Humans in the landscape: Low-impact development as a response to the neoliberal environmental agenda

Julyan Levy draws on his own ethnographic research to explore the spaces created by two low-impact communities in the UK, Diggerville and Woodville. Levy argues that low-impact living communities offer a glimpse into how humans may adapt their behaviour to ameliorate the stresses involved in the potential breakdown of capitalism. In particular, the author shows how these two cases offer some clues as to how small groups of people born into an individualistic Western capitalist society can maintain and promote social cohesion in a communal setting, how they respond effectively and sustainably to the burgeoning housing and energy crises and how they loosen their dependence on monetary economics for food. In this sense, Levy argues that low-impact communities exemplify the realities of economic degrowth; they embody post-capitalist relationships by engaging in communal activities that rely a little less on monetary economics and by providing tantalizing examples of alternative social organization. Levy invites us to address some fundamental questions, such as whether the current system of land ownership and land use can be considered as socially and ecologically beneficial to the majority of people and why we consider it acceptable to build expensive housing developments and not to encourage low-impact communities. He calls us to see low-impact communities as examples of the latent human potential that flourishes in a culture of co-operation while challenging our expectations of sustainability, providing a glimpse into some of the realities involved in a transition to a socially and ecologically, post-capitalist, sustainable culture.