Written by:
Guest Author
In this piece, recent graduate Aisha Taj formulates a passionate call to action for senior built environment professionals to work more collaboratively with their young colleagues to shape our shared world.
The weight of the world is upon us. But do we share the burden equally?
Once upon a time, environmental cataclysm was far enough downstream that we could build cities like the planet had unlimited lives. It turns out, this isn’t the case. As built environment practitioners, we have an intimate relationship with the urgency of the present moment. We are the creators of dwelling and community, working on the front lines of the environmental emergency, leading the terms by which humans meet the natural world. And that means, our decisions matter more than ever.
Still, there are decisions that make waves, and decisions that shift entire currents. As a young person, I notice that those with current-shifting power have something in common: they are all senior career professionals. Senior professionals definitely earn the right to be in charge, and I’m not (yet) here to advocate otherwise. I’d rather draw attention to the resultant paradox of practice: those with the most influence over the built environment, are ageing away from the consequences of their work.
Is that the end of the world? Well, possibly. There is a wisdom of experience, and a wisdom of consequence. A lack of the latter is one reason for our present existential crisis. Take the previous generation for instance, senior professionals were certainly experienced, but also influenced by post-war rebuilding, Cold War competitiveness and the rise of neoliberalism. A culture of maximising profit made maximum sense, at a time where global flows of capital felt world-saving, world-opening. Indeed, “negative externalities” were the accepted cost of growth, a polite synonym for “not my problem”. Though times have changed, we must learn from the mistakes of past. Senior professionals should stay vigilant against the natural psychological effect of having less skin in the game.
Don’t get me wrong: I know older professionals aren’t apathetic to the plight of their offspring, or the legacy of their work. But let’s be honest, it’s not the same as having your own life on the line. I was grown in crisis, moulded by it. I’ve always known climate warnings as “our last chance”. I was once nervous about puberty, but whilst coming of age, I outwardly witnessed: a global financial crash, worldwide breakdowns of democracy, a technological shift that platformed everyone’s suffering, mass reckonings with systemic injustice, ongoing climate disasters, and later, a global pandemic.
From my perspective, I see a world proving itself to be increasingly interconnected. We’re now dealing with one planetary civilisation, not separate societies. Transformation is no longer occurring in linear cycles of boom, bust, recovery… it’s happening through the simultaneous expansion and collapse of systems. As technology booms, democracies bust. As markets soar, ecology sinks. As global connection expands, local communities collapse. When every externality feels devestatingly internal, the distance between macro and micro also collapses. Everything is happening everywhere, all at once.
For many of my peers, this experience has led to feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, anger, apathy, inaction, powerlessness. These feelings are valid, but honestly, I think they’re useless. I’m a fan of hope. Some people consider it naïve, but hope is actually an organic fuel for action and agency; only without those things are we truly hopeless. When we assume there is a way forward, the uncertainty of the present becomes a breeding ground for infinite possibilities. The lifelong exposure to crisis becomes a sharpened tool for navigating the world’s complexity. The wisdom of consequence is not only precautionary, but visionary.
My vision? I want to one day shift how practitioners think – not just what they do, but how they approach decisions from the inside. This is why I explored ecological wisdom in my Master’s thesis, a built environment framework emergent from Eastern philosophy, that recognises humans as indivisible from their environment, like fish in water. It’s inherently transdisciplinary and transgenerational, seeking sustainability solutions off the beaten path of traditional empiricism, that hasn’t delivered us to the change we need. That’s what leads my curiosity into the internal landscape, as a battleground for sustainability, and that’s what brings me to community. Community creates connection and belonging, which activates people into caring about the interconnected web of all things. Right now, we have an activation issue.
This internal shift is more than my own theory – initiatives like the Inner Development Goals recognise that sustainability demands consciousness change at professional levels. In ecological wisdom terms, the highest levels of practice involve “the master skill of moral improvisation” – an intuitive ability developed through reflective practice. It’s the skill of making wise decisions in spontaneous, evolving moments of practice, fine-tuning the balance between the ask of the moment and the demands of the greater good. This is the wisdom of experience and the weight of responsibility acting in its highest form.
In that regard, senior professionals lead the way. But like the soldier, king, and peasant working together toward a shared dream, every generation of practitioners contributes something essential. On behalf of those aging towards the consequences of built environment action, I encourage you to be in constant conversation with young practitioners. We carry within us wisdom of consequence, comfort with chaos, and the stem cells of a new world.
About the Author
Aisha Taj is an MSc graduate in International Planning from UCL, passionate about rethinking sustainability through the lens of community. When not planning, she writes and performs poetry about the environment and our shared future.