timeless places

"Let everyone look at the space around them. What do they see? Do they see time? They live time, after all; they are in time. Yet all anyone sees is movements. In nature, time is apprehended within space - in the very heart of space: the hour of the day, the season, the elevation of the sun above the horizon, the position of the moon and stars in the heavens, the cold and the heat, the age of each natural being, and so on. Until nature became localised in underdevelopment, each place showed its age and, like a tree trunk, bore the mark of the years it had taken to grow. Time was thus inscribed in space, and natural space was merely the lyrical and tragic script of natural time ... With the advent of modernity time has vanished from social space. It is recorded solely on measuring-instruments, on clocks, that are as isolated and functionally specialised as this time itself."

As I read this passage from French sociologist Henri Lefebvre, I found myself a little taken aback by the significance of this claim - have our modern cities, our urban lifestyles, uprooted us from temporal reality, transporting us into a sort of timelessness?  

Maybe what Lefebvre is really talking about is our shared sense of history. With the erasure of time, a place becomes ahistorical. In our modern cities, nothing is built to last. Everything can be built anew. Buildings are here today and gone tomorrow. Local businesses open up and then close back down. So that any traces of the past can simply become lost along with the memories of passing generations. As its residents, we rarely question how a place came to be. Places just are. The paradigm of modernity within which we live becomes invisible, appearing to us not as a choice, not as one of many possible models that was selected (or imposed) among others, but as an inevitability. 

What are the implications of these ideas for community building within a neighbourhood? 

A first consideration might be a community's sense of ownership. If collectively we do not feel intertwined with the history of a place, does it affect the way we conceive of our role in the development of its future? 

Another consideration might concern our sense of progress. If we cannot conceive of place as existing in time, how can we conceptualise where it stands on a path of an ever-advancing civilisation? Perhaps this is one of the effects that the shift towards a more consumerist society has had on the places within which we live. Materialism writes its own histories, based on its notions of who we are and what our purpose in life should be. The consumerist motor that drives the development of our cities forward propels us to look ahead, towards infinite novel possibilities, but with little sense of direction nor purpose. 

This leads to yet another consideration - our sense of responsibility towards our planet. In promoting an urban design that personifies humanity's triumph over nature, modernity is cutting us off from the natural world. A rampantly growing materialism has built over it, covering up the destruction of our planet being left in its wake (behind smooth surfaces, long roads and towering edifices).

How does this all affect our sense of oneness with our planet, as beings wound up in a common fate with each other and with the world?

The consumerist credo underpinning the very structures of our modern society has taught us to expect whatever we want, whenever we want it. Even our food is no longer bound by the seasonal conditions of a given place. Have seasons, too, lost their meaning, now that we no longer live according to nature's rhythm? Is it thus surprising that our collective sense of responsibility towards the nature we have blindly inherited is diminishing? That, in pursuit of modernity, our actions wreak havoc on a planet whose greatest assets are increasingly hidden from our eyes? How to recover this sense of oneness, how to rekindle an organic connection with place, while still embarking on a course of progress?

A final consideration is the following perspective on the value of history, taken from the Baha'i publication, The Century of Light.

History is a powerful instrument. At its best, it provides a perspective on the past and casts a light on the future. It populates human consciousness with heroes, saints and martyrs whose example awakens in everyone touched by it capacities they had not imagined they possessed. It helps make sense of the world and of human experience. It inspires, consoles and enlightens. It enriches life. In the great body of literature and legend that it has left to humanity, history's hand can be seen at work shaping much of the course of civilisation - in the legends that have inspired the ideals of every people since the dawn of recorded time... 

To feel engaged in a process, to perceive humanity as being on a path of progress, perhaps we need to feel that we are part of its shared history. For places, real places, just as much as people, are inscribed with the stories of how we got to where we are - stories of heroism and triumph; stories - often gone untold - of humanity's nobility, of its potential. Stories that illustrate our oneness. And perhaps within these stories lie vital clues to where we are going, as well as signs of what we care about.

Is there a feeling that such features of place are missing from our current urban models? And, to return to the original question, what are some implications of these ideas on community building processes within a neighbourhood? 

Would love to hear any thoughts :)