Rewilding Ghost Suburbia

If mankind decides to shrink, and we succeed to achieve an average height of 50 centimeters as The Incredible Shrinking Man proposes, one of the most significant changes will be the increase of available space. The scale of buildings, infrastructure and distance will be enormous and must be readjusted to the size of our bodies. In the city large areas will probably need to be abandoned in order to reorganize them in more functional ways. Imagine what could be done with these urban ghost areas. Here’s just a few ideas to start with.

–Recycling materials from the abandoned parts of large cities could supply us with our material needs for decades to come.

-We could redesign the way we deal with the rising ocean levels and return land to the water in places like Bangladesh, New Orleans, or the Netherlands and the Maldives.

-We’d finally be able to seriously develop urban farming. Parks could be turned into Farmland. Lawns could be turned into parks. Any small piece of green could be turned into a lawn. And what about rooftops and balconies?

–Urban exploration could become a serious leisure time industry. Exploration of our past as giants would become part of the historical curriculum. And then there is the excitement of going where no man has gone before, pointed out by Australian designer Guy Keulemans in a previous post.

-All of this and much more will be possible but whatever we do, much of the new land will and should be returned to the wilderness and rewildered. In the end, giving back to nature what we’ve taken from it could be one of the most rewarding results of shrinking mankind.