CONVENING FOR ACTION AT GREENLINK VANCOUVER CONFERENCE: “The concept of respect for the land and a ‘design with nature’ approach to community design is in stark contrast to the ‘dominate and destroy’ mentality described by Ian McHarg when he published his call to action, Design With Nature, in the 1960s,” stated Kim Stephens (October 2010)
“Most people don’t understand ‘water’ because it is abstract beyond what happens when they turn the tap or flush the toilet, but light bulbs go on when we say we are actually talking about the ‘land ethic’. The critical message is that it is ‘land + water’, not water in a silo,” stated Kim Stephens. “A suburban reality is that no large-scale project proceeds until ‘water issues’, usually drainage, are resolved because water is at the heart of environmental impact. Battles are fought over water-related issues during the approval process, but once resolved, the water discussion is recorded as a deceptively small part of a project storyline.”