Albuquerque's Environmental Story

Educating For a Sustainable Community

Introduction

What Lies Ahead?

The barrage of problems bombarding Albuquerque and other growing cities - urban sprawl, uncoordinated land-use and transportation planning, deteriorating water quality and supply, inadequate hazardous and solid waste disposal systems, graffiti, crime/gangs/drugs/violence, poverty/homelessness, ethnic hostilities - the familiar litany, can easily lead us to ask, "Is there any hope?" Fortunately we still have options. We can prepare through planning and education for a sustainable future and community and personal fulfillment based on a shared vision of what we want our city to become. Or, failing that, we can risk the urban decay, economic disintegration, and population flight that are destroying too many American cities.

Albuquerque's Goals Committee, in its 1983-1984 report, emphasized a thought as applicable today as it was then:

Albuquerque's greatest asset is the quality of life city residents enjoy: open space for movement and thought, outdoor activity in a pleasant climate combined with growing economic and cultural advantages. Albuquerque is a western city with advantages for living found in few of the world's other urban areas. Those unique advantages have contributed directly to the city's rapid growth. As a consequence, Albuquerque/Bernalillo County is a vibrant regional center and home for 425,000 people sharing life in the city's distinct yet interdependent communities.

Albuquerque's growth will certainly continue although at a less explosive rate than in past decades. Growth will bring broader employment opportunities and strengthen the base of support needed to enhance human services and cultural opportunities. The challenge of the future is to enrich the quality of life by both expanding the ability to meet human needs and guiding the growth of the city. The alternatives: stagnation or growth at the expense of the quality of life, Albuquerque's unique attraction, would be ruined. (Reprinted from Goals for Albuquerque 1983-84, p. 1.)

Although we cannot expect that many Albuquerqueans in the next century will identify with what Ernie Pyle wrote in the 1940s, we can hope that most people will continue to see our city as a wonderful and special place to live. This book has been prepared with the thought that schoolchildren, their parents and teachers, as well as other adults in the community will be moved to learn enough about the area's natural and human systems to cherish them in their diversity and to care enough to protect them.

(Up to Introduction, Back to Systems and Ecosystems, On to Section I - Albuquerque's Natural Environment)

Copyright © 2008, Friends of Albuquerque's Environmental Story