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November 24, 2008
City Eco Lab (Sustainability festival, St Etienne, France, 2008)
City Eco Lab was a two-week festival of projects that took place in November in St Etienne, France. These 50-plus projects involved productive urban gardens; low energy food storage; communal composting solutions; re-discovery of hidden rivers; neighbourhood energy dashboards; de-motorised courier services; and a wide variety of software tools to help people share resources. This blog post is a summary. Detailed stories about City Eco Lab are to be found here. The event was hosted by the St Etienne Cite du Design; its designers were Exyzt and Gaëlle Gabillet.
As with Dott07 which we programmed in England in 2007, citizen co-design of projects was at the core of City Eco Lab. Among its highlights:
Mathieu-Benoit-Gonin's installation on urban permaculture:
Magalie Restallo designed a prototype vital flows dashboard for an eco-quartier in St Etienne:
Hugo Bont and Olivier Peyricot built an urban fish-farming prototype; (I'm not sure the cutest baby in the shed knew the fish were to be eaten):
Emanuel Louisgrand designed an urban garden toolkit:
Avinish Kumar collected sounds and images of bicycle-based merchants in Delhi for an installation on the delights of de-motorised transportation:
Bethany Koby and Ellie Thornhill created this tool shed with resources to help people improve their projects: tools for designing, tools for modelling and making things, tools for monitoring local flows, tools for finding and sharing resources.
Francois Jegou's "story scripts" - shown on small screens in City Eco Lab - in which people from St Etienne imagined their current life using solutions that reduced their impact on the environment and also regenerated the social fabric around them.
In the middle of this market (it was in a 5,000 square metre former gun factory) was an 'Explorers Club' for encounters between citizens, project leaders, tool makers, and designers. Here, for example, food producers and citizens discuss ways to enhance the AMAP system of community supported agriculture:
Posted by John Thackara at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2008
City Eco Lab: Exyzt's buildings as events
Shown below, Exyzt's hang-out that they built for themselves at City Eco Lab. Not very Design - but the coolest corner in the shed.
Exyzt next project, which is called Monumento that they're about to do in Brazil with Coloco, is to re-purpose this 24 story skyscraper in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Posted by John Thackara at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2008
Land and re-localisation
With allotment waiting lists in the UK massively over-subscribed, and people right across the country keen to grow their own fruit and vegetables, a new project called Landshare aims to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to all.
Within days of registration being opened, thousands of landowners and would-be gardeners have signed up. A website, hosted by a television network, Channel 4, enables people to find land where they can grow their own; offer land in return for produce; identify land suitable for planting; and build a growing community.
"The sort of land could be a garden share, a yard behind a company, a slice of a farmer's field, or a flat roof capable of taking the weight of a few pots" say the producers. "We don’t limit the variety or size of plot, nor who should get involved. The scheme is for individuals, families, businesses and organisations".
Landshare is not just about private gardens. Many organisations have large and under-used banks of land - utility companies, property developers, supermarkets, government bodies, charities - and churches.
Among 140 different religious groups in the UK, say Landshare, the Church of England on its own is one of the country's biggest landowners. Extraordinarily no-one, including the Church itself, knows exactly how much land it owns. "It is likely to be over 250,000 acres but could be considerably more" say the Landshare team.
It seems as if Landshare has been inspired in part by a project called Garden Share in Totnes, home of the Transition Towns movement. The Totnes service, too, matches enthusiastic growers with local garden owners who want to see their gardens used more productively.
The Totnes project was always conceived as a long-term community initiative with people gardening the land year after year if possible. "Every person who grows more of their own food is taking an important step towards greater local food resilience" say the Totnes team.
How well and how fast might the Landshare project scale up nationwide?
One of the key lessons we learned in the Move Me project, in Dott 07, was the importance of building trust between participants. Move Me was a ride-share service, and no parent would countenance sending a child to school in a car driven by a stranger.
Websites that match people wanting to go cheaply from A-F, with drivers of vehicles with empty seats, appeal to a limited demographic of, for the most part, sturdy able-bodied students. For everyone else, a precondition for being 'matched' is learning to trust people during face to face encounters.
Parents and staff in a school community (where Move Me was based) already know each other. How different is sharing a garden, or the field behind a church? We shall see.
Meanwhile, back in the global economy, re-localisation proceeds at an impressive pace. The Baltic Dry Index (below) provides an assessment of the price of moving raw materials by sea - such as 1.000,000 metric tons of rice from Bangkok to Tokyo. Demand in the market right now is heading vertically towards zero.
Posted by John Thackara at 08:50 AM | Comments (1)
November 05, 2008
"Presidents are only presidents"
Our election night here in France was febrile. As I listened to the results (and finished Sharon Astyk's book during the dull bits on the box) a tremendous storm raged outside and the power went down several times. That has has not happened here in seven years. All very Macbeth-like.
I don't suppose you need more punditry right now - but if you can't get enough, World Changing has just published a bunch of answers to this question: "In 100 words or less, what should the next president do in his first 100 days to address the planet's most pressing problems?"
Answers from the likes of Hunter Lovins, Bill McKibben, Bruce Sterling, Cameron Sinclair, Howard Rheingold, Pierre Omidyar, Mathis Wackernagel, Jacqueline Novogratz, Paul Hawken, Robert Neuwirth (et moi) are here.
“There ain't no cure, and I'm not sure he knows". Illargi's take is darker than the generally can-do comments of the the World Changing group. "Whatever hope a new administration may evoke in the hearts and minds of Americans and people across the globe", Illargi writes, "one thing still stands…millions upon millions of jobs will be lost in the US alone within the next 12 months. Obama’s task will not, because it can not, be to lead his nation back into prosperous times".
If prosperity means returning to a world of perpetual, inequitable, resource-intensive growth, then for me at least it's not a desirable destination.
A better word than Prosperous, for me, would be Prepared.
That's why my advice to the President would be to tell the truth about the likely consequences of peak energy, food and water and the like. This truth will confront people with the need to prepare for hard times, yes - but also to regenerate, and mend.
He should ask each U.S. region to map its ecosystems and human resources; identify any gaps; and then hold Transition Meetings to draw up Living Economy Action Plans.
In other words, he should delegate the whole thing to the people and re-cast the President's role as Co-ordinator in Chief.
"I am a firm believer in the people”, said Abraham Lincoln; “If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
Or as Sharon Astyk puts it in her pre-election comment: “Presidents are only Presidents - the people, well, that’s something else”
So much, so portentous, I know. I'm off to buy candles - and then to eat rosti for lunch with our friend up the hill.
Posted by John Thackara at 09:56 AM | Comments (2)
