“Unbuilding” is a word we keep coming back to at Commune. It isn’t a fancy term for demolition — it’s closer to the opposite: a way back to land, memory and community that fast urban growth tends to erase. This page gathers what we’ve written about what cities cost us as they grow, and why we think the answer isn’t better construction, but less of it.
What we lose when cities grow
Rapid urbanization is often described in terms of growth — new roads, new housing schemes, new economic activity. Less discussed is what that growth is built on top of: displaced families, disappearing farmland, and cultural heritage that doesn’t survive the bulldozer. It can be cheap to build and expensive to lose. Read more on the cost of rapid urbanization →
Lahore is a useful, unglamorous example — a city permanently under construction, where every new plaza or road seems to arrive with its own quiet demolition attached. Development in Pakistan often focuses on erasing history and roots, both literally and metaphorically, faster than it builds anything worth keeping. Unbuilding is our word for the opposite instinct: reconnecting with land rather than paving over it. A mud house, in this sense, isn’t really “constructed” — it’s lifted from ground that was already part of the culture. Read more on learning to unbuild →
Naeem Bajwa, a social and environmental activist and founding member of the Lahore Conservation Society, put it plainly in a 2022 interview: Lahore is expanding faster than its resources can handle, and the small landholding farmers caught in that expansion rarely get a say. Entire villages now sit trapped between gated societies, their futures decided somewhere else. Read more on what Lahore’s growth is costing it →
The human cost
Environmental sustainability doesn’t stop at soil and emissions — it depends on the people living within it, too. Displacement carries a real psychological toll: a Bradford, UK study found that people relocated to areas with higher air pollution had an 11% greater risk of developing new mental health issues, while access to good green space was linked to fewer mental health prescriptions. Beyond individual wellbeing, forced relocation scatters the oral histories, traditions and community caregiving networks that don’t relocate as easily as people do. Read more on the psychological cost of displacement →
Mud as an act of unbuilding
This is where the two threads of Commune meet. If unbuilding means reconnecting with land instead of paving over it, natural materials are the most literal version of that — mud, lime, bamboo and stone taken from the ground and returned to it, rather than trucked in and left behind. Visit the natural building field guide →
Further reading: Vandana Shiva’s Terra Viva
Vandana Shiva has spent decades writing about the connection between land, rural knowledge and ecological survival. Her book Terra Viva is a recurring reference point for us — our team has been working through it chapter by chapter:
- Chapter 1: Eco-Feminism and the Hidden Wealth of Rural Communities — how rural communities, disconnected from modern technology, often hold more knowledge of the environment than those who study it.
- Chapter 2: Roots in the Himalayas — When Earth Became My Teacher — on Shiva’s own turn from academic physics to environmental activism.
- Chapter 3: Forces of Destruction versus Forces of Creation — the forces that harm soil and biodiversity, set against the ones that restore them.
This is a running collection, not a finished argument — we add to it as we keep writing and thinking about it. Browse all writing on roots & belonging.