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History, especially since the Renaissance, demonstrates that humans have been attempting to tame, control, or reconfigure “nature.” This approach is not sustainable in the long-term due to several factors including exponential population growth, overuse of resources, and global climate change. Instead, people need to change and adapt, including how we conceptualize sustainable cities, the focus of this paper. Current sustainability practices are typically designed to mitigate immediate concerns over decadal timespans. In today's world, this time span is inadequate; longer and more resilient and sustainable options need to be implemented. The past provides options on how to avoid repeating mistakes because it “offers a pool of experience of challenges, strategies, practices, successes and failures from which to draw” (Isendahl et al., 2018, p. 19). Archaeology, specifically, contributes: (1) evidence for climate instability, flooding, extreme weather events, etc.; and (2) how people responded and/or changed their behavior (e.g., Fiske et al., 2015).

The high interconnectivity of the modern world signifies that a call for urban resilience is a call for planetary resilience—expanding the spatial component of sustainability along with the temporal. Exceedingly vital is the necessity to think beyond humans since the survival of Homo sapiens is dependent on the endurance of the non-human world; if the environment and its resources, forests, water bodies and creatures are irrevocably damaged, humans cannot flourish. Thus, we opt for a non-anthropocentric approach for planning future cities; we broach changing the relationship between human behavior and the urban environment by taking a holistic, interspecies view of urban and non-urban spaces in the tropics.

We approach urbanism as we would any ecosystem, and approach humans as any other organism, acknowledging that everything is reciprocally connected. Ecosystems demonstrate that diversity is fundamental across all scales; diverse strategies are flexible, spread risk, and are resilient in the face of change. We set the stage for this holistic model by discussing the Classic Maya (c. 250–900 CE) of Central America—a tropical society where farmers practiced widespread, sustainable agriculture for 4,000 years without destroying their ecosystem. The Maya accomplished this feat in large part due to their cosmocentric worldview (CWV)—that is, a cosmology of conservation where people, animals, plants, rivers, stones, clouds, etc., each played a role in maintaining the world (Lucero, 2018a). Their non-anthropocentric worldview was also expressed in their Urban-Rural Interdependence (URI), where Maya kings and subject farmers built cities with reservoirs, causeways and monumental constructions integrated into the existing environment, resulting in green cities interspersed with farmsteads and managed biodiverse forests.

We present strategies gleaned from the tropical past that provide architypes for urban planning today (e.g., open and green spaces, natural cemeteries, constructed wetland biospheres, recycling organic waste, etc.). In brief, our holistic model re-integrates nature and culture. As archaeologists, we approach sustainable urbanism theoretically rather than empirically (Brenner and Schmid, 2015), and holistically as an ecosystem rather than an isolated unit of study. We begin with a brief discussion of urban-rural interdependency in tropical regions and elsewhere, followed by an introduction to the Classic Maya and their CWV. We then present a holistic approach for a future URI based on insights from the Maya.

Urban areas around the world have become a large rallying point in politics and policy, as well as sustainability initiatives, including tropical regions where over 40% of the world's population resides (Mora et al., 2013). The large population should come as no surprise given that people have been living in tropical regions for tens of thousands of years (Roberts et al., 2017). The tropics lie between 23.5° north and south of the equator; consequently, they have a high level of solar radiation throughout the year as well as some of the most diverse and complex ecosystems (Hutterer, 1985). Even though there is high forest biodiversity, resources are dispersed; species of flora and fauna are not concentrated in any given area. Healthy forests are critical for flora, fauna, and humans; forest cover also promotes precipitation and decreases evaporation and erosion (Lawrence and Vandecar, 2015). At present, the urban-rural divide looms increasingly prevalent as cities expand due to growing populations, which exerts pressure on rural communities and agricultural fields (Lichter and Brown, 2014; Barthel et al., 2019). This fact is even more significant given the expected expansion of the tropical belt beyond the ±23.5° latitude from the equator due to global climate change. Tropical features presumably also will spread, both good and bad, including wet and dry seasons, rainfall-dependency, hurricanes and tropical storms, changing biodiversity, diseases (e.g., Zika, malaria, dengue, etc.), and so on.

Throughout history, rainfall-dependent tropical societies lived sustainability for millennia, relying on a combination of local, small-scale subsistence technologies and large-scale water management systems, brought together in a low-density agrarian urban system that integrated water and agricultural systems, political centers, dispersed farmsteads and communities, exchange networks, and resources (Fletcher, 2009). Low-density agrarian urban systems embodied an efficient URI and covered a wide range of scales, from the hundreds of Classic Maya kingdoms of Central America between the first century BCE and the tenth century CE, and the Sinhalese Buddhist capital of Anuradhapura between the fourth century BCE and eleventh century CE in Sri Lanka, to the Khmer capital of Angkor in Cambodia between the ninth and sixteenth centuries CE (Lucero et al., 2015). While their scale varies (e.g., Angkor and its immediate area integrated c. 750,000 people, whereas the largest Maya capitals up to c. 80,000), they had key features in common: their rainfall-dependency and the URI that emerged as a means to address it and other tropical conditions. There was a fine balance between the centripetal pull of cities (reservoirs, markets, large-scale public ceremonies and other events, etc.) and the centrifugal forces of scattered resources and subjects in non-urban or rural areas (Table 1). Table 1 represents a fluid system between the left and right columns; the amount of flow is largely dependent on seasonal variation because each has specific activities that relate to the dry season (agricultural downtime) and the wet season (agricultural intensive period).

Different tropical societies, though varying in size, had similar paths, signifying that future trajectories will likely be similar. Thus, it is crucial to be aware of the key factors that worked and did not work in the long term. As in the past, cities are heavily entangled with rural areas (Schaeffer et al., 2014). Rural communities provide food, recreation, energy, and other domesticates and natural resources to cities. The reliance of cities on rural populations bolsters an URI, a state in which the urban can only exist amidst a symbiotic relationship with the rural—in essence, they form an ecosystem of their own (Figure 1).

The word ecology stems from the Greek word oikos for home. Hence, from an ecological perspective, to look at the urban is to grasp its relationship with other living things and their environment or homes—encompassing not only the rural, but also non-human entities. What are the foundations of a home for humans and non-humans? The environment, a social milieu, and production and consumption are the three underpinnings of every society and ecosystem (Table 2). Regardless of species, a home is a physical place (habitation) containing a social unit (individual/family). In human societies, families or households interact on a daily basis within communities or neighborhoods, which typically serve as the basis of identity (Smith, 2010) in a wider, integrated system. For example, traditional Maya wear woven clothing with designs (social unit) specific to each village (environment) (Dywer, 2005). Each community or town contains public features, or services, such as sanitation and water systems, administrative buildings, recreation facilities, courthouses, and others.

Current sustainable planning privileges humans, focusing on short-term solutions, which in turn leads to an imbalance caused by an over-reliance on technology, increased automation—and unintended consequences, the bane of human existence (e.g., Stokstad, 2019). For example, “influenza viruses coevolved with birds, pigs, and humans since the threshold of domestication, and the Industrial Revolution disrupted this ecosystem and amplified lethal viral mutations. The emergence of pandemic influenza viruses was…an unintended effect of the livestock revolution” (Keck, 2019, p. 1). Even green technology has unintended consequences; for instance, wind turbines, while producing stores of green energy, are killing swaths of migratory bats, already endangered by white nose syndrome (Frick et al., 2017). Bats provide many eco-services such as pollination, seed dispersal, fertilization, and insect control (Wilson, 1997). Dwindling bat species has major repercussions and elevates the need for human input to fill the increasing gap in their ecological niche. Similar critical repercussions occur with other taxa, such as the escalation of microplastic entanglements and ingestion by marine life, which ultimately affects various human food sources and environmental eco-services (Li et al., 2018).

This is not to say that modernization should be delayed, or that a return to pre-modern ways is necessary, or even possible for that matter, but rather that a more-than-human, more holistic approach needs to be considered in urban sustainability discourse. What would a highly populated urban ecosystem look like with a more-than-human worldview? Tropical societies like the Classic Maya provide insights for a sustainable URI.

The Classic Maya (c. 250–900 CE) of the southern lowlands of present-day Belize, northern Guatemala and southeastern Mexico lived in urban centers or cities ruled by kings, or in dispersed rural farmsteads in a forested karstic landscape with high but dispersed biodiversity (Lucero, 2006, 2017) (Figure 2). There is also relatively limited surface water due to rainfall percolating through the permeable limestone bedrock. Water was vital in this rainfall-dependent society due to annual rainy and dry seasons; even most wetlands (c. 40% of the lowlands) became desiccated in the dry season (Dunning et al., 2006). The Maya area did not have metals or beasts of burden, and the Maya did not build extensive irrigation or extensive road systems. Instead they relied on labor, human ingenuity, stone tools, and working with the environment and its myriad of non-human entities. Organizing a dispersed subject populace required different administrative tools for efficient urban-rural interactions that encompassed diverse resource management strategies and long-term sustainable agriculture (Lucero, 2017, 2018b). Diversity in URI—in scale of water and subsistence technologies, resource types and locations, crops planted, forest management strategies, and other practices were key.

The diverse but scattered resources, including fertile agricultural soils, resulted in farmers living dispersed throughout the landscape; larger plots of fertile land supported more people and larger cities (Fedick and Ford, 1990). The Maya relied not only on diverse crops, but also diverse locations where they planted them—milpas (fields), house gardens, and managed forests. By planting in areas with fertile soils, the Maya not only fed more people by planting more crops per year, but they did not have the need to clear as much land (Ford and Clarke, 2016). An additional supply of food likely came from urban areas, where the Maya likely made use of the open, presumably green, spaces (Graham and Isendahl, 2018). Urban agriculture would have enhanced food security and resilience. Figure 3, an artist's rendition of Tikal, Guatemala, shows open areas between buildings, causeways, and reservoirs that could have supported urban gardens or even fields and forest stands. The Maya either walked through the jungle on well-established trails or canoed on navigable rivers. Thus, the lack of extensive road or transportation systems was not an issue because Maya relied on nearby resources and produce (Scarborough and Lucero, 2010).

Most of the 100's of urban centers had their own king, though some were more powerful than others, namely Tikal in Guatemala and Calakmul in Mexico, largely due to their location in areas with large amounts of fertile soils. These areas, however, lacked permanent surface water such as lakes and rivers because of the porous bedrock. Small- and large-scale water containment and conservation systems were thus vital for survival during the 5-month dry season. Rural farmers depended on city reservoirs for clean water during the dry season, which was the agricultural downtime. Urban planning and layout increasingly became interlinked with reservoir systems, creating anthropogenic landscapes that are still visible today (Scarborough, 1998; Scarborough et al., 2012). Urban features included multi-purpose ones; for example, while the causeways connected different political and ceremonial complexes, some also served as dams and walkways during the rainy season. In addition, cities exerted a centripetal pull on rural Maya through markets and access to goods, public ceremonies, and other large-scale public events. In turn, cities depended on the rural populace to fund the political economy in the form of labor, services (craft specialists, hunters, etc.), agricultural produce (e.g., maize, beans, manioc, squash, pineapple, tobacco, tomatoes, cacao, etc.), and forest resources (wood, fuel, construction materials, medicinal plants, chert, game, berries, twine, fruit, etc.).

The Maya began building water systems by c. 100 BCE (e.g., El Mirador, Guatemala) (Scarborough, 2000). Growing population resulted in increasingly larger and more sophisticated artificial reservoirs with dams, channels and sand filtration systems, a trend that continued through the Late Classic (c. 600–800 CE), the period with the highest population size (Scarborough and Gallopin, 1991; Scarborough, 1993, 2003, p. 50–51, Scarborough, 2007). Maintaining water quality would have been crucial to curtail the presence of water borne parasites and diseases such as hepatic schistosomiasis, and the build-up of noxious elements such as nitrogen (Burton et al., 1979). The Maya kept water clean by mimicking wetland biospheres through the use of certain surface and subsurface plants and aquatic life (Lucero et al., 2011). Reservoirs, that is, constructed wetland biospheres, “also had other uses; fish eat insects and their feces and other bottom debris can be used as fertilizer…Fish, as well as snails and shellfish, are excellent sources of protein…Edible and medicinal plants grow in aquatic environments and the Maya perhaps used reeds that grew at reservoir edges for baskets and mats” (Lucero, 2017, p. 170–171). A major concern would have been dealing with human waste due to the porous limestone, especially since latrines have not been found in the archaeological record; perhaps the Maya used night soil as fertilizer, as traditional Chinese and other farmers have done.

The URI developed out of the need to manage land and water in a tropical climate, which expanded and served people's needs until a series of prolonged droughts struck between c. 800 and 930 CE (Medina-Elizalde et al., 2010; Kennett et al., 2012; Douglas et al., 2015). Because kings relied on reservoirs to attract subjects and their services and labor, these droughts not only impacted reservoirs, but the foundation of royal power. As reservoirs dried up, water quality worsened and water plants died, along with Maya kingship. An urban diaspora ensued, resulting in c. 90% (Turner and Sabloff, 2012) of farming families leaving the interior southern lowlands for coastal areas and areas near major rivers and lakes (e.g., Belize River, Lake Petén Iztá) where smaller market towns emerged and trade thrived (Sabloff, 2007; Graham, 2011; Masson and Freidel, 2012). Maya families that remained lived near the relatively few perennial lakes and rivers (e.g., Belize River, Cara Blanca pools) in smaller communities with a different socio-political organization. Abandoned urban centers were never re-occupied. Maya families had to make hard, difficult and even radical decisions. They left their homes, fields, and communities. But they did so to save their families. While this response was drastic, it was an adaptive strategy—one that worked as evidenced by the over seven million Maya currently living in Central America and beyond (McAnany and Gallareta Negrón, 2009).

Maya cities lasted as long as kings—water managers—provided clean water during the long dry season. By not diversifying their political economy, the kings became path dependent, which is in stark contrast to diverse and flexible strategies. “Path dependence connotes a sense of becoming increasingly stuck in a particular way of doing things, an inability to change even when change would be advantageous” (Nelson et al., 2014, p. 172; e.g., Hegmon et al., 2008). That said, cities in the southern lowlands prospered for over a thousand years. They lasted because of a fine-tuned URI that was dependent on predictable wet and dry seasons, which changed when the ninth century droughts struck. While Maya cities were not unsustainable per se, being path dependent was. Kings disappeared and cities remained empty; families and traditional knowledge endured.

How did Maya farmers live for thousands of years without destroying their environment? How did their cities persist for over a thousand years? We posit through a non-anthropocentric worldview that guided daily existence and engagement with the non-human world in such a way that promoted a more equal relationship (Lucero, 2018a; see Tsing et al., 2019).

The current anthropocentric worldview as expressed in our Cartesian, dichotomous view of the world stands in stark contrast to a CWV found in many pre-modern or non-industrial societies (e.g., Weber, 2013; Lucero, 2017). A CWV is the opposite of anthropocentrism; it situates objects, humans, animals, land, water and everything on the same plane, with the goal of maintaining themselves and the world (Lucero, 2018a). The Maya thus were one with world, a concept illustrated in how they perceive the soul (ch'ulel). Every entity has a soul; every soul is connected and communicates with other souls (Houston et al., 2006, p. 142–143; Vogt, 1969, p. 369–371). Human souls are recycled; “Children and grandchildren were called kexol, “replacements” of their ancestors…” (Schele and Miller, 1986, p. 266). This CWV is embodied in languages as well; for example, “Native Americans often refer to the sun, mountains, clouds, rain, and so forth in kin terms” (Astor-Aguilera, 2010, p. 211). The Maya, and other societies with CWVs, saw more than we do—or at least acknowledged the vibrant forces of others and the fact that everything is connected and played their part to maintain the world, a concept illustrated in the ergative nature of Mayan languages and their “plurality of subjects” (England, 2017). Among the Tojolab'al Maya of Chiapas, Mexico, for instance, they emphasize “we” instead of “I” (Lenkersdorf, 2006); “we” includes clouds, plants, rivers, mountains, animals, and other entities.

The Maya, as one with world, were closely connected and intermingled with the world around them. This point is illustrated in how the Maya perceive wits, a term that signifies lineage mountains and pyramid temples (Stuart, 1987, 1997; Stuart and Houston, 1994, p. 82). Temples are not replicas of ancestral mountains, they are ancestral mountains (see Brady and Ashmore, 1999; Harrison–Buck, 2012). It is in mountains were ancestors reside and watch over their descendants; they also serve as a means of communication through the many caves or ch'e'n. Such openings in the earth, especially caves and water bodies, are portals to the otherworld, where the Maya communicated with ancestors and gods (e.g., the Rain God Chahk). The Maya engaged with urban center wits (temples) as animated entities via ceremonies and summit performances (Reese-Taylor, 2002), as well as rural wits (mountains) via pilgrimage journeys and ceremonies (Lucero, 2018a). And even though artificial reservoirs provided clean drinking water, they, too, were considered portals and treated accordingly.

There are no Mayan terms for “religion” or “nature” (Pharo, 2007), reflecting a merged existence that the Maya underscored through engaging with other entities via ceremonies in the home, gardens, milpas, cities and throughout the landscape (caves, water bodies, etc.). For example, Cara Blanca in central Belize served as a pilgrimage destination, especially during the ninth century droughts. This landscape includes fertile agricultural soils and 25 pools, some of which are deep watery portals or cenotes (steep-sided sinkholes filled by groundwater). Cenotes contain water throughout the year, including during the 5-month dry season. However, we only find minimal settlement near the cenotes, all ceremonial in nature (Lucero and Kinkella, 2015; Lucero et al., 2016). The Maya neither built houses nor planted fields near cenotes. They left these areas relatively untouched, despite the plentiful resources, likely because it held some significant cultural meaning. As a result, the lack of houses and fields near Cara Blanca cenotes allowed local flora and fauna to flourish, which in turn promoted biodiversity, and thus, conservation (Lucero, 2018a).

Maya engagement of such “sacred” places was a type of sustainable management. Diversifying what they planted in their house gardens and milpas, in addition to this type of forest management, became an integral part in maintaining the landscape (Ford and Nigh, 2015, p. 13). There are other types of forest management strategies as well. A mosaic of built, managed and untouched areas sustained the Maya for millennia (Ford and Clarke, 2016).

The Maya left a sustainable imprint on the forested landscape. In fact, there is growing evidence that the “primary” forest we see today actually signifies a descendant forest reflecting ancient resource management (e.g., Gómez-Pompa et al., 1987; Lindsay, 2011, 2014; Ross, 2011). Forest management strategies included culling, promoting some species over others, land clearing, resource extraction, and intentional and accidental fires for uses including gathering wood for fuel and hunting (Ford and Nigh, 2009). Even at the height of population size in the Late Classic (c. 600–800 CE), the Maya managed and relied on forest products as evidenced in the flora and faunal remains in the archaeological record, as well as the current forest composition. For example, in a study of over 300 botanical specimens collected from areas with Maya sites in central Belize, a Mopan Maya foremen was able to identify approximately 95% of the specimens, most of which have uses today (e.g., spices, fruit, nuts, medicinal, construction materials, etc.) (Lindsay, 2011; Lucero et al., 2014). This knowledge reflects thousands of years of engaging responsibly with the living forest. Presently, the Maya make use of over 500 indigenous food plant species and a plethora of fauna, exotics, tools, ceramics, textiles, and aquatic foods (Fedick, 2010). In fact, current Maya house gardens and milpas typically mimic forest diversity (Lentz et al., 2015).

Maya farmers likely planted non-contiguous plots to prevent the spread of pests, and used diverse small-scale extensive and intensive subsistence technologies that were environmentally unobtrusive; they included low terraces and dams, short and shallow canals and localized “raised fields that were used to grow the staples of maize, beans and squash in house gardens, short-fallow infields, long-fallow outfields and combinations of these techniques” (Lucero, 2017, p. 166). Present Maya communities still cultivate and maintain home gardens that are species rich (Thompson et al., 2015).

Even with all of the history that has passed, including the Spanish conquest beginning in the 1520's, Spanish and English colonial rule, forced conversion to Christianity, massive population loss and displacement due to conflict and epidemic diseases and so on, the Maya and their knowledge of the environment prevail (e.g., Nations and Nigh, 1980; Argivo, 1994; Ford and Nigh, 2015) with broad implications for us all. The Maya and the tropical environment co-existed without either over-taxing the other. Low-density urbanism and URI, diverse crops and milpas and forest management are key components in tropical areas and play a key role in how we can implement sustainability goals. We propose a holistic approach for a sustainable URI that is inspired by insights from the Classic Maya.

Human encroachment in the natural world is undeniable, but how we proceed in the near future may mean the difference between hard choices and long-term survival vs. short-term solutions and disaster. Figure 4 illustrates the worldview of the Anthropocene; while it may not be possible to completely revert to the other side of the spectrum, we must at least break down the hierarchical, anthropocentric view of the world—which would thus impact how we move forward to a sustainable URI.

At the outset, we first want to situate this model regarding the major challenges any urban model faces: (1) exponential population growth and concomitant expanding urban sprawl that endangers food security (Barthel et al., 2019); (2) overuse of resources; and (3) the need to factor in a global changing climate. Classic Maya society provides six relevant insights on how we can move toward sustainable cities with these challenges in mind, summarized here: (1) a CWV that places humans and non-humans on the same plane; (2) the importance of flexible and diverse practices and relations; (3) traditional knowledge; 4) multi-purpose designs like Maya reservoirs and causeways; (5) local resource networks; and (6) the family as the basic unit of society—and action. In brief, the Maya lived as part of the ecosystem, not divorced from it. In the remainder of this paper, we present alternative long-term strategies that are inspired from the Maya and approach the city with an integrated ecosystem lens.

In 2015, 193 Member States adopted the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). Goal 11 is of particular significance—to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable—as is Target 11.4 to strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage. To attain this goal, we need to address increasingly extreme weather events, such as what happened relatively recently in Houston, Texas and Puerto Rico. Cities rarely collapse; they are resilient (Smith, 2019, p. 253–255); rural areas even more so. That said, can Houston take another major hurricane? Can New Orleans withstand another massive flooding event? We can ask the same questions for most cities, whose foundation of existence is changing due to climate change.

The model presented here has applications beyond tropical societies—especially since URI exists wherever cities do. As we have demonstrated from Classic Maya insights, URI must be the focal point for sustainability efforts. Cities do not stand alone; they are dependent on goods and produce from the rural area and populace. In turn, rural areas and people rely on cities for infrastructure, goods (e.g., machinery from factories), and cultural and political services. Focusing only on cities ignores the interrelations with rural communities and non-human entities, decreasing the overall impact of sustainability efforts.

We also need to keep in mind the omnipresent unintended consequences, especially with regard to technology and our assumption—or even belief—that it will save the day as it has done several times in the past. A hypothetical example of the impact of climate change and technology comes in the form of another Dust Bowl and its impact on solar panels—dust clouds and blocked sunlight means less or no solar power. The resources and energy required to build and maintain solar panels are other issues entirely, not to mention the space they require.

In cities, leaders come and go, with relatively little impact on their inhabitants (Smith, 2019, p. 239). Top-down mitigation in and of itself will not work without the support and action of the majority. Merging top-down and bottom-up approaches are the only alternative. And it begins at the foundation of any society—the family or household; it is and will be the basis for activism and action, including making some hard, life-altering decisions (e.g., using our own organic waste as fertilizer, natural cemeteries, etc.).

The Classic Maya and other non-anthropocentric societies can teach us much, if we are willing to learn. In so doing, we will be able to reconceptualize sustainable urban planning in the future in a more holistic manner that considers non-human survival as well. Instead of “live and learn,” we need to learn and live.

LL and JG contributed to the research design and holistic approach. LL wrote most of the Classic Maya material.