Urban Planning

You can read yesterday’s part 1 here.

Modern architects and urban planners have recently been designing buildings and urban spaces promoting values reminiscent of Old Europe and other societies with similar values. These societies are often referred to as “matriarchal.” However, there is ongoing discussion among scholars about what to call them. For this post, we will use Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s lovely term “societies of peace.” To read more about these societies, modern desires to live in communities similar to these societies, and modern efforts to promote social interaction and beauty, please click here to read Part 1.

Connecting to Nature

Old Europe and other similar societies of peace frequently included well-used outdoor spaces, connecting residents to nature as they went about their daily life. Residents did weaving, baking, and other tasks in open courtyards. Public rituals were held in plazas and courtyards. Celts and those who lived in Britain before them held their religious ceremonies in groves of trees or in open spaces with standing stones or other monuments. Public art, such as frescoes in Crete, featuring plants and animals also indicates the value these societies gave to nature.

Modern Mixed Use Development with Buildings Facing Each Other in a Circle

Is a peaceful, just, creative, sustainable world a far-off, unattainable dream or might there be ways to begin to build such communities right in our own neighborhoods?

Archeologists and scholars like Marija Gimbutas, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and Carol Christ have studied societies from Old Europe and elsewhere that share some common characteristics. (These societies are often referred to as “matriarchal.” However, there is ongoing discussion among scholars about how to name these societies. For these posts, I’ll use Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s beautiful term societies of peace). These qualities include prioritizing caring social relationships, art and beauty, ecological responsibility, equality, commitment to consensus decision-making, and more. Researchers often cite how buildings, city and town layout, and outdoor spaces of these societies of peace reflect these values by featuring similarly-sized residences, beautiful frescoes depicting women and men in peaceful pursuits, a lack of warlike structures, and plazas and courtyards for social, civic, and religious events, among other attributes.