To recapture relationships essential to our well-being, we must know places intimately; then those places reciprocate our caring, filling us with simple pleasures such as being covered in a blanket of cherry blossoms.
The design for the new boardwalk in Manteo, North Carolina, accommodated each traditional activity pattern. Even amidst thousands of visitors, places were created for teenagers to hang out at the docks.
So many people contributed to the garden at Fito's Place, a public memorial in Berkeley, California, that it was soon growing profusely, with new details added continuously by Amber and neighbors.
Fito’s Place has not been abandoned as so many spontaneous memorials are; rather it thrives and inspires innovative community improvements, from urban greening to a mural calling out the principles Fito lived by. Photograph by John Syorey.
Nearby residents place flower pots in the middle of a channelized stream, creating a distinctive gestalt in the Japanese community of Takesegawa.
Every group involved in the Rockbridge County (Virginia) Scavenger Hunt photographed different streams and rivers (such as the Maury River) as central to their sacred structure. This provided a county-wide framework for land-use planning.
Walking tours, combined with field research, engage residents in gathering scientific and sensual evidence about special places. Here, a group measures the effects of erosion from poor siting of a road on their Hollywood, California, neighborhood. Citizen involvement reversed their previous support to dam this natural canyon and engineer a debris basin to control flooding. Their own science convinced them to disperse floodwater into sub-watersheds, slowing erosion with small check dams and vegetation.
As deep values about childhood become clear, parental stewardship increases, often resulting in the emergence of small volunteer-led projects to benefit a neighborhood.
Ecological and cultural tourism have brought new life to abandoned villages in Japan, creating multi-generational family businesses like this bed-and-breakfast with gardens made from recycled beach detritus.
Court proceedings were secondary to informal meetings between climbers and National Park Service officials, where sharing stories about renegade young climbers and youthful NPS law enforcers allowed all to view themselves as part of a historic adventure.
Although only one telescope was allowed on Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii by law, more than a dozen have been built, with their foundations piercing the bodies of the Gods. More telescopes are planned.
Advanced societies paid little attention to food security until recent health scares. Now, an increasing number of cities, both in the U.S. and abroad, are preserving agricultural land to provide local, organic produce directly to urban households.
From cedar circles to open fields, the landscape around the Hester’s homeplace in North Carolina provides opportunities for the present generation to communicate with ancestors about good fortune and terrible loss.
When people actively participate, they gain a sense of belonging. Emerging from martial law, youth in Taiwan assertively engage in designing improvements to their elementary school.
Sacredness manifests in places that arouse all the senses at once through textures, sounds, and smells that provide pleasure and sensual knowledge.
