Caro Sicking voor Ecolutie

Kort gezegd: in een Allemaal Winnen samenleving werken mensen samen aan een betere wereld, niet ten koste van elkaar, noch door uitputting van natuurlijke hulpbronnen, maar door op basis van gezamenlijk verwoorde principes oplossingen te zoeken en ook uit te voeren waar iedereen beter van wordt. Het klinkt als een utopie en dat is het ook. Echter deze utopie wordt geladen met werkwijzen en begrippen die het pad plaveien en ons dichter bij een wereld brengen waarin we willen leven. Een wereld zonder verliezers.

De thesis brengt theorie en praktijk bij elkaar. Martin Bakker werkte gedurende het onderzoek als beleidsambtenaar bij de directie Ecologie van de provincie Noord-Brabant en begeleidde en voerde menig project, proeftuin en experiment uit om in deze regio de ontwikkeling van mens, natuur en economie te stimuleren. Frank van Empel, schrijver en denker, was als zodanig bij een groot aantal veldoefeningen betrokken en studeerde op een filosofie, een groter kader of zo men wil verhaal, om de experimenten in te bedden, resultaten te meten en te zoeken naar algemene begrippen om een succesvol project op te schalen. Want, zo begint het boek, dit proefschrift komt voort uit onvermogen, onvermogen van regionale overheden om tot echte duurzame verbeteringen te komen die de leefbaarheid, gezondheid, veiligheid en (bio)diversiteit van het gebied en de mensen die daar wonen te vergroten.

Al vrij snel wordt het begrip ‘duurzame ontwikkeling’ vervangen door een nieuwe term: Ecolutie. De auteurs doen dit in navolging van Jacques Derrida die stelt dat ook woorden sleets worden en toe kunnen zijn aan vervanging. Het woord duurzaam is zo’n woord. Politici en bedrijven gebruiken het als stoplap, als raamversiering en er verandert niets. Ecolutie is het bijstere spoor, de weg die door de chaos leidt naar een hoger niveau van ecologie, economie en sociaal-culturele weefsels van een samenleving.

Langs vele filosofen en denkers, door een woud van experimenten, mislukkingen en mislukkingen, opstaan, verder gaan en weer niet slagen, leidt Allemaal Winnen ons naar een praktisch toepasbare matrix die als kompas kan dienen om het bijstere spoor Ecolutie te vinden, te beginnen met de aanwijzing: U bevindt zich hier.

De horizontale as van de matrix bestaat uit fasen: destructie – deconstructie – constructie. Iedere ontwikkeling doorloopt deze fasen, voortdurend en steeds opnieuw. Dat is het patroon van veranderingen die zich gewenst en ongewenst voltrekken.

Op de verticale as staan de zogenoemde oplossingsclusters: gedrag – technologie – besluitvorming.

Deze matrix wordt gevuld met concepten. Ook hier is verandering het sleutelwoord. Concepten kunnen variëren door de tijd en op verschillende plaatsen. Er zijn zeven criteria vastgesteld waar aan een concept dient te voldoen om te leiden naar een duurzame ontwikkeling.

Democratie kan zo’n concept zijn en zal zich bevinden in het oplossingscluster besluitvorming. Het zal niemand moeite kosten om zich voor te stellen wanneer een land of regio zich in de destructie fase bevindt: dictatuur. Waar een dictator heerst, is geen duurzame ontwikkeling mogelijk. Gedrag en technologie (waartoe ook procedures behoren) vervallen in een dergelijke maatschappij ook snel tot destructie. Denk aan (internet)censuur, corruptie en aan berusting door de onderdrukten. Dat laatste valt onder het cluster gedrag. Mensen die berusten, nemen het heft niet in eigen hand. Sommigen besluiten tot reframing, door zich te verzetten of door te migreren (vluchten). Zij zijn de dapperen die zelf in de deconstructie fase belanden. Maar zodra ze met velen zijn en een omslagpunt (tipping point) bereikt wordt, werpt die massa de dictator omver en is er zicht op constructie. Iets dergelijks heeft zich voorgedaan in het Midden Oosten en is nog steeds in volle gang.

Een uitstekend voorbeeld van de voortdurende verandering die samenlevingen doorlopen is de Industriële Revolutie, begin vorige eeuw. Nadat automatisering van productieprocessen zich had voltrokken en de arbeider geëmancipeerd raakte, zowel in stem, opleiding, gezondheid als in welvaart, vielen we van de constructiefase rap naar destructie. We geraakten in een olieverslaafd tijdperk waar natuurlijke hulpbronnen alsmaar schaarser worden, waar klimaatverandering grote groepen mensen dakloos maakt door extreme natuurverschijnselen en waar voedselcrises aan de orde van de dag zijn, ondanks het feit dat de wereld meer voedsel produceert dan ooit te voren.

De Allemaal Winnen matrix en het nieuwe begrippenkader waarvan Ecolutie er één is, worden aangevuld met een werkwijze die haar nut heeft bewezen in de regio Noord-Brabant: verkennen – experimenteren – opschalen. Vooral dat laatste blijkt echter nog steeds weerbarstig. Daarvoor zijn verschillende oorzaken aan te wijzen, maar ook oplossingen te vinden die in het lijvige boekwerk besproken worden.

Uiteindelijk, zo concluderen de auteurs, is iedere samenleving (groot of klein) het resultaat van de optelsom van de vrijheden en verantwoordelijkheden van elk individu. Een groep individuen die samenwerkt en gedrag, technologie (innovaties) en besluitvorming toepast waarbij allen gelijkwaardig zijn, maar tevens zijn aan te spreken op hun daden, zo’n groep kan zichzelf organiseren en issues die zich voordoen oplossen. Een dergelijke community wordt aangeduid als een Joint Effort Society, waarbij alle leden naar vermogen bijdragen aan het geheel en vruchten plukken van het geheel. Voor het nemen van besluiten met alle belanghebbenden samen zijn methodes en technieken zoals de in Harvard ontwikkelde Mutual Gains Approach. Dit is een vorm van directe democratie die met name bij gebiedsontwikkeling tot goede resultaten kan leiden.

Allemaal Winnen beschrijft systemen, zoals de huidige complexiteit waarbinnen wij leven. De wereld bestaat in toenemende mate uit netwerken, in feite open systemen. Door de groei van het Internetgebruik en de daarop draaiende sociale media, verspreiden netwerken zich virtueel als rizomen oftewel wortelstokken. Deze metafoor komt van Gilles Deleuze en Felix Guatarri die beschrijven hoe een netwerk ondergronds doorgroeit, en zich niets aantrekt van de tuinman die zich een ongeluk wiedt. De sociale media hebben het vermogen om machtlozen bijeen te brengen, informatie te verschaffen en een stem te geven. Dit fenomeen maakt centrale sturing steeds minder effectief, terwijl bijvoorbeeld ten tijde van de Industriële Revolutie een begrip als Operational Excellence dat top-down bevelstructuren inhoudt, wel steekhoudend was, want de productiviteit verhoogde en daarmee de welvaart.

Ingrijpen in een systeem is vooral ingewikkeld omdat dat systeem bestaat uit subsystemen en verbonden is met andere systemen en een ingreep op één plek leidt tot onvoorziene gebeurtenissen elders. Dat verleidt de auteurs ertoe om Donella Meadows van de Club van Rome aan te halen: Men kan slechts dansen met systemen, met heel je menszijn en je intuïtie. Systemen hebben bovendien de neiging om te verkalken en zichzelf in stand te houden. De bureaucratie in onze landen is daar een perfect voorbeeld van.

Daarom, en hiermee komen we aan het einde van dit artikel, is voortdurende ontregeling nodig. Een wildcard die anders kijkt en doet dan de mainstream, die de boel opschudt en op z’n kop zet, wanorde creëert en chaos toe laat, is onontbeerlijk in ieder gezelschap, of het nu een politiek toneel is, het hoofdkantoor van een multinational of een buurt waar mensen besluiten om samen energie op te wekken met een windmolen. Deconstructie, de middelste fase op de horizontale as van de Allemaal Winnen matrix, voorkomt aderverkalking en houdt flexibel.

Allemaal Winnen pleit voor verschil en variatie, voor een ethisch reveil. Anders omgaan met migranten, ze verwelkomen in plaats van afstoten. Voor het steeds opnieuw inzetten van de dialoog met elkaar, voortdurend leren en innoveren, voor vrede, voor een gezonde en leefbare planeet en voor individuele ontplooiing, vrijheid en verantwoordelijkheid, zodat de individuen samen een verhaal kunnen schrijven waar ze zich achter scharen en naar gedragen. Gewoon omdat ze dat willen, omdat ze ervan overtuigd zijn dat in een competitieve samenleving er per saldo niets gewonnen wordt: de een wint – de ander verliest en de som is nul.

Allemaal Winnen ISBN 978.94.90665.043 is binnenkort te verkrijgen. Het e-boek is te downloaden via de diverse bekende kanalen.

Voor de populaire versie met tekeningen van Barend van Hoek, klik hier

afbeelding: Barend van Hoek, Winner takes all, potlood op papier, 2012

The Only Winners Matrix can be perceived as a compass and measuring tool in one for decision makers as well as individuals to find out if a development is sustainable and leads to equal prosperity for people, planet and profit. On the Matrix one finds three phases: destruction – deconstruction – construction on the horizontal axe that are combined with behaviour – technology – decision making on the vertical axe.

The measurement is done by using concepts that comply with seven criteria. This creates a dynamic model, with changing concepts which are validated by the criteria.

Whenever a development is destructive for people, environment or economy, deconstruction has to be committed. Ecolution (Ecolutie in Dutch) is the most prominent deconstruction path. The authors call it the lost track, the expedition towards an unknown future that leads to a society we all want to be part of: a society of Only Winners.

The model foresees in developments that are constructive at one time and turn destructive over the years. Like the Industrial Revolution which was a huge step forward for humanity, but stranded on its’ own success and leaves us nowadays with global issues that are not easy to solve: poverty – food crises – environmental problems – climate change et cetera.

Underneath you can find the English, German and Spanish translation of the summary of Only Winners. We hope we are able to translate the entire book soon for those of you who are interested.

Short summary only winners – Una resena Todos Ganados – Zusammenfassung Alle Gewinnen

For the translations we have to thank: Prof. Dr. Don Huisingh – English version, Lisa van Empel – Spanish version and Prof. Mag. Arch. Ing.Dr.h.c. Peter Schmid – German version.

Image: Barend van Hoek, Victory 4 all, pencil on paper, 2012

Caro Sicking, Ecolutie, April 29 2012

Allemaal Winnen

Duurzame ontwikkeling is alles behalve een eenduidig begrip. Dat leidt tot verwarring en inertie. Theoretische verdieping en onderzoek naar de praktijk van duurzame ontwikkeling in de provincie Noord-Brabant brengen Martin Bakker en Frank van Empel tot een begrippenkader, dat het streven naar duurzame ontwikkeling op regionale schaal nieuwe impulsen kan geven. ‘Allemaal winnen’ drukt een streven uit naar een andere wereld, een wereld zonder verliezers, waar mensen en organisaties samenwerken en hun kennis, kunde en contacten met anderen delen in plaats van elkaar kapot te concurreren. Met de provincie Noord-Brabant als voorbeeld wordt een marsroute naar deze nieuwe wereld uitgestippeld voor regio’s. Een routebeschrijving en een kompas worden meegeleverd. Het kompas heeft de vorm van een matrix, de ‘Allemaal Winnen Matrix’. Deze geeft aan in welke ontwikkelingsfase een regio zich bevindt en welke middelen worden ingezet om het doel – Allemaal Winnen – te bereiken. De weg naar het doel heet ‘Ecolutie’.  Ecolutie houdt in dat mensen anders omgaan met de omgeving in brede zin (het milieu), de gebouwde omgeving en met elkaar. Belanghebbenden bij regionale, duurzame ontwikkeling leren hoe zij door het systematisch ontregelen van routines, gewoonten en gebruiken kunnen voorkomen dat mensen en organisaties vastlopen in een destructieve omgeving.

samenvatting allemaal winnen

Foto:

Martin Johan Bakker (links,1957) werkt sinds 1999 als senior beleidsmedewerker bij de Provincie Noord-Brabant. Daarvóór was hij 13 jaar docent, onder meer aan de Agrarische Hogeschool in Dordrecht en aan de Milieukunde opleiding in Delft.

Frank van Empel (rechts,1954) studeerde in 1980 in Tilburg cum laude af in de algemene leer en geschiedenis der economie door spanning te brengen in een klassiek, lineair evenwichtsmodel, waardoor het niet-lineair en onevenwichtig wordt. Hij werkte toen al ruim een jaar als redacteur bij het opinieweekblad Haagse Post. Anno 2012 is schrijven nog altijd zijn lust en zijn leven.

Ecolutie, 28 april 2012

Het e-boek Allemaal Winnen is vanaf nu verkrijgbaar bij alle internetboekhandels. ISBN nr 9789490665050 voor € 7,95. Binnenkort is de papieren versie eveneens te vinden in boekhandels en bol.com

Stemmen kan de hele maand april 2012 door te klikken op deze link: Theater de Speeldoos

Ecolutie, 7 april 2012

Barend van Hoek, pencil on paper, 2012

This thesis comes from failure. Inability to influence the behavior of people, systems, ingrained habits, calcified structures, routine decision-making processes, outdated technologies and closed sub-cultures to disrupt and then reset to give room for innovation. Ten years of intensive involvement in regional sustainable development policies in Noord-Brabant have produced not much more than minutes, reports and resolutions. How can we improve this? That was the central question. The answer – about 500 pages – will follow on Thursday April 26, early in the morning at Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Eco-drawing by the marvellous Dutch painter Barend van Hoek !!!! Thanks, Barend !!! We love you.

©nonfiXe puB’s

Een tip van de sluier: Ecolutie is het bijstere spoor – de expeditie naar de toekomst waar economische, ecologische en sociaal-culturele ontwikkelingen in evenwicht met elkaar zijn, geen afwenteling is in tijd of plaats.

(Noud te Riele)

Het bijstere spoor / the lost track of things: Less than 0,5% of the energy in the fuel of a typical modern auto actually moves the driver.

An auto’s weight is responsible for more than two-thirds of the energy needed to move.

(Reinventing Fire – RMI)

As you can see in the video of  STRAF, a simple bike just needs the natural energy in our muscles.

If you add a wagon and some self-made music, life is a lot easier. So, come on, take your guitar and hit the road. Enjoy the landscape of Noord-Brabant, stop smoking and eat some healthy food to load your legs.

All the best for 2012. Let’s make it a year to remember.

Just click for the video: Fanfare van het bijstere spoor

picture: zeropop

video Niet zonder ons

More on this: nonfiXe

‘The biggest threat to humanity, is not the evil of the bad persons. It is the passivity of the good ones!’ Martin Luther King

by Frank van Empel

Nationalism is always just one step around the corner. As soon as the economic engine starts to sputter fascists, disguised as politicians, come out of their holes to spread their lies. They smell blood. Unemployment is blamed on foreigners coming here to drive Dutch people out of there jobs. ‘They eat our food, they spend our money, use our wives and daughters, steal our phones,’ they say. A solution is easily found. Close the door. The debt of Greece recently even was a reason to reïnvent the Dutch guilder. That their own country number 3 worldwide in debtbuilding is, doesn’t suit them. So they ignore it. Mama and uncle Jeff don’t know it, so why should théy care? Facts are of no importance to them, they pick up what fits and hear what they want to hear.

Everyone is free to think and say what he or she wants to in a country like ours. No problem. The frightening part however is the lack of opposers. It cannot be a lack of arguments. At your service:

1. The United Kingdom, not Greece, is World Champion Debt All Categories (total debt as a percentage of gdp[1]: 469), thanks to its financial institutions that scored an all time debt record of 202% of gdp in 2008. The silver medal in the year of the crisis went to Japan (459%), where the national government with 188% of gdp was the champion. Number 3 were the Netherlands with a total debt of 3,5 time (350%) growth domestic product (gdp). Dutch consumers with a debt-ratio of 104 (104% of gdp) are in the lead here followed by the banks (99%). Spain just missed the medals, like number 5: South-Korea. Greece is not even noticed as a debt racer.[2]
2. The populations of Germany and Japan shrink. As a consequence economic growth of both countries is tempered. Fewer people produce less. And if gdp is sinking, debt as a percentage of gdp increases, because declining economic growth, rising debt and the growing costs of ageing press harder and harder on the shoulders of a shrinking workforce. In the Netherlands the total population keeps on growing until 2040, however the amount of people working will shrink from 2012 on as a consequence of ageing[3]. Depending on the demand the risk of tension on the labour market gets higher every year. In the year 2015, consultants[4] expect, there will be a shortage of 500.000 employees on the Dutch labour market. One of the possible solutions – internationalization[5] – is under pressure due to current nationalistic sentiments in Dutch politics. Moreover the xenophobe foreign policy and stringent procedures designed to keep asylum seekers out of the country will prove to be destructive for the Lowlands. The Netherlands should have an open door policy instead. Migrants are a stimulus for production, income and future population growth. The Netherlands will badly need that growth in order to get rid of debt. It is easier to grow out of debt than to cut in jobs and incomes of people.  According to YER[6] and the Intelligence Group, there is no policy in The Hague to counter the trend of ageing. The current Dutch government is not only deaf, dumb and blind, but also impotent.
3. Re-introduction of the guilder is non-sense. We retrieve the power to manipulate the flow and price of our own currency, but we will loose much more, dependent as the (small!) country is on trade. We cannot lean on our strong neighbour Germany – the economic engine of Europe – anymore. Instead of that we’ll have to face fierce competition from the common market. It will be economical suicide on one hand and moral bankruptcy on the other. Leaving the Euro is betraying the peace movement that put the foundations under the European Dream after World War Two. The Netherlands is one of the founders of the Union that prevented war on the continent for already fifty years. As a small country it has to work together with other countries, to make a difference from within. We are not in the World to compete with our friends, but to join forces to make the World a better place to live in. To make love, not war.

Ecolutie, 20 November 2011

[2] McKinsey Global Institute, Debt and deleveraging: the global credit bubble and its economic consequences, Januar 2010. And Jaap van Duijn, De Schuldenberg, De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2011, p 34.

[3] Since 2005 the category 60-65 years old outweights that of 0-15 years old.

[4] De Nederlandse arbeidsmarkt 2011-2015, Paradoxale ontwikkelingen in een krappe arbeidsmarkt,  Intelligence Group and YER, 2011.

[5] Employers may use social media like twitter, facebook and LinkedIn to recruit  employees worldwide.

[6] YER is an international recruitment agency that focuses on Bachelors and Masters; Graduates, Professionals, Executives and Directors for Permanent and Temporary positions.

Say you want a revolution

We better get on right away

Well you get on your feet

And out on the street

Singing power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

(John Lennon)

Text: Frank van Empel

I  State of Mind

Cognitive State of Mind > Affective State of Mind > Neuro-scientific State of Mind

1. Revolutions in our minds

Revolutions not only take place on the streets of unstable countries in South America or Africa. They happen in the minds of ordinary people too. From the Sixties until halfway the Eighties of last century a so-called Cognitive Revolution happened in the psychological perception of the human mind. The human mind is a kind of computer, scientists stated those days. A cold data processor, a machine without feelings.

At the end of the century emotions, feelings and intuitions entered the mind, during a silent ‘Affective Revolution’. They blew up the image of our ordered minds that are supposed to weigh the pros and cons of whatever against each other. This was merely a passage to a third revolution in half a century. Now it was the turn of the neuroscientists to hold the red flag. They use super sensitive machines to scan our minds in order to measure brain activity. As a result we have to deal with controversial conclusions like: Man has no free will. The idea that we control our behavior with our thoughts is an illusion. Our minds don’t steer our bodies consciously. More than we realize our behavior is determined by factors beyond our control.

Can they prove it? ‘Well…yes’. For instance with this famous experiment by Benjamin Libet (1985): the neuroscientist asks a person to raise a finger at a self chosen moment and watch a clock to time exactly when he or she notices the consciously taken decision to move the finger. In the meantime the researcher measures the brain activity. Conclusion: a half of a second before someone reports the decision brain-activity already reached its peak.

Our behavior is reigned by fear and lust, by all kinds of impulsive feelings, intuitions, expectations, frustrations. You name it! We decide on the hoof, not behind a desk. Whenever we are confronted with a choice we immediately have a feeling about it, positive or negative. Go for it, because what really happens after this split second decision is that we start to reason towards a conclusion that has already been drawn. Motivated reasoning. If we follow neuroscientology, we cannot but conclude that it doesn’t make sense to just tell people what to do. There is a big chance they will not act upon it.

2. Juxtapositions[1]

Jane Jacobs, an American-Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning, already stated in 1961: ‘You can’t make people use streets they have no reason to use. You can’t make people watch streets they do not want to watch.’ Jacobs’ plea was a strong argument written in monologue about how to secure streets where the public space is unequivocally public and badly in need of eyes to secure safety. A government, any government that tries to convince or enforce people to fill up empty streets for the sake of security of the ones that live there or the strangers who don’t know better, is doomed to fail. Jacobs: ‘The safety of the street works best, most casually, and with least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely where people are using and most enjoying the city streets voluntarily and are least conscious, normally, that they are policing.’[2]

The basic requisite for such a surveillance is a substantial quantity of stores, bars, restaurants and other public spaces sprinkled along the sidewalks. Moreover, there should be many different kinds of enterprises, to give people reasons for crisscrossing paths. There’s more to say about this, but the message is clear: people don’t want to be pushed around by policymakers and authorities to make them change their behavior. They want freedom of choice. Public servants that want them to change habits and routines will have to be more clever.

The making of reality never is a linear process from a to z. As Herbert Butterfield, a British historian and philosopher of history, says (1965): ‘History is full of accidents and conjunctures and curious juxtapositions of events and it demonstrates to us the complexity of human change and the unpredictable character of the ultimate consequences of any given act or decision of men.’[3] So, even if the government is smart and chooses for the subtle tactics of obliquity[4], the government cannot be sure of people’s real behavior. The only thing we can do is: trying to influence the context in which decisions are made. Try to influence the mood of people with inspiring fine arts, qualitative outstanding architecture, flowers and colours such as yellow and orange.

3. Swamp

Now let us jump to the issue of human behavior in relation to the use of energy. In order to improve policy interventions aimed at influencing the consumers’ behavior, the European Commission, under the Intelligent Energy for Europe program, at the end of 2006 decided to cofound the project BEHAVE. The aim of this project was to draw lessons from an evaluation of 41 energy behavior change programs from all over Europe, combine them with theoretical insights, provide an overview of best practices, and create guidelines to develop and implement successful policy interventions aimed at consumers. A quote from the final BEHAVE report, one year later, underlines what fifty years ago already had been noticed: ‘Theory demonstrates that behavior is a complex phenomenon. It is a product of factors both internal (attitudes, values, habits and personal norms) and external to the individual (fiscal and regulatory incentives, institutional constraints and social practices).’[5]

Sounds promising, you may think. But essential links are missing. Quote from one of the BEHAVE Work Packages: ‘Literature does not explore the relationships between internal factors and external constraints in any depth’. In other words, there is no way to predict on how people will react to incentives. If we pull all of this together, we have to conclude that behavior change is a very tricky subject. It feels like a swamp, devouring the policymaker when he least expects it.

Recently public interest in global warming has been growing, making it relevant to use the momentum to act. Now is the time to bring CO₂-emissions down. And though the context seems to provide the right circumstances for change, it still won’t be easy. There is no foundation in theory.

This is the point where POWER-project TrIsCo comes in. POWER is a EU programme to stimulate regions into the direction of a low carbon economy. Like in most EU programmes international cooperation and knowledge dissemination is an important condition. TrIsCo – with participants from Estonia, UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands – aims to:

• Enable different ‘islands’[6] of communities (households, businesses and public bodies) to reduce their Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emissions by changing their behavior towards their use of resources;
• Embed sustainability (social, economic and environmental) into behavior change drivers;
• Overcome barriers to implement low carbon communities.

II.  TrIsCo-Findings

4. Picking Best Practices

One step beyond the BEHAVE project, the Transition Islands Communities project (TrIsCo) focuses on the exchange of good practice, training seminars, experience and expertise by multi-disciplinary teams across and cross border regions, in order to create ‘Empowering CO₂ Reduction’ catalogues of instruments, initiatives or local authority action plans with quantifiable measuring tools for public bodies, commerce and the public to take action themselves and to be able to assess their own success. These catalogues can then be applied across Europe to achieve sustainable carbon reduction through behavior change.

That sounds pretty instrumental, but it is up to the POWER Rangers to bridge the gap between policy and ordinary European energy consumers, taking into account new insights and the smell of new theories about behavior change that come along. The POWER-Rangers from the Brabantse Milieufederatie – a federation of environmental pressure groups in the province of Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands – didn’t spend too much time on literature, instead the BMF started to inform a multitude of ignorant people about six best practices selected with a little help from the Province:

1. The (national) climate street party competition (CSP) is all about energy saving. Inhabitants of different streets or neighbourhoods work together and compete with other streets on reducing the use of fossil fuels. The success depends on the activity and creativity of the people that participate. The aim of the CSP is to help neighbours to save as much energy as they can. The overarching goal is to make the multitude more conscious about energy saving in relation to CO₂-emissions and to stimulate people to take real action. If the Dutch POWER-Rangers would have studied literature they had found proof of how well chosen this best practice is. The influence of social norms on individual choices is incredibly large, though many will deny this. Literature tells us that people often don’t know the real causes of their behaviour.Research by Nolan c.s. on energy consumption behaviour shows how oblivious people are of the true reasons of their own actions. Participants declare they save energy because of environmental reasons, costs and moral motives. What others do, how they behave is not of great influence, people state. Analyses of consumption patterns however show that the use of energy in the surrounding neighbourhood is the best indicator for individual consumption. At some stage researchers tried to convince people of the benefits of energy efficiency, and what happened? The most effective argument for saving turned out to be information on energy consumption by neighbours.[7]
2. The ‘Energy Café’ concept is part of the Climate Street Party (CSP) competition 2009/2010. A concept that could work just as well as a stand-alone project. Energy Cafés offer people a chance to meet with a professional energy advisor to exchange knowledge on energy reduction and energy saving techniques, as well as find answers to questions they might have about energy issues.
3. The ‘Farmer meets Neighbour’ initiative enables farmers to cover the roofs of their stables with solar panels, paid by consumers who receive green vegetables, milk and fruit as a return on investment.
4. Like the Energy Café the ‘Golden Star Municipalities’ concept is part of the Climate Street Party competition 2009/2010. It provides local authorities with knowledge and tools to promote interaction between municipalities and citizens with respect to CO₂ reduction and saving energy.
5. The Night of the Night is the highlight of a campaign to raise awareness for the importance of darkness for the natural environment and for (un)necessary energy use.
6. Because of language and/or cultural barriers immigrants in the Netherlands are a difficult target group to reach by educational programs, communication and/or activities by government, or municipalities. The KlimaTeam project is an initiative of the Brabantse Milieufederatie (BMF) that reaches out to immigrants using a train-the-trainer set up with trainers from within migrant communities. People with different cultural backgrounds are educated on energy efficiency issues. Then they are supposed to disseminate this knowledge to their own network and community.

The bottom up approach that is applied here fits the way the Environment Centre (tEC) in Southampton operates like a glove. tEC hosts a range of community based activities like community and business road shows, training sessions for local authority staff, schools visits, environmental audits for businesses and a free phone consultant number. The road shows travel to supermarkets, shopping centres and all kinds of events covering insulation, energy saving measures, grants, smarter driving and renewable energy. It is all about raising awareness, building on the assumption that people can change their behaviour if they choose to, out of free will – voluntarily. People cannot be changed by others, or because other people think they have to. So, people have to be convinced of the value and benefit of behaviour change, or they have to be influenced in more sophisticated ways. In times of trouble and crisis people prefer style, not sloppiness, adventure, not conformity.

‘WATCH!’ the banner on tEC’s website commands. ‘Beautiful video about sustainable living on the Swedish island of Gotland, a product of tEC’s TrIsCo project ’. Like tEC and Noord-Brabant Gotland is a partner in the TrIsco Project funded under POWER. Gotland is Sweden’s biggest island. The inhabitants of this island are special. They have decided to become an ecologically sustainable society within the course of a generation. The message of this extremely slow movie is a message of a closed community where people recycle everything and grow their own fruit, vegetables and kids. No imports. A wrong one in 2011, we need an open, dynamic society instead, where people don’t spend their whole life at the same place, where authorities don’t prescribe peoples’ do’s and don’ts.

All regions have at least one authority on their back; the Central Government. Some are small and powerless, others are just screaming, shouting, claiming and pretending. The UK government for instance recently stated that success in changing behaviour was based on strong enforcement of existing or new laws. ‘To make it an effective intervention,’ the regional correspondent of South East England puts top-down and bottom-up dynamics into perspective, ‘the behaviour required by the legislation should be unambiguous, easy to be monitored, policed and enforced, be within the competence of the individual to comply, have a clear rationale understood by the public, have a severe and multi-faceted penalty for non-compliance; and have an associated high probability that non-compliance will be detected.’ Conclusion: the UK-government is still living in the past. It is reliving the Cognitive Revolution.

Energy policy in Italy is a blend of top-down and bottom-up measures, the correspondent of Reggio Emilia reports. The main issues of the national energy policies are the high demand for energy and the dependence of the fossil fuels international market. To meet these challenges important strategies have been directed – before the Fukushima disaster!!! – towards the liberalization and the promotion of nuclear energy infrastructure. These strategies have been put in standby mode after the nuclear disaster in Japan. Within this national framework, there is enough room for regional initiatives. In the Emilia-Romagna Region a network of public and private organizations called INFEA stimulates behaviour change through Environmental Education. On top of that 69 Centres for Environment & Sustainability Education (CEA) act as network nodes for the regional system. A new Regional Law (Regional Law N. 27 of 29/12/2009) supports the CEA actions and the INFEA network system launching projects and generating new Eco-Laboratory schools and training courses in order to build up new skills. Financial resources, expertise and facilities are provided in various ways to the INFEA actors by specific projects.

Moreover several development campaigns are launched during the last years which are recorded by and still living on specific web portals that are constantly updated: LIBERIAMO L’ARIA (Get Air to be free), ACQUA RISPARMIO VITALE (Water, a vital saving), In FORMA e FELICE con BIKE & GO (Fit & Happy with Bike & Go), CONSUMABILE – impariamo a stare al mondo (Able to consume –learn to live in the world).

The interactive mode of communication with citizens has been and will be increased with the adoption of the newest Web-technology for the ER Region portal. The potential of this tool has been enlarged by digital infrastructure in the ER Region. A higher goal is to improve institutions and citizens’ attitude towards self-responsibility with respect to collective learning through the spreading and the sharing of information.

The roadmap has much more to offer, in Estonia and in Andalucia. However we refrain from another summing up of bottom-up initiatives, fitting into a larger picture. Such would kill curiosity, enthusiasm, motivation and creativity in the minds of bystanders to come up with some bright ideas and analyses themselves. To draw the circle round, we finish where we started: in Noord-Brabant, the region that skipped theory and gave the floor to practice. Some of the lessons learned bring coherence in the storyline. A modern network society is not served by bottom up processes alone. There has to be some coordination at a higher level.

5. Lessons Learned

Behaviour change starts with participation from below, at the community level where people communicate with each other. Being ‘on speaking terms’ is an important prerequisite for people to take responsibility and initiate common actions to improve their own living conditions (the concept of ‘do-democracy’ has been identified in this respect and is presently explored and further developed by the Tilburg School of Politics and Public Administration).

Schools that offer inspiration are able to nourish behaviour change. Being at school and learning should be fun, because this is where young people start to formulate their ambitions for life. Schools and teachers help them to generate the passion and to grow attitudes that are needed to achieve sustainable ambitions.

Behaviour change requires a new type of government. Public administration should learn to do less and achieve more by bringing different groups of people together. Its’ specific role can be identified as directing more effective social interactions that are needed to establish a more sustainable society. The new type of government is based on a governance model in which the ‘public cause’ has become the ‘common cause’ of citizens, communities, local entrepreneurs, and government institutions alike.

That is why behaviour change needs to be learned by example and ‘good practices’. There is a need for better understanding the mechanisms underlying productive interaction patterns that are needed to trigger behaviour change.

Behaviour change also requires us to learn to communicate together in a better way. Learning to speak a common language can be regarded as the fundament for ‘the art of living together’.

6. Preliminary Conclusions by BMF

BMF: ‘The dominant view among policymakers still is that by nature people make rational decisions. It is expected that the right decisions will be made, once there is an equal playing field, a market mechanism in place, and sufficient information available. Policy efforts are thus often aimed at providing the ‘calculating citizen’ with enough transparency, information, and publicity, as well as exposing him or her to a fair amount of competition.’

Comment: some people either have been sleeping for 25 years, or don’t like to admit being wrong.

‘More and more evidence points towards the direction that human choices are far from rational,’ the BMF acknowledges. ‘Emotions and social relations play an important part.’ However, the BMF does not adopt the storyline of this essay. ’In spite of this,’ the BMF continues, ‘behaviour remains predictable to a certain extend and can be influenced, directed, or manipulated, even without the classical government ingredients of financial incentives or the regulatory framework of do’s and don’ts. The desired behaviour might be triggered by slightly altering the context and by supporting social innovations (based on the explorative study “The human decision maker” by the WRR – Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy, report nr 22, 2009).’

Human nature is diverse. It is also mutable, for better or worse. And it is influenced not just by one-to-one interactions, but by the multitudinous society in which each of us is embedded.[8] (…) ‘A push and a pull; a tension between conflicting desires. This is all it takes to tip our social behaviour into complex and often unpredictable patterns, dictated by influences beyond our immediate experience or our ability to control.’[9] We can try to detect patterns in complex structures like human behaviour and react on that, or we can learn to trust our feelings, our intuition and our mind’s eye and make our own choice impulsively.

7. The Mind’s Eye

Psychologist Ian Robertson advocates to use imagery and not words to get what we need and want. ‘Western societies,’ Robertson argues, ‘have largely lost the ability to think in images rather than words.’ With that ability we’ve lost important clues about why we are doing what we are doing. The right half of our brain has a limited capacity to deal with words, research reveals. It can ‘know’ things, but it is unable to ‘say’ them. The famous scientist Albert Einstein was a lucky guy. He went to a school that taught children to think visual, in images. At the age of sixteen he used imagery to carry out a breakthrough ‘thought-experiment’ that laid the ground for the splitting of the atom. He famously declared: ‘Words or language…do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought…my elements of thought are images.’ Words however are not useless. They bind images together. Robertson: ‘Our memories are stories studded with images that illustrate the narrative. Without the words we are left with isolated visions – often emotional, colourful and vivid, but nevertheless as fragmented and confusing as dreams if they are starved of the narrative power of language.’[10]

We don’t remember much of our early childhood because toddlers don’t know how to use words and create stories for themselves. One who can create stories for oneself, can construct them for others too. And the ones that know how to spice these narratives effectively with images can even manipulate people. That is what Al Gore did in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and in ‘Our Choice’.  This is true as well for populists who gain votes on dissatisfaction or insecurity in society.

© WoordWerk

Ecolutie, 14 November 2011

The EU POWER Programme was meant for research, knowledge sharing and experiments that lead to a Low Carbon Economy by EU regions. Of all derived projects, the province Noord Brabant joined five. TrIsCo was one of them

Related essays on the Power Programme: Joint Effort Society (JES), Power for Wood, Beyond a Mere Mobility Thing and Magnitude & Murder

Jane Jacobs, The death and life of great American cities

By Caro Sicking

I wired for change

1. Flamenco and economics

In the SILCS project one of the three partners is Seville, city of extremes. It incorporates e.g. a historical centre visited by tourists, universities and students, a district called Poligono Sur where social exclusion is the name of the game, drugs and violence reign and 43% of the inhabitants is jobless and a prestigious business park Campus Palmas Altas that won the Greenbuilding platinum LEED Award. Seville has it all; the grandeur, the extreme heat, the poverty, the history, the culture and the music. It is known for fabulous Flamenco.

The leadpartner is a knowledge centre, CURe University of Portsmouth, UK. The two other partners, Kent County and the province of Noord Brabant have less magnitude and less murder than the Spanish city; they search particularly for economically viable ways of sustainable building (and standards). Before viewing on lessons learned, points scored and missed goals, before diving into the relations, differences and comparisons between the partners, let’s take a walk down urban planning with Seville in mind. Just to get a larger picture of what Strategies for Low Carbon Settlements (SILCS) can be about.

2. Garden in disguise

Sustainable building is more than housing. It is placing a house in a context in such a manner that the inhabitants will be able to lead the life they prefer by natural course. Sustainable building also is changing the context in which people live. Again to enable them to lead a happy, healthy and productive life. Whether it is retrofitting, refurbishing or building anew, there is always a context and always an impact on people’s lives. That, plus the effect settlements have on the environment and whether future generations profit from it are a few basics. Building for the future, according to Lord Norman Foster, Pritzker Architecture Price winner of 1999, is creating a building that is wired for change. The architect and urban designer needs to anticipate change. In this perspective Foster mentions the Willis Faber & Dumas Headquarters in Ipswich, UK, built 1971-1975. From the website of Foster & Partners: ‘The country headquarters for insurance company Willis Faber & Dumas was a pioneering example of energy-conscious design that challenged accepted thinking about the office building. Offering a new social dimension with its swimming pool, roof-top garden and restaurant, it was conceived in the spirit of democratising the workplace and engendering a sense of community.’ The building e.g. is covered by a garden in disguise – green roof -, a large green public space that connects it to nature.

Foster starts his speech ‘Building on the green agenda’ on TED emphasizing the nature of sustainability is not fashion, but is about survival. According to Foster building and associated transport – to and fro houses, work, shops et cetera – acquires 70% of the total energy consumption of a city.

3. Sustainable cities

A few years ago Norman Foster picked up a green fingered gauntlet: designing a blueprint for a sustainable city. The proof is in the eating and the first settlement, called Masdar City (Source City) is being built in Abu Dhabi as we speak. Another inspiring masterplan of great allure is the plan for Incheon, South Korea: ‘Taking agriculture as a central theme, the design utilises existing elements such as irrigation channels, green spaces and roads, while the arrangement of buildings within the masterplan follows the natural topology of the site, incorporating green roofs to further harmonise with the landscape. Like the veins of a leaf, the smaller roads and pedestrian avenues extend from the central transportation spine. The existing island is predominately agricultural so terraced farming, utilising the roofs of the industrial buildings, will replace any agriculture displaced by the development. There will be no structure above 50 metres, so the scheme will not extend into the foothills or mountain, thus preserving the rural landscape.’

4. A family affair

‘Cities are the physical framework of our society, the generator of civil values, the engine of our economy and the heart of our culture,’ states Sir Richard Rogers, Florence born British architect and urban planner, former head of the UK Urban Task Force, multiple price winner on sustainable building and co-creator of the most visited building of Europe, Centre Pompidou in Paris. He is known for his intuitive understanding of urban areas, using this to ameliorate the space where people live and work. He is e.g. responsible for the tent-like construction of the Ashford designer retail outlets in Kent, one of the SILCS partners. Rogers and Foster, two of the UK major architects that already acknowledged the importance of eco-innovation in building early seventies, while designing breathtaking architecture, started their careers together. Both graduated from the university of Yale with a master degree in Architecture in 1962. On their way back to the UK the partnership Foster/Rogers took off. It was a family affair; the wives Wendy Cheeseman and Su Brumwell participated. In 1967 Rogers and Foster split up, but evaluating their respective careers and views on urban planning, the kinship is still alive.

5. Far from SILCS?

What we can learn from these behemoths of modern architecture is that the amenity of an urban dwelling, the sheer pleasure it gives to people, combining green and renewable energy sources with meeting places, connecting people, using sun and shade, adds to the level in which a building is wired for change.

Yet, it doesn’t feel right, does it? Foster and Rogers design for the rich and lucky, for professionals that work in high tech and successful sectors, for the fortunate that can afford to own a state of the art apartment in Masdar City. For travellers that use large airports as hubs to other continents, prestigious designs like the Kai Tak Cruise terminal in Hong Kong and Madrid Barajas Airport. Architects like Rogers and Foster build the cathedrals of our age.

This seems a long way from SILCS, where Kent County, the province of Noord-Brabant and the Public Housing Enterprise of Seville partner to create sustainable and affordable housing in their respective regions. This appears far away from the vision of Jane Jacobs, publicist and urban planning activist, who’s quote heads this essay.

6. Use the street and watch it!?

Jane Jacobs voiced her thoughts on urban planning in The death and life of great American cities in 1961. In the novelistic written book she describes how building and infrastructure influence the social coherence, the behaviour of people and thus the liveability of a neighbourhood. ‘You can’t force people to use a street, or to watch over it.’ Jacobs advocates the enabling of dwelling and wandering, crisscrossing and encountering each other in public space. She talks about the foremost important condition in urban environments: safety. Sidewalks provide safety for pedestrians, cycle paths for bikers. Then there is social safety as well; can a girl walk the streets by herself at nightfall? A lot of the social safety has to do with the coherence and watchfulness of the people living, working and roaming a place. Diversity of functions, having shops, playgrounds, schools, homes and working places can do a great deal of the trick according to Jacobs, and make people behave social responsible.

And though behaviour is the theme of yet another POWER project, TrIsCo, we cannot ignore it when discussing SILCS, or ITACA – on sustainable transportation – for that matter. When a society chooses to take the road to sustainability, all aspects have to be taken into account.

7. Coffee table at the busstop

People entering a beautiful carefully designed and maintained building, act accordingly and will not throw garbage on the floor. Especially not if there are bins in sight where one can leave the rubbish. The environment influences their behaviour and enables them – by putting bins in sight – to conduct according to how they feel. Influencing and enabling is what city-planners do on large scale, especially in this age of accelerated urbanization[1].

June 2011, designer Jlie Kim wanted to battle the image she thinks the rest of the world holds on Los Angeles: nobody walks or uses public transport. She put her Hammock coffee table with a vase filled with fresh flowers at a bus stop in Korea town, then filmed with a spy-cam. The footage shows a guy rearranging the flowers in the vase, two girls acting as if in their family livingroom, attracting a boy’s attention, then an older lady sits down next to the girls and starts to talk to them. It looks like all these people actually know each other. But like Jane Jacobs states: a city is by definition filled with strangers.

La Cuidad Viva – website, facebook page and twitter account – is an open forum for participation, created by SILCS partner Empresa Publica de Suelo de Andalucia (EPSA), 45000 people visit the site on monthly base, they originate from 85 countries. EPSA put up the website as a Think Tank, hoping to learn from others how they feel and think on sustainable urban development. Here too are photo’s to be found of mere plastic chairs and a table, put somewhere in public space and being used, changing a sidewalk into a meeting place.

8. Cathedrals and football champions

Entering the POWER project SILCS we need to hold both views into account. A society needs dreams and ambitions, it yearns for cathedrals and championing football clubs. At the same time there is the need for a different scale, human sized measures where we can live, shop, walk the dog and play. These two aren’t necessary biting one another, on the contrary, they are complementary. Just look at the Centre Pompidou, situated in a lively Paris quarter, where its magnitude inspires people to play on the square in front of it, small shops attract the dweller from one site of the street to the other and kids linger around the fountain with colourful sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. Urban planning can be big and small at the same time, as long as the design is cut out to unify and communicate.

II SILCS FINDINGS

9. Social cohesion

Strategies for Low Carbon Settlements come as big and small as the settlements. SILCS aims to prove and illustrate the effectiveness of Low carbon building initiatives within the framework of a sustainable development. The project will address the following four questions:

1. Participation: how are stakeholders to be involved within experiments and what types of community participation activities are possible and viable depending upon the low carbon solution and design outcome required?
2. Financing: what kind of approaches are successfully enable change and have maximum impact on the way financial analyses are made and decisions taken, resulting in decisions not based on initial investments but on total live-cycle costs?
3. Organisation: how can the building process (planning, designing etc) deliver sustainable results?
4. Technologies: which (systems) technologies are most effective and successfully achieve innovative Low Carbon solutions.

The above is stated on the SILCS page of the POWER website. The partners exchange knowledge and experience during two to three day workshops and visit each other’s best practice examples. ‘These projects are not just innovative construction solutions, but illustrate the potential for social cohesion integrated with innovative low carbon technologies, which can become best practice examples for future directions.’

10. Different faces

Social cohesion integrated with innovative low carbon technologies, has a different face in each region. In the Netherlands, Noord Brabant struggles to create jobs and attract high educated talent in order for the region to be fit for the future as well as economical competitive with neighbouring provinces, being the Randstad, Ruhrgebied in Germany and Belgium. Cutting on fossil fuel dependency and emissions whilst enhancing biodiversity and the quality of rural as well as urban landscapes are an important part of the strategy. The ambition of the province connected to SILCS is to prove sustainable, holistic designed, energy or climate neutral and healthy housing can be affordable, comfortable and future proof for everybody, even in de social housing sector. It started with the ambitious project Geerpark, a new to construct neighbourhood in the town of Vlijmen. Social housing corporation Woonveste owns a large part of the area: 28 ha of a total of 46 ha. Woonveste builds and rents houses to people with a small wallet. In order for Woonveste to agree to co-create the most sustainable quarter of the Netherlands, which was the ambition of the alderman of the town, the housing corporation needed to be convinced of the affordability of the buildings. The province moved into the negotiations, taking knowledge of the Mutual Gains Approach[2] and experts on sustainable building along. The issue, building ecological and social responsible for the lowest incomes in economically viable ways, stirred the imagination of a multitude of municipalities and housing corporations.  On request the regional government organised meetings and charettes between them and four experts on finance, sustainable building, participation and organisation to design a programme of demands according to which the ambition can be met. The result of this is called Brabant Woning. Houses that are build according to the list of demands will be certified with the title by service institute VIBA Expo. Part of the prescriptions are based on the use of daylight and solar power, re-using heat from air and water and natural ventilation through a rooftop window, applied in such a manner that the rain will stay out. The hood of the prototype is a mansard roof. The garret is build in sections that graduate different to optimize the inclination for solar panels or green roofs, suitably for natural ventilation, windows and roof tiles. The Brabant Woning is very well insulated, using natural materials. The house is designed to be comfortable with a healthy inner climate as well as affordable. Outerspace is considered equally important to the inside, allowing the inhabitants to be in contact with nature and trying to get them into participating in neighbourhood ‘greencare’, thus enhancing social cohesion at the same time. Brabant Woning raises the low carbon ambition one step further: a house like a living organism. This implies breathing (natural ventilation) as well as green walls and/or roofs, rooming up for biodiversity in build areas, energy generation and water as lifestream. There is one default, as remarked in one of the SILCS documents: ‘Noticeable about Brabant Woning is that there is nothing noticeable about it’. This shortcoming in design is something Brabant can learn from the Spanish as well as the British partners. In Kent design quality is considered one of the conditions for sustainable building.

11. Investing money

The excellence of Brabant Woning, according to the English partners is in the money basket. Kent County, south of London, too aspires to design a standards framework for the local builders. The way Noord Brabant thought out financing healthy, low-energy, low-emission and comfortable housing for the social market by pulling investments in front and dividing the yields between investor and renter may be a method for realising eco houses. It clarifies that though certain innovations cost extra to implement, the investment cuts budgets during the building’s lifecycle. A Nota Zero building, meaning there is no energy bill due to generation of electricity and heat by the building itself, may be more expensive to build, yet can be cheaper when taking the whole life-cycle in account.

Until today the Brabant Woning has not actually been realised. It is a list of demands that must lead to an affordable, healthy, green house as a living organism and which can be used by every architect and any building constructor. The municipalities and housing corporations involved in the process of conceptualizing of Brabant Woning plan to construct 80 to 100 of these houses, but they move slow due to conservatism in their backyards and reluctant equally conservative investors.

As to Geerpark, the project that started it all of, the realisation got in a deadlock. At the kick off there was an ambitious holistic approach, combining a green environment, water management and pleasure, biodiversity in the neighbourhood with bats and butterflies, energy or climate neutral buildings, green roofs and walls, all of it guarded by an independent group of engaged experts called The Conscience. Now, three years after signing a letter of intentions by involved parties, it still is difficult to actually realise a workingman’s paradise. Not in the least because the province, due to changed political government, withdrew, because the alderman who started the project also belonged to one of the losing political parties and had to leave the scene, because of conventionalism in the building and housing sector and financial crises still roaming around, making people careful before trying something new.

12. Reducing on carbon

The ambitions of the North Western partners seem aligned. Kent County too, like Brabant, uses sustainable building to revitalize the area, create jobs, reduce fossil fuel dependence and the emissions that come along with it, while trying to create an interesting stimulating environment for the inhabitants and visitors. The national government strives towards lowering carbon emission in housing construction with 80% and decrease home energy use with 100%. The individual British inhabitant will have to reduce carbon emissions from 11,87 tonnes to 2,37 tonnes.

According to Ed Metcalfe, director of Research and Business Development Institute for Sustainability, UK buildings emit 43% of the total emissions. 90% of the British challenge is in the existing stock of buildings, he argues. The task leads up to retrofitting or refurbishing 600.000 houses a year the coming four decennia.

Regions and municipalities have to create the right conditions for their citizens to be able to keep up with these ambitions. In Ashford, Kent County, there is a need for 31000 new homes to be build between 2001 and 2031. The church has to be renovated to provide enhanced performance space, cutting down on the use of resources, running costs and maintenance requirements. The local library is up for redevelopment to provide integrated services for the growing community by lowering the carbon footprint, increasing energy efficiency and creating facilities for a multiple agencies.

Mike Bodkin, head of Urban Generation Kent County emphases on building homes and communities and not estates. Localism, aspiration and choice are the key words to Kent’s sustainable ambitions, whilst aiming to raise design quality.

From the presentation by Mr Ed Metcalfe, 01.26.2011

UK environmental market: £ 106 billion

880.000 employees

4% growth per annum

400.000 extra jobs the coming 8 years

UK retrofit ambition: £ 400 billion

13. Las Tres Mil Viviendas

One could say Seville has the advantage of the dialectics of progress. The need for urgent action is felt at the headquarters of the Empresa Publica de Suelo de Andalucía (Public Enterprise for Social Housing) that cooperates with the Junta de Andalucía and Seville’s University and other educational and knowledge institutes on making change happen in Las Tres Mil, the common name for Poligono Sur. The district is home to 55000 people of whom 43% is jobless. Impervious roads, railroads and building blocks isolate Las Tres Mil Viviendas from the rest of the city. The streets are dangerous, drugs and crime rule. Empty buildings, illegal housing, aids and kids staying home from school. Las Tres Mil is synonymous for social exclusion and party spoiler for the beautiful historic centre of the town.

Still, there is hope. The city has been working since 2003 according to the Plan Integral de Poligono Sur. The goals are: retrofitting and refurbishing the houses/apartments, work and development for the inhabitants, education, equality and social welfare, and improving the health of the people living in the area. SILCS is part of this bigger picture.

The same year, 2003, Dominique Abel, dancer and film director, was subsidized by the Administración de la Junta de Andalucía to make a documentary on the lost district. She set out in search of the roots of Flamenco, the proud Spanish traditional dance. What she found and recorded was a vivid culture amidst a depressing décor. The sensitivity in the filming and the focus on the talents of the people filmed was one way to empower. But, of course making a film is not enough to solve stringent social and economical conditions. Seville has joined the POWER programme on more projects in order to accomplish the Hercules job of turning the coin for the whole district.

14. Safety first

The situation in Poligono Sur gives an insight on the (pre) conditions of sustainable building. The first and foremost is safety. There is no sustainability in unsafe streets, or in places where people feel unsafe. Safety comes with social coherence, people watching over each other. This has to do with local culture, behaviour (see the essay on TrIsCo), with economics (ability to work, go to school, entertain) as well as with what has been written in stone. Mono functional areas appear to be unsustainable, whether it concerns shopping malls, industrial areas or living space. The walkability of a town – schools, jobs, shops, entertainment, parks, sports and playgrounds on short distance – determines for a large part the sustainability. About walkability you can read more in the essay ‘Beyond a mere mobility thing’ discussing the POWER projects ITACA and E-mob.

Diversity is another principle that leads to developing a place where we like to live. Richard Florida, following Jane Jacobs’ footsteps, argues that economic and social thriving cities are the places where minorities populate the streets. Mothers with children, gay people, artists, managers and construction workers, black, white, Asian and South American, all walking the same pavements blow good vibrations and dynamics through a city.

15. Do it together

Another trick from the book is applied in Seville; the locals help to renovate their own homes and neighbourhood, thus acquiring skills, getting to know one another and regaining contact with the own environment. Pride is another human characteristic that gets polished this way. Once proud of your neighbourhood, you take care of it in every sense of the word. So does participation. Apart from trying to get inhabitants to participate in the rehabilitation of their surroundings, new organisation structures concerning e.g. health have been implemented.

Another unifying project is the construction of Plaza Sur, the planners call it ‘reto para el futuro’ in a pdf for their SILCS partners. The words mean ‘challenge for the future’. According to the blog Urbanity 2, it will be designed by Pedro Garcia del Barrio. Urbanity 2: [Plaza Sur] will be placed in a non built plot of 46000 m2 for commercial, sport use. Business, social and educational projects will be also developed there. The exterior covering will be a garden zone, and the building will combine glass and stone.
Other project will be the new Park of The Guadaíra, that will be defined along the “Su Eminencia” road, and it will be finished at the end of this year, with an investment of 16,8 M€, paid from the European Help for Development (FEDER), Guadalquivir River Management Department and the municipality of Seville. This new green park will join “Poligono Sur” with “The Beremejales” district, with a new free space of 63,5 hectares,’ according to Urbanity 2.

16. High trees

Grand design fits the region of magnitude and murder. In the same city, the aforementioned British architect Richard Rogers designed, together with Luis Vidal and Asociados Arquitectos the business park Campus Palmas Altas where the headquarters of Abengoa group is located. The aim was to maximize communication and encourage crossfertilization between various divisions of the international technology company that thrives for sustainable development in the areas infrastructure, environment and energy. The business park is designed in a compact urban character and suited to withstand the extreme summer conditions of Spain. The central space consists of different patios and the colours used are derived from the traditional Andalucían tile shades.

From the website of Arup, company of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists that was involved in the construction of Palmas Altas:

Concept design studies indicating carbon footprint reduction and economic payback have been carried out for all the proposed passive and active sustainability solutions. Passive low energy consumption solutions include orientation, compactness, green roofs, and facades.

Active solutions to optimise energy efficiency include:

• Trigeneration, which creates electricity, heating and cooling from a single energy source.
• The installation of photovoltaic panels on the roofs.
• Lighting dimming systems sensitive to levels of daylight.

Active solutions to reduce water consumption include:

• Absorption chillers on the roofs which will provide cold water.
• Dry toilets.
• Storage facilities for rainwater so that it can be recycled and used for irrigation.

The result is expected to bring exceptional green credentials to Palmas Altas. On completion, the carbon footprint of the development will be about 30% lower than typical Spanish offices.

The development is also expected to receive platinum accreditation from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building rating system, which is the highest accreditation available.

The development promises to be economically viable as well as sustainable – it is expected to keep to a tight budget of €850 per m².

The platinum LEED accreditation was indeed awarded to Campus Palmas Altas, as well as other prices.[3]

From the website of Rogers, Stirk, Harbour & Partners: Campus Palmas Altas, the new headquarters for Abengoa in Seville, has been awarded first prize in the 2010 Prime Property Awards as the best sustainable real estate project in Europe. Competing against 142 entries from 19 European countries, the judges commented that the scheme is “a prime example of sustainable architecture and technology.” The business park was completed in late 2009 and has been certified LEED Platinum – the first project in Europe to receive the highest LEED rating. Jury member Garrie Renucci, partner at Gardiner & Theobald, said: “Deploying renewable energy sources and innovative technologies in Seville has led to an unusual yet exemplary building concept in terms of energy efficiency that sets benchmarks and has already inspired others.”

17. Are you connected?

The allure of a business dwelling like Campus Palmas Altas is in sharp contrast with the unnoticeable characteristics of the Brabant Woning, thus mentioned in one of the SILCS documents. The holistic lifting of a disintegrated neighbourhood sounds more heroic then retrofitting a church, a single house or library.

But, whether one builds one house or a whole district, whether refurbishing or retrofitting, the same principles go when it comes to the major themes of SILCS: participation, financing, organization and technologies. Besides that; in architecture context and design are of major importance.

SILCS partners learned from each other through workshops sometimes by presentations that spoke of the situation in a country, the European continent or global, before zooming into the regional matters. Students were involved in the SILCS project in Noord Brabant as well as in Portsmouth. Lead partner CURe University made a cross-over with the POWER project TraCit and sent its students to Tallinn with the commission to participate in a design charette concerning local transport and urban development together with the Estonian.

Neither of the projects spoken of has come to an end yet, which is quite understandable considering the time urban development costs and the still unconventional goal to build according to ecological principles with regard to and in contact with the social impact a building or neighbourhood has on its inhabitants and arbitrary dwellers or purposeful tourists; Do they feel safe? Sound? Healthy? Is their environment stimulating and inspiring them to lead a happy and productive life connected to other people and to nature? In other words, the question is: Are you connected?

III wired for the future

18. Cooperation in competition

Seville is not the only Spanish city facing poor (in every sense of the word) dwellings at a magnificent town’s corner. Malaga, Cadiz and Almeria suffer the same disease. Universities and technical schools in the region Andalucía teamed up as Solar Kit Andalucía team. Students work together to design and build a self-sufficient house, powered only by solar and with technologies implemented that will result in efficient use of resources. The house will join the competition Solar Decathlon to be held in Madrid next year. It will have to battle the ReVolt house of Delft University from the Netherlands among others. After the exhibition the Delft ReVolt house will be located in Rotterdam, city of trade and water.

19. Are you networked?

We are at the point where the virtual world finally connects with the analogue world on multiple levels and creats opportunities that go way beyond imitation of reality. Already architects use ICT programmes that show a building’s behaviour before the first stone marks the building lot. Already social media connect individuals that are geographically miles apart. But new applications are on the way; the Future Internet or the Internet of Things.

May 2011, The UK based Future Internet Strategy Group, issued a report on the impact Internet is going to have on our lives and environments and the business opportunities is sees for the UK. ‘The report identifies between £ 50 billion and £ 100 billion annual benefit to the UK,’ it states on Page iv. The future Internet is defined as: ‘An evolving  convergent Internet of things and services that is available  anywhere, anytime as part of an all-pervasive omnipresent socio-economic fabric, made up of converged services, shared data  and an advanced wireless and fixed infrastructure linking people and machines to provide advanced services to business and citizens.’  This Future Internet will change human behaviour, as in transport, service and decisionmaking. It will change the city and any built environment, due to different needs and habits of the people living there. It will grow efficiency. Increased contact between citizens, business and government is predicted. Public (mass) services will become available on personal (individual) demand. Imagine; data surfing the ether generated by machines as well as by persons. The fridge of the woman next door is talking to my washing machine and together they decide the most convenient (energy efficient, cheap) time for doing the laundry… The report writes about ‘access anywhere, anytime, creating an omnipresent fabric linking people and machine-to-machine communications’. It states: ‘Many of these opportunities are embodied in the Smart City with its infrastructure of sensors and smart buildings that offer 24/7 access to services supported by shared data clouds, interacting with citizens and businesses in a concentrated environment. Barcelona, New Songdo City, Incheon and San Francisco lead the way in demonstrating how the Future Internet can be implemented today, providing the value case has been made and there is executive leadership to drive the new thinking and implementation.’ Smart, sustainable cities enabling networked citizens to live, work, travel, shop, sport and play, connected to each other and their environment. Changed behaviour caused by changed opportunities due to new technologies and smart applications that combine the needs and interests of many.

The challenge will be: access for Everybody to prevent social exclusion of the not networked and create new Poligono Surs on the way.

Ecolutie July 2011

© WoordWerk, Vught, Nl

The EU POWER Programme was meant for research, knowledge sharing and experiments that lead to a Low Carbon Economy by EU regions. Of all derived projects, the province Noord Brabant joined five. SILCS was one of them

Related essays on the Power Programme: Joint Effort Society (JES), Power for Wood, Beyond a Mere Mobility Thing and Power to the People

[2] The Mutual Gains Approach is a method for participative decisionmaking by Lawrence Susskind, teacher, trainer, mediator and urban planner. The method is published in various books e.g. Breaking Robert’s rules

[3] LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. US Greenbuilding Council