACKGROUND, 06/1973 by Doug Wilson.
SMOG OBSCURES BIRMINGHAM SKYLINE. TWO STEEL FURNACES OPERATED ROUND THE CLOCK BY U.S. STEEL, PLUS OTHER HEAVY INDUSTRY IN THE CITY SPEW FORTH THE SMOKE THAT PERIODICALLY CAUSES THE SMOG, 07/1972 by LeRoy Woodson.
CITY "FARMERS" CULTIVATE THRIVING GARDEN. VOLUNTEERS WERE ASSIGNED THEIR PLOTS BY COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION. THE SQUARE BLOCK FORMERLY THE SITE OF A BREWERY, EXTENDS FROM 92ND TO 93RD STREET AND FROM 2ND TO 3RD AVENUE, 08/1973 by Suzanne Szasz