There is a greater interest in creating more resilient cities where residents produce what they need, in order to minimize waste and dependency on industrial-scale food production and retailing. This, combined with individual interest to learn and reconnect with the food system, has given rise to a number of urban and community gardens. This bottom-up movement of urban agriculture is also seeking a structural support by policy makers. Several grassroot communities around the world are finding innovative ways to distribute the surplus food grown or cooked which otherwise would go to waste. —Khushboo Balwani

1. League of Urban Canners: Stewarding Urban Orchards

Planting an urban fruit tree is more than a lifetime commitment — it is an intergenerational civic responsibility. Each summer, in Greater Boston, a huge amount of backyard fruit falls to the ground and sidewalk, where it rots and creates a mess. Property owners and municipalities are often pressured to remove these “nuisances,” while many urban residents are struggling to access local and organic food sources. The League of Urban Canners has developed a network of individuals to map, harvest, preserve, and share this otherwise wasted fruit. They make agreements with property owners to share the work of fruit harvesting and preserving, as well as tree and arbor pruning. The preserved fruits are shared between property owners (10 percent), preservers (70 percent), and harvesters (20 percent). Each season the completely volunteer-run enterprise harvests and preserves about 5,000 pounds of fruit from a database of more than 300 trees and arbors. Myriad acts of cooperation sustain this urban commons, in which harvesters, property owners, preservers, and eaters learn to share responsibility, resources, and care for each other and their urban environment. —Oona Morrow

2. Restaurant Day (‘Ravintolapäivä’): Fostering Cross-cultural Gatherings Through Shared Meals

In big cities, people of many different cultures live in close proximity. However, there often aren’t enough chances for them to intermingle and experience the diverse traditions within their city. In an effort to bring people together and foster cross cultural interaction, local organizers in Helsinki, Finland, created “Ravintolapäivä,” or Restaurant Day. Initiated in 2011, it began as a food carnival where anyone with a passion for food was encouraged to run a “restaurant” in their private home or in public spaces for a single day. Even though the pop-up restaurants charge money for the meals, the emphasis is not on profit, but rather on community teamwork and cultural exchange. During the event, Helsinki is transformed by hundreds of these informal restaurants serving a wide range of cuisines in this city-wide street festival. The event is put on through distributed organization — individual volunteer restaurateurs are responsible for finding a location, managing the menu and invitations, and setting the meal prices. Now, Restaurant Day has become a global movement, with over 27,000 pop-up restaurants having served over 3 million community members across 75 countries. —Khushboo Balwani

3. Kitchen Share: A Sustainable Community Resource for Home Cooks

Kitchen appliances can be superfluous uses of money and cupboard space, especially for city residents with tight budgets and small homes. Yet interest in healthy eating is growing. More people are trying out unusual food preparation techniques, which can require unique appliances. Kitchen Share, launched in 2012, is a kitchen tool-lending library for home cooks in Portland, Oregon. It enables community members to borrow a wide variety of kitchen appliances such as dehydrators, mixers, and juicers. Members can check out over 400 items online using affordable lending library software from myTurn. With two locations in Portland, Kitchen Share helps residents save money, learn new skills from neighbors, and reduce their environmental footprint. As a nonprofit community resource for home cooks, Kitchen Share only asks for a one-time donation upon joining, providing affordable access to otherwise expensive and bulky items while building a more resource-efficient city. Learn about starting a lending library with this toolkit.—Marion Weymes

These three short case studies are adapted from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.”

Cross-posted from Shareable

Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash

The post These 3 grassroots movements are bringing people together through food appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Combining nine of the blocks proposed by Ildefons Cerdà in the 1859 plan (very different from those realised) they are meant to reduce car traffic in the streets and squares inside the superblock’s perimeter, confining it to the perimetral streets, in order to create a solution for the serious problems deriving from pollution, the near absence of green areas, the minimal space for pedestrians caused by the omnipresence of cars.

The “supermanzanas” (superblocks, literally ‘superapples’) project aims at creating four squares in every superblock converting the inner part of the intersections in areas mostly dedicated to pedestrians. This is a proposal that —if completely fulfilled— will radically change the city.

The central part of the issue is the following: are we facing a change that is going to confirm the elements of the neo-liberal city, limiting to correcting them with the introduction of – essential and very helpful – measures for the reduction of air and acoustic pollution and for the creation of pedestrian areas? Or is it an opportunity to criticise the neo-liberal economy through urbanism, its production structure, its voracity, its unfamiliarity with ethics, its inequality and its destruction of the environment?

The international attention towards the project has been accompanied by the recent —and predictable— anger of a part of the residents of the site of the first superblock in Poble Nou, due to the concentration of traffic. This has remained unchanged in its quantity and quality because of the habits of people that use cars for travelling around the city, in the perimetral streets and due to the absence of areas dedicated to (for) the sacred rite of parking. These criticisms should make us slow down and reflect.

Here we are not going to analyse technical issues, flows of cars, directions, signalling, number of parking areas. On the contrary, we want firstly to focus on the resistance and on the criticism towards the superblocks made by the inhabitants, then we are going to analyse the elements that could turn the “supermanzanas” into a feature for a significant change.

The opposition towards the project can be explained through two elements. The first one, with deep roots, is the cultural educational problem: perhaps the blind rage caused by the offence to the sacred nature of car reveals an underlying problem in the (mis)educational system, whose main prerogative is teaching to accept the “status quo” of the neo-liberal society without asking, without knowing its bases, silencing any search for different horizons?

The still sacred element of our times —the automobile— despite its obvious destructive action towards the city life, is the main issue. This strange God continues to be venerated by the majority of people. Nevertheless, like every God, the automobile limits freedom —even more than the city does— increases air pollution, threatens our peace with its hypnotic noise, threatens our lives with accidents and with its support to the oil industry, to the pharmaceutical industry, to psychological treatments, to insurance companies, to the loans from banking institutions, among other things. It constrains freedom: as it has been known for decades —or as it should be known and taught during the compulsory education— the real speed of an automobile is 6 kilometres per hour.

«The typical American devotes more than 1600 hours per year to its automobile: sitting in it, in motion or stationary, working for paying it, for paying fuel, tyres, tolls, insurance, infringements and duties for federal highways and communal parking. They devote four hours per day in which they use it, look after or work for it […] But if we ask ourselves how these 1600 hours contribute to its circulation, the situation changes. These 1600 hours serve up to make a 10 000 kilometres ride, that is to say 6 kilometres in one hour. It is the same distance that people that live in countries without transport industry can reach . But, while North Americans dedicate to circulation one quarter of their available social time, in non-motorised societies time allocated for that purpose is between 3 and 8 percent of the social time. What distinguishes the circulation in a rich country and in a poor country is not a greater efficiency, but the obligation to consume in high dose energies related to the transport industry.»
Ivan Illich, Energy and equity [1974]

The substitution of the automobile with the bicycle in the city is an urgent need since decades.

The substitution of the automobile with the bicycle in the city is an urgent need since decades. The high energy efficiency of bicycle, its critical presence towards neo-liberal economy, its independence from fossil fuel —i.e. wars and environmental devastation— and from everything related to the automotive industry are fundamental elements for the boost of a radical change in the approach to the problems of our times. The issue of the veneration of the automobile could be solved with real educational action opposing the bombing from mass-medias in support of the automotive industry, insurance companies, etc. —who finance newspapers through advertising and content sponsored by brands— an educational action carried out in the streets, in parks, courts, social centres, truly independent and critical newspapers can help us understand the problems of our society, a process that requires time and effort. The disputed “supermanzana” could represent the beginning of the end of automobiles e in the city if it becomes the catalyst of profound cultural change.

The second element of the protests that we want to highlight is the inadequate feeling of appropriation of the project by the people who live in that area, due to the insufficient participation throughout its genesis and realisation. In order to feel comfortable in a place —public or private— it is necessary for this to be created, modified, lived, penetrated. The feeling of being subjected to the imposition of a project, or the insufficient participation in its creation and fulfillment, will always create direct or indirect opposition. Although there have been moments of conversation with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, apparently these have not been sufficient, in quantity or in quality.

In order to convert “supermanzanas” in an instrument for a deep change, disrupting the structure of the neo-liberal city, schooled and submissive towards those in power, and in order to contribute to the establishment of a city that is human, cooperative, supportive, equal and respectful towards the delicate natural equilibrium, we have to take into account a very important element: urban agriculture. We are not talking about organising urban gardens to enhance the image of the city, which would immediately become a sustainable model for other cities; we are not talking about gardens so that “elderly people” —considered to be a problem when it comes to production, instead of being respected and considered repositories of wisdom and memory— keep themselves busy after a life of subordinate employment. We are even less talking of creating a new empty and commodified fashion, sap of the neo-liberal economy which consumes everything. We are saying exactly the opposite.

Urban agriculture can catalyse a slow and deep transformation of the city overall

Urban agriculture can catalyse a slow and deep transformation of the city overall, on different grounds, from food sovereignty and environmental protection to the economy, from a proper education to the win-back of personal autonomy and mutual peer support, at one condition: that this would be proposed, organised, lived, and actively shared among the people who live the city.

Barcelona has 1076 hectares of parks and public gardens (without counting the Collserola), which means an average of 6,64 m² of green areas per inhabitant, much less than what other cities can offer. Prague, for example, has 2650 hectares of urban parks – without counting natural parks and woods – meaning an average of 21.34 m² per inhabitant). In the Eixample district numbers are noticeably lower: 1.85 m² per inhabitant, due to —among other factors— the distortion and denaturalisation —in its literal meaning— of the Plan Cerdà during its implementation —speculation, certainly, was its main cause. The lack of green areas in the Eixample district is serious and requires urgent and energetic action so that people can live in a fair and healthy way.

In a city like Barcelona, in which —despite the many and laudable initiatives adopted by the city council to address the problems of the city— the number of people living in serious difficulties is high, the growing of food in the city would, on the one hand, carry a high symbolic value and be an opportunity to overcome the passive acceptance of a devastating system; on the other hand, it would bring an incredible number of positive effects on the short term and would be an impulse for change on the long term.

Among others:

• It would offer free food to people – in the program of Barcelona en Comú the intention of “ensuring the right to basic feeding” is outlined.
• It would make the quality of air and microclimate better. The presence of thousands of fruit-bearing trees would clear the air —reducing the levels of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, particular matter PM10— and would bring important benefits for health, it would attenuate noise, provide areas of shade, enrich wildlife in the urban perimeter, it would reduce the levels of carbon dioxide contributing to the fight against climate change and would naturally regulate the temperature on the microclimate level, additionally bringing beauty in each season.
• It would push for cooperation, social relations, mutual support and peer dialogue in a society in which competition rules on every level, from the cradle to the grave —in school, work, relationships, politics, university, social activities, sport, etc. Using the words of Richard Sennet: “a city obliging people to tell each other what they think and realising from this form a condition of mutual compatibility.”
• It would enhance personal relationships through nature, its understanding, the culture of biodiversity as opposed to the logic of monoculture imposed by corporations and to the conquering and devastation of nature for profit-making.
• Together with the substitution of the car by the bicycle and the commitment to degrowth, urban agriculture would contribute to ease the energy problem, by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels to transport food between regions and countries —or even continents— as well as it would diminish traffic in the city due to the transportation of food.
• It would boost the vegetarian and vegan philosophy beyond fashion and commodification to reflect on the relationships between human beings and animals and the defense of the rights of the latter —who are not machines in the service of humanity, despite what Descartes thought; to reflect also on the ethical and environmental problems, contributing to the fight against climate change —being the production of meat and milk one of the main causes of global warming and of the processes of destruction of rainforests for the production of animal feed.
• It would contribute to boosting education in and through the city, outside of schools, transforming the city in a learning place. The observation of the process of food growing, from seed —defending biodiversity, using traditional patent-free local seeds, recovering traditional wisdom on harvesting— would change the perverse idea of food as a good coming from a conveyor, packed by unknown distant hands (often) with no rights, in a plastic bag with a barcode, sold by some speculator who harvests the fruits of the work of some other person. The city programme “Huertos escolares” (‘School gardens’), no doubts useful and positive, would be no longer necessary as it would have become part of the city life, without recourse to school. It is necessary to give to the city its educational role. The organisation of spaces for urban agriculture in the Eixample district would be a catalyst for the de-schooling of the city, for the collapse of a whole system of values that the so-called compulsory education teaches —dressed up as freedom of choice— through the acceptance of the neo-liberal society as it is.
• It would spread organic cultivation methods, the knowledge of the ecosystem, the understanding of the delicate natural balances, a new sensitivity towards life, nowadays unknown.

The city council would have the only role of presenting, through an honest, deep and detailed information the problems, not only on the urban level, but also on a larger scale, to discuss, propose and coordinate the actions of people in a real participatory democracy.

In the context of a weakening of democracy, that we have been living over the past decades —we are de facto living in an oligarchy— the role of urbanism is to contribute to breaking the ties between the city and the markets and to act in order to destabilise the current oppressive system towards the weakest by offering individual and collective tools to realise a participatory democracy, without excluding anyone. The only work that the city council would need to put in place, with a high symbolic value, would be to draw a circle in the middle of each crossroad in the Eixample district and remove the asphalt layer. Before an empty space, in the middle of each crossroad, a place in which market and power are not present, a space that nobody can sell, buy, exploit, rent or use as a parking, around this space we should think how to organise the city all together, without exclusions. It would mean taking away the asphalt layer , that for decades kept us apart from the land, waterproofing the entire city, waterproofing our sensitivity, and putting at the centre a source of public free quality water, a common good outside of the market, and around the source to grow vegetables and fruits for those who need them, apples that feed without calculating. The apple is here, hanging on a tree, a possibility to change into a new era. An apple that is a fruit of the social economy, with no barcode, each apple with a different taste. The apple, fruit of the land, redeemer of the metropolis, feeds people regardless of their passports and bank accounts. This would be the starting point to overcome the commodification of life and to go back to having a relationship with these natural elements in the urban context of the XXI century. Food and beauty for everyone, with no mediation, to take on a substantial slow and deep change.

It is necessary to stop any relationship between the city and the banks

In the symbolic space where the power cannot enter —in the website of the city one can read that the urban gardens of the city are organised by the city council in collaboration with the Fundació La Caixa, a foundation managed by one of the best-known Spanish banks. Having seen the collusion between banks and political powers, it is necessary to stop any relationship between the city and the banks. Until the “cooperation with the La Caixa Foundation” is on, whatever change will automatically convert itself into a simulacrum that will not really impact the organisation of the city— in this space for the democratic life, the act of taking away the asphalt and presenting soil and water as a common good represents another possibility for a radically different city, and gives both a symbolic meaning and crucial practical effect.

Far from being a step backwards —as if history was a linear process and what comes after is unquestionably called progress— introducing urban agriculture and putting at its centre water as a common good, means considering the past as a tool to change the present. From the errors and horrors of the vast majority of urban planning in the XX century that forgot life, we should quickly learn how to change the fundamentals of the way to live the city, facing economic, feeding, climate, social, environmental, cultural, aesthetic problems in the context of participatory democracy among peers based on social and environmental justice, non-commodified health, food production outside corporations, commons, popular culture, memory, independent thinking, education as a libertarian process of liberation.

The shopping mall Illa Diagonal, designed by Rafael Moneo and Manuel de Solà-Morales in 1993, is located in the Eixample district. The first stone that was placed —as it is said on the website of the mall— contains an insurance policy and a certificate of deposit. The symbols of our era. Real progress, a slow and deep change, would start by taking away the asphalt layer, going back to the soil and substituting, as symbolic elements of a new era, the insurance policy and the certificate of deposit with a seeds and a source of public water.

This substitution of elements would benefit the majority of people, except speculators. As Orwell said, “Journalism consists of printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” In the context of the neo-liberal city one can say: “Urbanism consists in doing together things someone does not want you to do: everything else is speculation.”

Massimo Paolini is an architecture theorist and author of the Blog Perspectivas anómalas around the issues of relationships between city, architecture, ideas (and freedom). He contributes to journals in the field of critical thinking and he is advisor of Art in Translation | University of Edinburgh for what concerns arts and architecture.

Photo by Ibán

The post Are Barcelona’s superblocks a radical challenge to the neoliberal city? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

(Journal of Urban Culture Research – Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand)

Keep the cars outside the urban core.
Image: Richard Elmore

The rapid urbanization of the world’s population over the twentieth century is described in the 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report. The global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030. [Wikipedia]

Urbanization, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin-America has created mega-cities out of small settlements in less than a century. The process has been, and is chaotic and the result as well. In earlier societies the city was a quite well defined entity. The city was often enclosed by a wall. The people inside the walls were the true citizens with their rights and their duties. Today a shanty town may spring up in weeks or months with thousands or even tens of thousands inhabitants and almost no formal structures. There is no certain definition of the city, and even lists of the most populous cities of the world are very ambiguous for that very reason. A city of fifteen million registered inhabitants may have twenty million during work hours because so many from surrounding areas commute into the city. These migrations very so much that any census is uncertain.

The wall sets a permanent limit – No sprawl.
Image: Richard Elmore

The city sprawl has also made it hard to define the limits of the city, where does it end and where does the countryside take over? Is New York a city or is it just a part of a super Megalopolis of fifty million people stretching from Boston to Washington DC. Greater Mexico city is a huge conurbation of more than 40 municipalities in the Valle de México. Jakarta was once before colonialism a small trading port. When the Dutch took over they founded the European style town of Batavia in 1619. Today Greater Jakarta has swallowed the neighboring cities such as Bogor into a metropolitan area, called Jabotabek, of almost 30 million people. And then you have the enormous conurbation of Tokyo-Yokohama where you can travel for hours and still be inside the city area.

In China the biggest migration in human history is taking place. Over the next few decades some 300 million people, that is approximately one USA, are moving into cities. Hundreds of new cities will be built to accommodate them.

The mega-cities are a 20th century invention made possible by the car and cheap petrol. But cheap energy is no longer an option and the city of the 21st century is challenged in a large number of ways. Let’s have a look at the greater picture.

Buildings that honors the natural environment.
Image: Richard Elmore

Peak oil

85 % of world energy consumption are fossil fuels, 37% oil, 25% coal and 23% gas. Fossil fuels have been the energy pushing and pulling the industrial revolution and so also the energy behind urbanization. Now it seems that oil has peaked. World oil production is not increasing any more, new oil fields are few and harder to exploit. In spite of a deep economic recession oil prices have been in the $ 100-120 per barrel bracket. With so high prices one would think that production would increase a lot, but instead it has leveled off. Lately prices have been falling, but that solves nothing, because it means that the marginal oil fields become even less attractive and that the push for alternatives to oil also becomes weaker.

Peak oil will have a profound and long lasting influence on world cities. Oil does not only go into commuting and transport. Electricity which is so crucial to the city is most places produced by burning oil, gas or coal. Concrete from which the cities are build in highly dependent on fossil fuels. The whole building industry is an oil guzzling industry never to be satisfied without it. And of course to feed and give water to the citizens oil is everywhere. Modern agriculture depends on oil in plowing, sowing, watering, reaping, producing, storing and distributing farm produce. The pesticides and chemical fertilizers that made the green revolution possible and by that the feeding of seven billion people, is based on fossil fuels. 17% av the world’s oil consumption is linked to food production. Fertilizers alone consume 5%. Modern man is a walking SUV. In fifty years agricultural oil consumption has tripled. Taking oil out of agriculture is like taking the central pole out of a tent.

Local food becomes increasingly important.
Image: Richard Elmore

Running a car takes oil. And if you prefer an electric car, consider how your city’s electricity is produced and how the car itself is produced. You will find oil and even coal behind the most environmental electric car. To produce one takes about 20 barrels of oil.

Heating and cooling of apartments and houses consume a lot of energy, and since most electricity id produced by burning fossil fuels, it is another carbon agenda.

What about the computers that run your city, or the one on your desk or lap top? No oil in them, to be sure. But to produce one they use at least ten times its weight in fossil fuels. To produce one 32MB microchip they use 1,7 liters of oil. And when you get rid of it it turns into so much hazardous waste. China is the fastest growing economy in the world, but it is also the fastest growing land fill of hazardous garbage.

School classrooms are on the village plazas.
Image: Richard Elmore

And what about our wonderful global internet? It helps us find information from the other side of the globe without moving from our desk or café table. Sure that must be eco-friendly. May be, but running the web consumes about 10% of all energy that is used in the US and close to 6% globally. For most of the people in the world that means oil and coal, and now and then nuclear power.

Producing cement consumes oil in quantity, 1000 kilos equals 1,13 barrels of oil. China alone consumes 1,7 billion tons of cement and counting. India is following suit. Paving of roads with asphalt takes at lot of oil, of course.

The suburbs were unthinkable without cheap energy, read oil. With the increase in Chinese growth alone, the world will not have enough energy long before 2030. Our entire city model is heading directly for a fundamental crisis.

Country towns are part of the rural economy.
Image: Richard Elmore

Synthetic fibers that are used in textile industries is nothing but oil. Plastics are oil. Toys, bottles, machine parts, sports’ equipment, building materials: oil, oil, oil.

95% of global trade is based on oil. Globalization equals oil.

With peak oil we enter into very uncertain terrain and continued urbanization becomes very dubious indeed.

But the trouble doesn’t stop there.

Climate and global warming

The modern city is a CO2-producing unit. Forests can be carbon sinks, but cities not. But the atmosphere already has too much CO2 for future good. Soon we will pass the 400 ppm limit, and that is at least 50 ppm too much. Even if we could stop immediately to emit more CO2 an increase in global temperature by 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial level is a given. But with the present speed in emissions 450 ppm is more likely, and then we might blow the 4 degree level and that is the entry into a very unpleasant planet.

Weather will be warmer, wetter and wilder. There will be more violent storms, more flooding of low-laying areas so typical for most big cities in the world and more diluvial rainfalls.

The modern city is contributing strongly to global warming and the climatic disasters, and it is also a local hot spot itself. City temperatures typically differ from the surroundings by being five centigrades higher. The city is a deposit for store solar heat and the city activity produces a lot of heat by itself.

Rooftop glasfloor harvest energy, water and food.
Image: Richard Elmore

So it is to be expected that the cities are vulnerable to climate change, and particularly the mega-cities in Asia, Africa and Latin-America.

Food and fertile top soil

The modern city is highly dependent of food production that typically tales place outside of the city itself. The city is a parasite. Without the fertile land outside of the city the inhabitants would die. But in spite of that the city destroys arable land as it grows. The level fiends of agriculture is so much more convenient building land than the barren hills, and the market price for building ground is so much higher than farm land. The end result is that that precious fertile soil that has taken numerous generations to create is destroyed to make way for the city. There is no romanticism from me underlining this, it is a fact. The city destroys the land that it feeds upon. In the long run this is of course lethal.

Water and sewage

Hanoi has seen its population swell to almost 7 million over the past few years, yet there is not a single sewage treatment plant in the entire city. Wastewater from toilets and showers ultimately ends up in the region’s rivers, from where it makes its way, dirty as dirty can be, into the ground water.

Residents in Mexico city get most of their drinking water from aquifers under the city. But because of waste and poor water treatment that water is contaminated with cadmium, chrome and other metals that are hazardous for humans. Over-exploitation of aquifers has contributed to the continued subsidence within the city (5-40cm per year), increasing the chance of catastrophic flooding.

In the port city of Karachi in southern Pakistan, around 30,000 people die due to the effects of contaminated drinking water, while in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), there are both traces of feces in drinking water and high concentrations of arsenic in ground water.

In the rivers of Buenos Aires there are high levels of dumped toxins making the Argentine river Matanza-Riachuelo “one of the world’s most polluted waterways”. And millions of people in the city lack safe access to drinking water and are not connected to sewer systems.

In Kenya, the capital city lacks capacity to manage the increasing demand for water. And 60 percent of Nairobi’s inhabitants live in informal settlements with inadequate access to quality water and are forced to buy their water at kiosks at a higher price.

The oceans

Most of the mega-cities lie on the estuaries of big rivers. Their sewage, their excessive nitrogen and phosphate over load go into the nearby sea and add to the dead zones in the worlds oceans. This in its turn destroy the feeding ground for fish and other sea organisms, and then of course threaten the food chain of the city dwellers.

Scientists have measured higher acidity in the oceans and a shocking level of plankton death over the last few decades. Most of it may be linked with CO2 being dissolved in the ocean water creating carbonic acid which is highly detrimental to all life in the oceans.

In the mid Pacific there is a sludge of plastic particles creating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms that reside near the ocean’s surface. Thus, plastic waste enters the food chain. Estimates of the size of the Patch vary widely, but there is no doubt that i represents a huge problem.

Paradigm shift

These ecological problems and the problem with getting sufficient energy are some of the biggest challenges to the future of the cities. The Henry Ford paradigm, that is the car and petrol city, is outdated. But that was the paradigm that fed the city growth, and so far there is no other paradigm in sight that can turn the table and make way for the sustainable city of the future.

Buildings are attached and multi-floor.
Image: Richard Elmore

But there is a lot of research going on in this field, and this is obviously the way to go to turn the city from a parasite and a problem into a contribution to a sustainable society.

There is no energy source in the pipe line of the foreseeable future that can match the versatility and energy richness of oil. The consumption and ultimate depletion of the oil resources is a once in a life time opportunity for a planet. Alternative energies like wind, tide and solar panels contribute but a tiny bit to world energy. And their production and maintenance takes a huge amount of oil. Nuclear doesn’t seem such a bright option after Fukushima and fusion energy remains a mirage very far from the practical world.

So the big picture is that we have to use less energy, per person and in sum total.

• The walkable city. Before cheap oil cities were built for slow and local transport. Commuting over long distances was not an option. We will soon be back there again. Cities must be built or restructured so that people can reach most of their daily activities, including work and play using their own muscles, that is by walking or biking. That means that work places and services must be within a short walk from home.
• City cells. To be walkable, all basic needs must be within walking distance. That means that the city must become a multi-node, multi-cellular city. A city of towns. Some needs that are not daily necessities could be found farther away, like an over-laying grid.
• Quality of life. The city nodes must have a sufficiently rich cultural life to satisfy a wide range and needs. Cultural consumption is normally less energy an material demanding and also gives life and attractiveness to the city environment. Here I think not only of culture for the people, but also of culture by the people. The city must give ample room for the creative activities of the citizens.
• Self sufficiency. The city must become self sufficient and self sustaining to a very large degree. Buildings must produce as much energy as they consume. A certain amount of food production must take place in the city. Sewage must be treated so that phosphates and nitrogen is contained and circulated back to farming.
• Durability. The modern tendency of use-and-throw is creating waste mountains that threaten to strangle the big cities. Durability and reusability are the new modern. Energy, water and other material resources are stretched thin today. There is small room for growth. So economic use of resources will be crucial.
• Urban qualities in the countryside. To contain a too great influx of new millions into the mega-cities, it is crucial to give the countryside some urban qualities. Those qualities that go for the city cells should also be developed in smaller rural centers, when it comes to jobs, housing, culture, recreation etc.

Start now!

Village Towns – Each village has a central plaza.
Image: Richard Elmore

The economic and ecological crises in the world today mean that there is no time to wait for change. The problems are only getting bigger and more difficult to solve as we wait. There will not be any one-size-fits-all solution. What we will be looking for is a complex and multifaceted web of solution, local, regional, national and global. A huge number of people all around the globe are thinking about and working for this. They need resources and sufficient leverage to make results. Also some governments have seen some of the drama in the present situation. China, which has some of the gravest environmental problems, not least in its ever-expanding cities, has declared its new five year plan «The green leap forward». The Chinese have also made plans to develop eco-cities. So far most of these plans remain on the drawing board and the real results are few. One of the problems is that so far these ideas have been top-down technocratic ideas. To succeed I believe such projects must belong to the people, to the grass-roots. People must be deeply involved and have a realistic feeling of ownership to the project. So empowerment, mobilization, real democracy are essential. That is not to say that planners, specialist and scientists do not belong. Their expertise is crucial, but it must be matched with a conscientious popular movement for groundbreaking change. From the Tahrir plaza to Madison Wisconsin, from the streets of London to Wall Street people demand power over their own future. The mismanaging of the earth by the rich elites have gone all too far.

Am I naive, is this an utopian vision? I don’t think so. The most unrealistic plan of all today is business as usual. It is business as usual that drives us to destruction. Be bold, be realistic, change the world!

Pål Steigan

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