Page 82 - ECOlogic Book

The Genius of This Place
(Fall, 1994)

Bill McDonough, who is building a sustainable “model village” with the Oglala
Lakota tribe in the Badlands of South Dakota, writes:
In the end, we seek a certain peace with each other
and the land. That kind of peace comes from
unconditional respect for each other and for the
place itself. Any dogmatic overlay limits the creative
expression needed to develop that respect, and results
in people feeling disconnected from the joy of their work,
the joy of the place, and the joy in each other. So we
must allow the process to inform itself as it proceeds,
rather than approach it with any preconceptions.

Our work takes place in the Badlands of Greater Detroit, heartland of the
Industrial Revolution. Our intention is to work gently with the genius of this
place. What is its genius?

We can hardly imagine it before the ‘20’s, before the great auto plants
imposed themselves indelibly on the landscape. If you have never seen it,
take a trip out to the area just South of Dearborn, where the Ford Rouge
Complex covers the landscape as far as the eye can see. Imagining this
area in the 1800’s is impossible. A visit to Greenfield Village reminds us that
even after the area was settled, before the auto changed it forever, it
seemed to rest peacefully with the natural world. It stretches the
imagination not less to learn that Detroit was once called the Paris of the
West.

The genius of this place starts with its lakes and waterways. They
characterize the place more than any other feature; the reason we call it the
Great Lakes Bioregion They also made industrialization in this place
possible” the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Detroit River, the
Rouge – were it not for these waterways affording the easy transportation of
goods and materials, Detroit might have remained a sleep village. It was
the combination of these waterways and the genius of one man that caused
Detroit to “happen” as it did. American Ingenuity, enshrined in our national
folklore, was embodied most fully in our Detroit folk hero, Henry Ford, a
quirky tinkerer who understood marketing as well as he understood cam
shafts and rotors.

82