Distributed urban network systems in the tropical archaeological record: Toward a model for urban sustainability in the era of climate change

Vernon L Scarborough,Christian Isendahl

doi:10.1177/2053019620919242

Vernon L Scarborough, Christian Isendahl

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019620919242

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Abstract

Identifying and employing the concept of sustainability in the social sciences remain a challenge. One approach presented here emphasizes its utility in examining past urban adaptations primarily from the archaeological record that demonstrate the role of low-density urbanism. Drawing upon early semitropical cities and their dispersed land-use and settlement patterns, both longevity and interconnectivity are shown to have developed in the context of environmental and societal diversity. The impact of climate change to our near-term futures can result in adaptations that accommodate positive societal transformations if all relevant disciplines are included in the dialogue. Past sustainable practices when melded with thoughtfully deployed technologies of today and tomorrow will assist with this new ecology. We argue that generating knowledge about tropical urban systems in the ancient past adds to a more diversified pool of urban models from which to draw for future urban planning. We specifically suggest that networked urban systems of distributed, low-density settlement repeatedly occurring throughout the tropical archaeological records have several social–environmental benefits toward a sustainability transition of cities in the era of climate change.

Highlights

A science of sustainability requires a multi-scalar temporal framework for assessing its analytical and practical merits in socio-environmental contexts, coupled with a critical history of its applicability
Based on the five points noted above, we suggest that low-density cities established a “human economy” (Graeber, 2011) relying on community definitions for well-being
As greater percentages of the human population are drawn to cities, climate change poses an existential threat to urban sustainability

Summary

Introduction

A science of sustainability requires a multi-scalar temporal framework for assessing its analytical and practical merits in socio-environmental contexts, coupled with a critical history of its applicability. The discipline of archaeology, with its comparative global reach, robust datasets, and ability to track how social and environmental change relate to each other, is well positioned to interrogate how sustainability pans out over different temporal and spatial scales and how that knowledge benefits the viability to project sustainability into our futures. We highlight the distributed urban network systems in the tropical archaeological record and their adaptive capacity over the long term to suggest how these conditions can inform models for urban sustainability and futures in the era of climate change. As a science of social change, archaeology provides another route to track sustainability, contributing to an anthropocentric long-term perspective as well as a global record of social–environmental cause–effect dynamics frequently more revealing than that observed or extracted from other sources

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