DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT
City Eco Lab Preview
September 2008
by John Thackara

CITY ECO LAB PREVIEW
This two-week-long market of sustainability projects opens in 70 days from
now
in St Etienne, France. We have set out to design a scalable, reproducable
event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its
transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 in North East England, citizen
co-design of projects are at the core of the City Eco Lab experiment.

In the food zone, projects to do with production, distribution, storage, and
composting will surround the biennial's best restaurant, Cantine 80km. (It's
called that because 80km is the limit beyond which transported food has to
be
refrigerated). The Cantine will feature Green Maps to help visitors identify
and contact suppliers directly. Nearby, Debra Solomon will present the Lucky
Mi snack wagon from the Netherlands, including its high-performance
sprout-growing module. Also in the food zone, visitors will be able to
pickle
vegetables using locally-sourced pots, and babies will make bread. Francois
Jegou will present scenarios for enhancing AMAP, the French network of of
community-supported agriculture systems; and we'll see how AMAPs compare
with
the new spin-farming idea from the USA - and alternative trade networks for
coffee.

Casino, a big supermarket chain, will present its state-of-the-art green
labeling scheme. St Etienne's architecture school will launch Soupe de Ville
which is based on ingredients grown within city limits (some by the
architects
themselves). Visitors will also be able to compare small, medium and
large-scale composting solutions: these include the beautiful pots of the
Daily Dump system from Bangalore; London's SEED foundation proposal for a
neighbourhood green waste service in which the celebrated Rocket composter
accelerator is used by a new social enterprise; and a high-tech,
industrial-scale system in Clermont Ferrand.

City Eco Lab's mobility zone will be mainly about bicycles, and especially
their potential use to de-motorise the distribution of 7,000 items of
freight
about the city each day. Prototypes of new bike-based services will be
presented by Les Cousiers Verts and by La Poste. Plans for a city-wide car
share system conceived for poorer people, will be shown - and compared with
Dott07's Move Me project presented by David Townson.

The central area of City Eco Lab will ask: what exactly is an "eco quartier"
(neighbourhood)? Live projects on show will deal with energy, water and
mobility. A team led by Justine Ultsch at St Etienne's city hall will
explore
ways to re-open Le Furan, the city's built-over river. Tools to capture and
clean rainwater will be on show, next to a description of Melbourne's
extraordinary plan to turn that whole city into a water catchment, and
Rotterdam's vision of itself as a water city. A unique array of dry toilets
will be on show, together with proposals from an Australian designer, Dena
Fam, of ways designers can make them physically and culturally more
attractive. A community-wide energy dashboard will be demonstrated by
Magalie
Restalo. Half way through the event a town hall meeting, convened by the
Maison du Quartier,wil discuss what to do, and how, with the ideas and
scenarios emerging from the City Eco Lab marketplace.

Continuing the water theme, plans to remove 60 dams from the Rhone will be
presented by the World Wildlife Fund's Martin Arnoud. Designers Hugo Bont
and
Olivier Peyricot will demonstrate their proposal for large scale urban fish
farming. The artist gardener Emanuel Louisgrand will recreate elements of
his
stunning l'ilot d'Amaranthes gardens from Lyon.

Next to the Eco-Quartier zone will be the "Germoir" (Nursery) co-designed by
the rural design collective Pomme_Z. Here, school students from the region
will work on live projects to reduce their schools' environmental footprint.
Five schools are involved in this Defi Eco Design, which is based on
Dott07's
Eco Design Challenge for schools in the UK. Defi Eco Design is the trial for
a
larger programme that it's hoped will be launched in 2009.

In addition to these daily-life zones of City Eco Lab, a large Cabane a
Outils
(Tool Shed) will contain some of the resources citizens will need to start
their own projects. The Tool Shed will feature books and films 9in English
and
French); a database of environmentally high-performance materials; a
selection
of software platforms; templates for new economic models; a map of skills
available within a 100km radius of the event; and a range of environmental
monitoring instruments and off-grid media tools.

City Eco Lab will also feature a Club des Explorateurs (Explorers Club) in
which a wide varietry of groups will meet to discuss practical ways to
enhance
or scale up their projects. Companies, community groups and grassroots
projects from across the Rhone-Alps region will participate - often together
with international visitors. The Explorers Club will be located next to to a
Salle des Cartes in which a wide variety of resource maps will be presented
by
a team from The Why Factory led by Winy Maas and colleagues from TU Delft
in The Netherlands. 15-30 November, St Etienne, France.
http://biennalesaint-etienne.citedudesign.com/?#/home

GREEN NOISE: EXPERT MEETING
The biggest challenge we face in City Eco Lab is the explosion of public
events, media channels, reports, platforms, trade shows, and government
initiatives, at all levels, to do with sustainability. Paul Hawken's
WiserEarth web portal, alone, alone lists over 100,000 non-profit projects
and
organisations. In the UK, the Transition Towns movement is growing virally.
Across Europe, thousands of other initiatives are bubbling away beneath the
radar of mainstream media and education. This explosion of energy and
diversity is great, but does beg the question: are any more new initiatives
needed? if so, what kind? and who will pay for them? Doors of Perception
will
host a discussion among city managers, policy makers and design producers
during the design biennial in St Etienne. If you think might want to join
this
meeting, plan to be there for Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 November.

IN THE BUBBLE - BOOK LAUNCH IN VENICE
The Italian edition of In The Bubble will be launched at the Architecture
Biennale in Venice on Saturday 13 September. The Biennale, which is
directed this year by Aaron Betsky, will feature site-specific
installations,
manifestos, landscapes and "scenes of an architecture beyond building".
The book moment on Saturday follows my lecture at the Dutch Pavilion
in the Gardini.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/en/62183.1.html

ARCHITECTURE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
"Sustainable development will necessarily bring profound changes to how we
design our cities and their architecture. How does this apply to
architecture
and urban design?" I've been asked to address this modest topic in my
opening
talk at The European Forum for Architectural Policies at in at arc-en-reve
in
Bordeaux on 9 October. It's open to professionals from across Europe, but
you do have to register.
http://tinyurl.com/6r2kqd

Other news

THE LONG DESCENT
John Michael Greer's new book The Long Descent is a welcome antidote to
the armageddonism that often accompanies peak oil discussions. "The decline
of a civilization is rarely anything like so sudden for those who live
through
it" writes Greer, encouragingly; it's "a much slower and more complex
transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by many social critics
today." Greer finds it helpful to look at Russia's recent journey - from
superpower status through collapse, contraction, stabilization, and recovery
-
as one example of where the rest of us may be headed. "Despite economic
collapse, urban populations did not turn into starving mobs roving the
landscape. Instead, as existing supply chains broke down, local
entrepreneurs
jerry-rigged new ones, and the backyard gardens of the Soviet era went into
overdrive to keep most Russians fed". The changes that will follow the
decline
of world petroleum production are likely to be sweeping and global, Greer
concludes, but from the perspective of those who live through them these
changes are much more likely to take gradual and local forms. "This will
make
them harder to notice, but paradoxically easier to meet".
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4014

DE-GROWTH
The French have a nice word, "decroissance", or de-growth, to describe a
growing movement to right-size global and national economies. The movement
defines degrowth as "a voluntary transition towards a just, participatory,
and ecologically sustainable society". The movement's Declaration is light,
to put it mildly, on how de-growth will be implemented - but it's an
interesting manifesto.
http://tinyurl.com/5js3jk

FOOD DECLARATION
Another Declaration has been published in the US - this one about food.
Leading US voices in the movement for sustainable agriculture systems have
published "Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture." A 12-point set of
principles reorients American food away from corporate farms and long-haul
delivery to local producers and land stewardship. The declaration is a
draft:
its organizers are soliciting public input for 90 days and will then deliver
a final document to US policymakers in time to shape debate over
the next farm bill.
http://fooddeclaration.org/

BRANCHLESS BANKING
In Brazil, customers open bank accounts, make deposits, and pay bills at
lottery houses and small retail outlets. In the Philippines, urban migrants
send money to their families in rural areas using mobile phones. Both of
these
activities are described as "branchless banking" in a new report; it
describes
the use of technology, such as payment cards or mobile phones, that enable
transactions remotely. The report's publisher, CGAP, describes itself as
"the
leading independent resource for objective information and innovative
solutions for microfinance" - but I could not help noticing that CGAP
is housed at the World Bank.
http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.9.2640

TAKE TO THE BOATS!
Dmitry Orlov, a writer about life after oil, has sold his beachfront house,
bought a boat, and is sailing up and down the east coast of the US. "It's a
lifestyle choice, plus a way to minimize costs and maximize available
options"
he says. If you, too, fancy a "just in case" boat, an online guide by Ian
Swan
includes suggestions to suit every pocket. Me, I'm probably best-suited
to inflatables: "they are very stable and great load carriers - their one
downside is that they are harder to row, especially upwind, because
of their high windage".
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46452

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