Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices 2013042198, 9780415814447, 9780203067215

Citation preview

Green Utopianism

Utopian thought and experimental approaches to societal organization have been rare in the last decades of planning and politics. Instead, there is a widespread belief in ecological modernization, that sustainable societies can be created within the frame of the current global capitalist world order by taking small steps such as eco-labeling, urban densification, and recycling. However, in the context of the current crisis in which resource depletion, climate change, uneven development, and economic instability are seen as interlinked, this belief is increasingly being questioned and alternative developmental paths sought. This collection demonstrates how utopian thought can be used in a contemporary context, as critique and in exploring desired futures. The book includes theoretical perspectives on changing global socio-environmental relationships and political struggles for alternative development paths, and analyzes micro-level practices in cohousing, alternative energy provision, use of green space, transportation, co-production of urban space, peer-to-peer production and consumption, and alternative economies. It contributes research perspectives on contemporary green utopian practices and strategies, combining theoretical and empirical analyses to spark discussions of possible futures. Karin Bradley is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Johan Hedrén is Associate Professor of Water and Environmental Studies at Linköping University.

Routledge Studies in Environment, Culture, and Society S ERIES

EDITORS :

BERNHARD GLAESER AND HEIKE EGNER

This series opens up a forum for advances in environmental studies relating to society and its social, cultural, and economic underpinnings. The underlying assumption guiding this series is that there is an important, and so far little-explored, interaction between societal as well as cultural givens and the ways in which societies both create and respond to environmental issues. As such, this series encourages the exploration of the links between prevalent practices, beliefs and values, as differentially manifested in diverse societies, and the distinct ways in which those societies confront the environment.

1 Human-Nature Interactions in the Anthropocene Potentials of Social-Ecological Systems Analysis Edited by Marion Glaser, Gesche Krause, Beate M. W. Ratter and Martin Welp 2 Green Utopianism Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices Edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

Green Utopianism Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices Edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Green utopianism : perspectives, politics and micro-practices / [edited by] Karin Bradley, Johan Hedrén. pages cm. — (Routledge studies in environment, culture, and society ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Utopias. 2. Environmentalism. I. Bradley, Karin, 1975– II. Hedrén, Johan, 1958– HX806.G73 2014 335'.02—dc23 2013042198 ISBN13: 978-0-415-81444-7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-06721-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Preface 1

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

vii ix xi 1

KARIN BRADLEY AND JOHAN HEDRÉN

PART I The Politics of Science 2

Anthropocenic Politicization: From the Politics of the Environment to Politicizing Environments

23

ERIK SWYNGEDOUW

3

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

38

J.K. GIBSON-GRAHAM

4

Utopianism in Science: The Case of Resilience Theory

57

JOHAN HEDRÉN

5

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees: Technological Utopianism and the Uneasy Relation Between Marxism and Ecological Economics

76

ALF HORNBORG

PART II Transforming Politics and Planning 6

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future ULRIKA GUNNARSSON-ÖSTLING

101

vi Contents 7

Mobility Transitions: The Necessity of Utopian Approaches

115

KAROLINA ISAKSSON

8

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

131

MEIKE SCHALK

9

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

150

YLVA UGGLA

10 Globalism, Particularism and the Greening of Neoliberal Energy Landscapes

165

TOM MELS

PART III Changing Practices 11 Towards a Peer Economy: How Open Source and Peer-to-Peer Architecture, Hardware, and Consumption Are Transforming the Economy

183

KARIN BRADLEY

12 Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City: Squatting and the Production of the Urban Commons in Berlin

205

ALEXANDER VASUDEVAN

13 Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism and Cohousing

226

LUCY SARGISSON

14 Transition Delayed: The 1980s Ecotopia of a Decentralized Renewable Energy System

243

MARTIN HULTMAN

15 R-Urban: Strategies and Tactics for Participative Utopias and Resilient Practices

258

CONSTANTIN PETCOU AND DOINA PETRESCU

Contributors Index

279 285

Figures

3.1 3.2 5.1 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

10.1 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 12.1 12.2 12.3

Jim Wark’s aerial photograph of “sitcom suburbs” in the United States. A fanciful retro-fit of the “sitcom suburb” by Gibson-Graham. Illustration of planned solar power plant in the Sahara Desert. Critical Mass ride, Lions Gate Bridge, Vancouver, 2007. Illustration from the film With My Own Two Wheels. The former Tempelhof airport in Berlin has become an open space. The Allmende-Kontor, a community garden on the Oderstrasse “pioneer field”. Map of Tempelhofer Freiheit showing the “pioneer fields.” The Dynamic Masterplan. The borders of the National City Park in Stockholm. Lily, by Karin Tyrefors (1998), is one of three monuments that constitute entries to the National City Park. Fisherman’s cottage (Fiskarstugan) from the seventeenth century. Södra huset, one of the main buildings of Stockholm University, designed by the architect David Helldén, built 1969–1971. The One Tonne Life household. Poster critiquing consumerist society. The Dalston Mill by Exyzt and partners in Hackney, London. The Open Source Ecology platform. Illustration of the Streetbank concept. Reimagining the Urban Commons? The Georg von Rauch Haus, former squatted house in Berlin, Kreuzberg. K77 in 2009.

52 52 77 125 126 134 135 139 140 151 154 156

158 173 184 191 194 196 206 209 218

viii Figures 12.4 Wall of apartment in Berlin, Neukölln, doubling as rent information wall. 12.5 Kotti & Co Protest Camp, Berlin, Kreuzberg in 2009. 13.1 View from Poundbury. 13.2 View from Seaside. 15.1 R-Urban micro-urbanism principles. 15.2 R-Urban ecology. 15.3 Agrocité, agro–cultural unit—drawing. 15.4 Agrocité, civic gardening, June 2012. 15.5 Agrocité, view from a residential tower, July 2012. 15.6 Recyclab, recycling, and ecoconstruction unit—drawing.

220 221 229 230 260 261 262 262 263 268

Tables

3.1 5.1

The Diverse Economy Some Essential Differences Between Four Traditions of Economic Thought

50 90

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

From our corner of the world, we see an urgent need for imaginaries, strategies, and practices of alternative futures beyond the current greenwashed environmentally and socially exploitative economy. This book compiles research perspectives on contemporary green utopian practices and strategies, combining both theoretical and empirical analyses to spark discussion of possible futures. In 2010 and 2011 we organized a seminar series at Linköping University, Sweden, on Green futures, which inspired us to hold an international symposium on the topic. It was entitled “Green futures: From utopian grand schemes to micro-practices” and was held in September 2011 in Norrköping. Scholars of various backgrounds were invited to present and discuss their current research on this theme, and the discussions during this meeting gave birth to this book. It has been a privilege to work with all the contributors, discussing and refi ning their various contributions. We are grateful to Lars Orrskog and colleagues at the Green Critical Forum at Linköping University for reading and commenting on the introductory chapter and to the editors at Proper English for improving our language. We would further like to thank the Swedish Research Council Formas for funding the research project “Exploring utopian thought in planning for sustainable futures” and the international symposium. We also thank DevNet—the Development Research Network on Nature, Poverty and Power—at Uppsala University and Water and Environmental Studies at Linköping University for fi nancially supporting the symposium and the latter also for supporting the book production. Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén Stockholm and Linköping, August 2013

This page intentionally left blank

1

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

1. CRISES: HARBINGERS OF CHANGE? In recent years, daily papers in the global North have reported on global warming, recurrent social uprisings in cities, financial crises, and the fragility of the debt-based economy. However, interpretations of these events differ. On the one hand, some argue that these problems can be fi xed with better economic instruments and new technology. “Sustainable societies” can be created within the frames of the current through ecolabeling, pricing mechanisms, recycling, urban densification, etc. On the other hand, there are reasons to argue that the financial crisis of 2008, social uprisings since 2011, and recurrent floods and droughts in fact represent cracks in the “capitalocentric” regime: They are signs that the nexus of liberal capitalism and the Anglo–European domination of “other” genders, peoples, and species is entering its decline. According to this perspective, new technologies, smarter pricing, austerity measures, and sustainability policies tend to treat the symptoms rather than treating their cause. For centuries, the Anglo–European economies have grown, technological innovation has increased productivity, and overall consumption and purchasing power have increased. However, this wealth and “progress” have been built on the extraction of fossil fuels, nonrenewable resources, and global exploitation of resources and people (Hornborg, 2011). As the Worldwatch Institute (2012) has pointed out in its State of the World report, we are approaching the end of the cheap-oil era and of continuous economic growth and, for the rich nations of the world, this means a need to develop strategies for prosperity in futures characterized by degrowth. As Richard Heinberg (2007, p. 22) puts it, welcome to “the century of declines.” According to Heinberg, not only are oil resources peaking, but many other natural resources have peaked or will peak in the twenty-first century, including phosphorous, natural gas, fresh water, and rare earth metals. These are resources on which society, as we know it in the global North, is heavily reliant, including for current “green technology.” So what do we do? Will changes in resource supply and demand solve things? As development economist Latouche (2010) points out, lack of growth in a growth-oriented economy is painful and potentially dangerous. Hence, the

2

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

argument here is that we need a systemic change, a reboot into societal arrangements that do not rely on the extraction of nonrenewable resources or the exploitation of other peoples, species, or territories. We need to rethink and recast the economy, the technical infrastructure, housing, and production and consumption patterns (Worldwatch Institute, 2012). Historically, societal arrangements such as tribalism, feudalism, and mercantilism have changed and transformed and new regimes have evolved. It is therefore likely that global capitalism will also evolve into something else. But into what? How? When? And at the expense of what? Desirable for whom? Powered by whom? Within the contemporary socioenvironmental movements inspired by concepts such as degrowth, transition, the commons, relocalization, Occupy, “Buen Vivir,” and environmental justice, one fi nds similar forms of societal critique and attempts to articulate and practice alternatives. These movements indeed have historical roots in critiques and movements of earlier decades, such as green waves, ecofeminism, deep ecology, globalization-from-below, ecological economics, political ecology, social ecology, bioregionalism, and ecosocialism. However, in the wake of the current “triple crises” and the nonarrival of the promised “green growth,” these voices and movements are gaining strength. For new societal arrangements to materialize, new conceptions are needed—dreams, imaginaries, and experiments that are articulated and make the impossible seem possible. However, there is not only a need to dream of other futures, but, in the context of the recent economic crisis, there are also outright basic needs to immediately practice alternatives, to stimulate the utopian impulse telling us that change is both possible and necessary, and to focus the analytical lenses through which current society can be scrutinized. Arguments are mounting that Fukuyama and Thatcher were wrong in their insistent predictions: There are indeed alternatives. And history is beginning, again. With this book, we would like to demonstrate that in-depth socioecological transition is possible—not only possible but in fact happening. We hope to demonstrate how utopian thought can be applied in a contemporary context, as critique and in imagining and practicing desired futures. The book includes perspectives on the changing of global socioenvironmental relationships, political struggles for alternative development paths, as well as analyses of microlevel practices in the form of cohousing, alternative energy provision, use of green space, transport arrangements, the coproduction of urban spaces, peer-to-peer production and consumption, and alternative economies. Most of the chapters are written by authors from Northern or Central Europe, and the cited cases and practices are drawn from France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States and Australia. Some of the chapters are more theoretical while others are more empirically oriented. However, all deal with utopian thought or radical societal change in one or another way. Central questions in the book are: What forms of utopian thought, critique, and practice have evolved in

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

3

recent years? How can utopianism, in its various guises, be understood? Utopian or alternative, in what sense, and in relation to what? To what extent and how can these critiques and alternative practices affect political endeavors and institutional change? Who or what are drivers of change? As academics we are trained in critiquing what exists, pointing out the flaws, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies in the everyday practices of professionals, politicians, and citizens. There is abundant scholarly critique of mainstream sustainability politics and practices, watered-down ecological modernization regimes, and “best practice” sustainability guides (Hajer, 1995; Krueger & Gibbs, 2007; Parr, 2009). There is also a growing body of action-oriented literature on the transition to postcarbon or postgrowth societies (Darley, Room, & Rich, 2005; Heinberg & Lerch, 2010; Hopkins, 2012; Murphy, 2008); however, it is characterized more by handbooks for community action rather than by ambitions to problematize and theorize strategies and practices. Our intent in this book is to contribute research perspectives on contemporary green utopian practices and subversive strategies, combining both theoretical and empirical analyses, which together may spark discussions about possible futures. In this book we attempt to explore various perspectives and existing practices that could be alternatives to the ecological modernization paradigm: certainly incomplete, fragmentary, iterative, plural, and at times paradoxical and problematic, but nevertheless sincere attempts at rethinking and recasting society. The perceived “impossibility of the utopian” is not a reason for not trying. As Samuel Beckett (1983) put it, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In the remainder of this introductory chapter we will fi rst, under the heading “Shades of Green,” situate the book in the spectrum of green politics and practices. Thereafter, under the heading “Utopianism as No-Place and Critique,” we will describe various strands of utopian thought and how we position the book in relation to them. Under the heading “The Purposes of Contemporary Utopianism,” we outline the functions we think contemporary utopianism could have. Finally, under the heading “Transforming Practices and Politics,” we contextualize and describe emerging practices: cohousing, urban commons, coproduction and coplanning, transition culture, alternative economies, and decentralized systems for energy and infrastructure provision. In this introductory chapter we refer to and build upon reasoning and examples from the book’s various chapters, albeit without intending to equally summarize each of them.

2. SHADES OF GREEN: FROM ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION TO GREEN UTOPIANISM The notion of “green” developed over the last few decades is used in various ways—green ideology, green movements, green lifestyles, green politics, etc.

4

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

Often it is closely connected to environmental concerns, although sometimes also linking environmental and resource issues to broader concerns such as justice between classes, genders, species, and generations—locally and globally. Not only are there different notions of what is actually meant by “green,” but there is also a contested terrain of competing green diagnoses, comprehensions, problematizations, and prospects for the future. There is certainly no commonly agreed-on green agenda, but rather a green terrain that encompasses a range of both individual and common initiatives aiming at a more or less radical transformation of socioenvironmental relationships. In parallel to this pluralist evolution of green thought, there is another, distinctly different development. The official politics in many countries in the global North downplay the genuinely political, i.e., issues related to confl icting interests, values, or prospects for the future. Under the rubrics of sustainable development or environmental policies, we find descriptions of the situation and suggested actions in which the comprehensive political concerns are made invisible. The tasks related to environmental protection, natural resource use, and environmental distribution are made to appear as technical or managerial issues to be handled by experts and administrators, in practice subordinated to the overarching goal of economic growth. A concrete example of this depoliticization of environmental issues is raised in Karolina Isaksson’s Chapter 7. She describes planning for sustainable mobility and how this is often framed as a technical concern, in which the transport system is supposed to adjust to any desired lifestyle; there is no questioning of the purpose of increased transport, the ends it serves, and whether the need for transport can be reduced and transformed. On a general level, this depoliticizing tendency might stem from the difficulties many political parties have had in integrating green concerns into their ideological foundations developed hundreds of years before the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s. This depoliticizing process might also be explained by politically strategic considerations, given that green issues rarely rank high among voters in general elections. Whatever the reason, we can take as a departure point that the incremental, consensual approach typical of environmental policies of many states today can be attributed to a post-political condition in which the underlying assumption is that the liberal socioeconomic world order should be maintained (Swyngedouw, 2007). This postpolitical condition can also be interpreted in terms of the triumph of ecological modernization, in which environmental problems are transformed into an engine of innovation and growth, dethroning the state to the position of service supporter of green companies (Spaargaren & Mol, 1992). In such a framing, the ecological crisis actually helps uphold the tenets of industrial modernization by stimulating the development of so-called green technology, which in turn is supposed to be the primary driver of an economy geared toward growth. In other words, the ecological

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

5

problems become neutralized and converted into a stimulus for the utopia of neoliberalism. The postpolitical condition or various aspects of it have also been analyzed in terms of ideology and ideological mystification (Harvey, 1996; Hedrén, 2002). For example, the internationally celebrated Swedish environmental politics is based on an alleged consensus about an ideal environment which, because of its many and radically different meanings, turns out to be nothing but a “continually shifting signifier” (Soper, 1995, p. 151). This “environment” is the abstract space perfectly controlled by the monitoring and management implemented by the public administration and simultaneously the untouched wilderness bearing witness to origins and purity. It is also the cultural landscape, the fragile, sublime totality, the provider of ecosystem services, a recipient of waste, and an aestheticized icon for ecotourism, all adding to the messy and contradictory substrate on which the ideal harmony and balance between nature and society are supposed to be built. Such symbolic language of harmony, balance, and control hides the many real confl icts over competing values, risks, mobility, welfare, trade relationships, urban structures, spatial designs, etc., mystifying the genuinely political character of the issues at stake and making the environment a perfect companion to the ideology of growth and capitalism. In Chapter 3, Erik Swyngedouw analyzes this postpolitical constellation of green issues in discussing the preconditions for a revitalized democracy. Since the 1990s, when rising public awareness of the urgent need to resolve environmental problems could be noted in many countries, the dominant green discourse is no longer hegemonically produced solely by governments, parliaments, and public authorities. As this rising public awareness is met by new trends in business and goods production, we also note that advertising and media in general strongly invoke the correctness of what are considered “green” or “ecological” lifestyles. Industry produces enormous amounts of commodities, ranging from clothes signaling a supposedly green lifestyle to luxury products for upper-class consumers, or from ecotourism to the greening of public spaces. The postpolitical framing continuously merges with the framing of a new kind of consumerism, in which green issues are commodified. The focus in this commodified turn of the green discourse is on the picturesque, harmony, intimacy, happiness, mysticism, safety, family relationships, the local, and the private. Global relationships are rarely represented, and the domination of (upper) middle class norms, values, and aesthetics (“ecological design”) is strong, giving rise to aestheticization rather than critical political analysis (Hedrén, 2009). Taken together, this can be viewed as a concretization of what is commonly described as the commodification of nature or green issues (Harvey, 1996; Jameson, 2010), which accentuates the nonpolitical framing already produced by the postpolitical turn in institutionalized politics (Meister & Japp, 2002). In such an era of political resignation, when potential controversies have been transformed into matters of lifestyle, “the utopian spirit remains more necessary than ever” (Jacoby, 1999, p 181).

6

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

In addition, international cooperation for sustainable development, led by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, appeals very strongly to management instead of politics. It is, as Phil Macnaghten and John Urry put it, avowedly apolitical (Macnaghten & Urry, 1998). There is no doubt that this global framing of issues related to environment and development is strongly correlated with postpolitical tendencies in many nations. Several authors have carefully critiqued how the sustainable development concept has been formulated and applied over the years (e.g., Boström, 2012; Redclift, 2005; Robinson, 2004; Swyngedouw, 2010). Several chapters in this book (notably those by Hedrén, Swyngedouw, Hornborg, and Gunnarsson-Östling) address problems arising from this depoliticized “common sense” understanding of environmental concerns. In Chapter 5, Alf Hornborg criticizes the belief in technological fi xes for environmental problems, arguing that the production of new technology in capitalism will always be at the expense of someone’s cheap labor according to the pattern of unequal exchange. Moreover, he argues that there are defi nite physical limits to growth that will put an ultimate end to the expansion of resource extraction. Johan Hedrén (Chapter 4) targets the theory of resilience and argues that, contrary to its promises, the inward sense of this theoretical approach goes very well with the postpolitical hegemony, counteracting the development of new socioenvironmental arrangements. Green politicians often claim that the main arguments in the critique of traditional ideologies and current social and economic arrangements have merged into something that could be called green ideology. While this might be true as far as party politics goes, we believe that the field of green thought is instead a terrain of divergent and partly confl icting ideas about the “roots of the evil,” about our desires, hopes, and possible futures. Green thought ranges from an interpretation of the “crisis in nature” as a matter of social adaptation (to the putative principles of nature), to various views of what are described as the interlinked social-ecological-economic crises of global capitalism. Whereas this volume presents various diagnoses and understandings of green utopianism, it is throughout critical to the adaptation strategies that dominate in contemporary politics.

3. UTOPIANISM AS NO-PLACE AND CRITIQUE The world stripped of anticipation turns cold and grey. (Jacoby, 1999, p. 181) Whereas utopianism of all kinds is based on a sense of discontent with contemporary social or socioenvironmental relationships, scholars diverge in how they defi ne utopia. The concept is used in many different ways, for example, to signify a totalitarian political project, a certain genre of fiction, an ideal urban plan, or, as in the reasoning of Ernst Bloch, an expression

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

7

of lack and the desire for a better world or life (Levitas, 2001). It can serve simply to compensate, i.e., daydreaming as an escape, but even then it contains the seeds of critique by expressing a desire to go beyond the current state of things (Levitas, 2001). It has also been conceived of as a particular kind of political theory (Goodwin & Taylor, 2009). Generally, however, a loose defi nition is applied in which utopia is understood simply as a radically different, better, or ideal society (Levitas, 2011). For some authors, such as Krishan Kumar (1987) and Marius de Geus (1999), utopia is conceived of as a literary genre, depicting a society in full operation. Others, such as Ruth Levitas (2011), Ernst Bloch (1986), David Harvey (2000), and Fredric Jameson (1994, 2005), instead treat utopia as an analytical category, denoting thought about, and hope for, a better future. In Levitas’s (2011) view, utopia means social constructs that arise as “a response to an equally socially constructed gap between the needs and wants generated by a particular society and the satisfactions available to and distributed by it” (p. 210). Utopias have often been described as spaces for speculation and critique in the interest of change (Sargisson, 1996), and this will be the most important aspect of the concept in this volume. Krishan Kumar (1999) distinguishes utopian thought from literary utopias or utopia proper. While utopia proper is a description of what is considered a better society, not as an abstract ideal but as a society in full operation (Kumar, 1987), utopian thought is more fragmentary, denoting a wide range of visionary expressions, from abstract principles to concrete social practices. Utopia can also be practiced, either as temporary experiments with alternative social organization or on a more regular basis in intentional communities. This volume will only occasionally engage with utopia proper in Kumar’s sense, focusing instead on utopian thought and utopian practices. A distinction is often made between utopia and dystopia. Utopias elaborate on potentials and promising tendencies, while dystopias focus on problems and maladies. While dystopias often take the form of a narrative, including a certain subject position, utopias have more frequently been represented as static visions (Jameson, 1994). Engagement in the dialectics of social process and change (Harvey, 2000), however, has been prominent in the utopianism of recent decades, making dystopia and utopia harder to distinguish. Irrespective of their form and character, both utopias and dystopias are here understood as different manifestations of utopianism. Utopianism is based on certain principles or sets of fundamental values (Stillman, 2001), and often those principles are held to generate a radically different society (Suvin, 2003). However, whereas utopia is by definition always somewhere else, it is also constrained by the imaginative resources at hand in contemporary society. As Fredric Jameson puts it, “even a noplace must be put together out of already existing representations” (Jameson, 2005, p. 24). Accordingly, a utopia inevitably to some extent expresses the ethos of its times (Heilbroner, 1996).

8

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

While utopianism generally entails a critique of contemporary society, not all utopianism is about radical alternatives: It can just as well be based on principles enshrined by powerful groups and already strongly affect existing social relationships. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the utopia called neoliberalism, which has been strongly supported by right-wing ideologists for decades. Utopias can thus serve very different interests and purposes. Utopian narratives often follow a certain structure. For some unforeseen reason, someone happens to arrive at an ideal place, often an island, and eventually goes back home to tell the story of this. A new delegation is then sent out to map this utopia in more detail, but the place cannot be found. This plot signals that a utopia is not only a good place but also a “noplace,” and that any attempt to treat it as a blueprint for realization will fail. In other words, when a totality is expressed in utopian form, it should be thought of as a “no-place” to reflect on, learn from, and investigate critically. Any idea of fi nal perfection or closure is rejected. A great deal of utopian thought throughout history (including Thomas More’s Utopia) is resistant to closure and celebrates process over product (Harvey, 2000; Sargisson, 2000). Utopias should actually not be assumed to express a search for perfection, and utopian thought is generally not about perfect places (Sargent, 2003; Sargisson, 1996, 2007). Although examples of perfectionist utopias exist, the bulk of utopianism is instead experimental, exploring certain principles and engaging with process, change, and critique. This feature, that utopian thought concerns not only issues of spatial organization, formation, and relationships, but also change and the regulation of social and physical processes, has over the years become ever more significant. A utopia should therefore not be regarded as a fi nal plan for a general transformation, but instead as an indispensable source of inspiration, propelling desire, imaginative capacity, reflexivity, change, and expectations of a better society. In Chapter 6, Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling argues for the importance of generating multiple images of the future. Urban planning indeed has a history of utopianism and striving to create “ideal cities,” although, as many of these ideal plans, often realized in large-scale projects, have proven to be problematic, “utopian” has become a pejorative in this context. Gunnarsson-Östling argues that urban planning should not give up on the utopian but instead articulate different images of the future to highlight the political dimensions of planning and hence transparency and possibilities for democratic influence. It has been argued that the postmodern epistemological turn, emphasizing the fluidity of knowledge claims and the difficulty of interpreting and representing others’ needs and desires, has strongly challenged utopian thought. Ruth Levitas points out that this led to “a greater provisionality and reflexivity of the utopian mode, and a marked shift from an emphasis on representation or content to an emphasis on process” (Levitas, 2001, p. 25). These challenges might have helped weaken the transformative potential, as

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

9

is sometimes argued, but they were definitely not only negative: the more experimental style of utopianism that has developed in recent years counteracts tendencies to confuse utopias with blueprints. However, when propelled by furious critique from authors favoring the hegemony of capitalism, or “free market fundamentalism” (Jameson, 2010, p. 22), there was definitely a period when any radical utopianism, be it feminist, red, or green, was in decline, evincing a crisis of imagination, but at the turn of the millennium, a number of authors voiced the need to overcome this crisis (Harvey, 2000; Moylan, 2003; Sargisson, 1996). What is more, not only do we need new utopian energy to nurture imaginative activity, we also need the fundamental will to change, i.e., the utopian impulse (Jameson, 1994, 2010).

4. THE PURPOSES OF CONTEMPORARY UTOPIANISM The most common motivations for engagement in utopianism are connected to the insight that current parliamentary politics lacks the capacity to seriously engage with alternative, possible futures. We argue that utopianism serves the following functions: 1. Exploration of alternative socioenvironmental orders: In its narrative forms, utopianism lays out daily life according to certain alternative ideas about social arrangements and, in so doing, complements the abstract reasoning of political theorists. Utopias allow people to playfully investigate alternative ideas and to escape from presentday dogmatic thinking (de Geus, 1999). Accordingly, utopias can be treated as heuristic devices for exploring and evaluating what might be possible or impossible (Levitas, 2001). 2. Utopianism as refl exivity and critique: All utopianism draws on, and is thus limited by, current experiences and understandings of social relationships, although, by introducing “alien” principles and relationships, contemporary orders are approached from afar. Utopias are fictive and illusionary, representations of orders that are thought of as beyond or outside dominant structures. As such, they serve as positions “from which to investigate the ideals, undertakings, and institutions of contemporary society, encourage a critical perspective on them, inspire a thoughtful evaluation of present and alternative individual and social ideals and activities, and consider if and where change is feasible and desirable” (Stillman, 2001, p. 11). Utopias can therefore function as regulative ideals against which unexamined contemporary norms, principles, and values can be evaluated, serving as stimulants and means of social criticism (Levitas, 2001, 2011). Through this critique, utopianism also serves as a means for destabilizing and relativizing the present, setting it in a context in which its fundamental elements must compete with alternative orders.

10

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén 3. Stimulation of the will to change and the power of imagination: From a radical political point of view, a main problem with current social orders is that the will to change is weak. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a right-wing rhetoric rapidly trumpeted the triumph of capitalism as representing the end of history. The failure of the Soviet Union to withstand competition from the capitalist world was treated as the end of socialism by right-wing analysts, and the Soviet failure ever to create a truly socialist regime demoralized those seeking radical change. For a while, then, utopianism was believed to be in decline—though the paradoxically utopian character of neoliberalism had not yet been recognized (Harvey, 2000). Taking that into consideration, it becomes apparent that we do not just need to stimulate utopianism per se, but also to lay bare the very different directions suggested by different utopias. A key function of utopia is arguably raising consciousness and stimulating the will to transform (Moylan, 1986); an even more important function, however, is to promote plurality of vision, expanding the range of beliefs about what is possible (Wright, 2010). While utopias serve to strengthen the will to change, it is also necessary to connect this will with an opening of the mind to alternative possibilities: We need to broaden the range of imaginable alternatives (Jameson, 2005). In his exploration of utopian thought in science fiction, Archeologies of the Future, Fredric Jameson calls for “anti-anti-utopianism” (Jameson, 2005, p. xvi). The persistent denial of any alternative to the neoliberal or neoconservative utopia that sets itself up as a blueprint for development today must be recognized as an ideological mystification hiding its totalitarian dimension. The demand is not just for more utopianism, but for the kind of utopianism that liberates people from the dominant thought patterns established by the utopia of neoliberalism that sail under the false flag of anti-utopianism. The logic of the utopianism needed is estrangement, “the disruption of the taken-for-granted nature of present reality” (Levitas, 1997, p. 75). The goal then would be to foster the utopian impulse, to stimulate hope and desire for a radically different society that addresses the concurrent ecological, social, and economic crises and explores alternative socio-environmental arrangements. 4. Transgression of current orders and structures: One main reason for recent interest in utopianism is its supposed potential to stimulate transgression, to cross the boundaries of thought and understanding that dominate minds in a specific society, to “enable ourselves to break free of mental constraints and think differently” (Sargisson, 2000, p. 3). As Lucy Sargisson argues in a conversation with Ruth Levitas about the conditions for utopianism, such activities are not only about change in the future, but also about transforming contemporary thought and understandings (Levitas & Sargisson, 2003). Whereas societies are to some extent imagined communities, a transformation

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

11

of the imagination could also be interpreted as change per se. Moreover, changed understandings are likely also to affect everyday life and goals and expectations. Sargisson (2007, p. 37) advocates “paradigm shifts in consciousness” through glimpses of new conceptual spaces to be used in analyzing the contemporary social order.

5. TRANSFORMING PRACTICES AND POLITICS What kind of architecture (in the broadest possible sense of that term) do we collectively want to create for the socioecological world in which we have our being? Not to pose that question is to evade the most crucial task confronting all forms of human action. (Harvey, 1996, p. 14)

5.1 Transition and Do-It-Yourself Culture The late 1990s and early ‘00s saw heated debates over the lack of “corporate social responsibility,” and social movements, notably what came to be called the “antiglobalization” movement, were pushing for multinational corporations to act more responsibly and for transnational institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and UN to set global environmental and social standards. Groups desiring structural change gathered at the annual World Social Forum, beginning in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001, and rallied at the international climate summits, pressing corporations and governments to agree to act to curb climate change. However, in the aftermath of the “failure” of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 and in subsequent climate summits, sentiments have perhaps shifted. The Transition Network movement, its front figure Rob Hopkins, and environmental journalists such as George Monbiot are explicitly arguing that there are no benign public institutions or governments that will “take care” of things and resolve problems when they appear (Hopkins, 2012; Monbiot, 2010). They argue that institutions such as the UN, the EU, and national governments have little capacity to handle a global fi nancial meltdown or the serious socioenvironmental crisis that four degrees of global warming would imply—much less capacity than most of us would like to think. Hence, the Transition movement and similar initiatives have emerged in a spirit of do-it-yourself: Start where you are, with the means at hand—your neighborhood, friends, and workplace—and step by step change practices, exchange knowledge, reskill, and build alliances with others and, on this basis, move on to work for institutional change. Activities often take place in loose networks with the help of social media, some focusing on placespecific projects, others coalescing around certain themes or events—such as the global Critical Mass rides, described by Isaksson in Chapter 7. Hence, in recent years we can see increased interest in transforming everyday practices—how we live, work, eat, socialize, and consume—and

12

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

in reengaging with practical making—repairing things, growing food, knitting, baking, remaking houses and collective spaces, and finding ways out of the corporate work-and-spend cycle (Astyk, 2008; Carlsson, 2008; Hou, 2010). In this local work, environmental concerns are often interwoven with questions of quality of life, use of time, community cohesion, and an ethic of care. Though this localized, and at times individualized, focus can be criticized for not working for structural and institutional change, it can equally be seen as a predecessor to, and bringing about, institutional and political transformation.

5.2 Alternative Economies A recurrent motif in contemporary socioenvironmental movements is attempts to strengthen local economies. With rising fuel and transport prices and possibly more competition over land resources, consumer goods currently produced in low-cost countries and transported long distances will likely become more expensive. Environmental activists and researchers argue that essential goods, such as food, clothes, building materials, and other basic necessities, need to be produced more locally (Darley et al., 2005; Heinberg & Lerch, 2010; Hopkins, 2012; Murphy, 2008). The standard economic formula and policymaking has long been phrased in terms of fi nding one’s competitive advantage, specializing, and producing for the export market. This formula is being challenged, particularly in the face of peak oil and the global fi nancial crises, as illustrated in Chapter 2 by J. K. Gibson-Graham. Under this pen name, Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham have for several years been rethinking regional development, mapping and articulating what might be called postcapitalist economies. In their chapter, they outline what regional development “driven by human intentionality and practices of cooperativism and environmental care” might be. They describe examples of localized postcapitalist economies— such as the worker-owned cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, engaged in urban farming, solar energy, and commercial laundry and the Mondragon Cooperative in Spain, engaged in a wide range of local sectors—fi nance, social services, health care, education, manufacturing, and agriculture. They point out how these forms of noncapitalist enterprises help strengthen the local economy rather than serving an export market and how the surpluses are distributed among the workers and reinvested locally rather than siphoned off to distant shareholders. Another way to strengthen local economies is through the use of local or complementary currencies. Hornborg (2010) advocates establishing “sphere economies,” for example, so that there is one market and currency for basic regional goods and services and then another international market and currency for specialized goods and services. In recent years of environmental and economic crises, there has been increased interest in local or alternative currencies or Local Exchange and Trading Schemes

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

13

(LETS), which can take the form of time banks, such as the Time Dollar used in the United States, or local notes such as the Bristol Pound (Seyfang, 2010). In Chapter 2, Gibson-Graham describe an alternative currency, the digital currency Ven, which is the fi rst currency to include carbon externalities and can be used to buy, sell, and trade knowledge, goods, and services at off -line pavilions in 130 cities around the world as well as on the Internet at large. Gibson-Graham describes this as peer-topeer exchange, which builds on the same idea of “peer economies” that Karin Bradley describes in Chapter 11. Both Gibson-Graham and Bradley explore examples of how the Internet facilitates peer-to-peer exchange, connecting those who have certain resources to offer—goods, knowledge, or services—to those who need such resources, but without a commercial intermediary. RelayRides is one such example, in which Internet applications and geomapping are used to connect car owners with car lenders. There are similar schemes for connecting land owners with growers, exchanging tools, or arranging overnight stays in private apartments. Bradley’s chapter deals with peer economies practiced in three different fields: architecture, hardware production, and collaborative consumption. Proponents of commons-based peer economies and open-source production argue that they signal the beginning of a larger societal transformation away from the twentieth century’s industrial and propriety economic forms (Benkler, 2006; Siefkes, 2007).

5.3 Housing Communities and Urban Commons Intentional communities, ecovillages, or other place-bound alternative communities are often criticized for creating a narrow form of utopianism, catering to groups of like-minded individuals, withdrawing from structural change and the messy reality outside their boundaries. Though this might at times be a relevant criticism, such place-based “microtopias” are often involved in translocal networks, exchanging information, learning, and engaging in various forms of outreach.1 By their mere existence they also show that alternative forms of living are possible. In this book, a number of examples of alternative communities are described and analyzed. Lucy Sargisson (Chapter 13) explores two contemporary quests for socially and ecologically sustainable communities— the New Urbanism and the cohousing movements—asking the question “Whose utopia is this?” Sargisson concludes that cohousing communities tend to be democratically shaped, designed, and governed by their residents, while New Urbanism communities tend to be more paternalistic, being creations of landowners or developers in conjunction with architects that residents later “buy into.” She concludes that there is a form of egalitarian utopianism in the cohousing movement and that cohousing generally does improve life for its residents “but does not necessarily form part of a wider agenda for social, political, ideological or economic change.”

14

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

In Chapter 12, Alexander Vasudevan takes us to the Berlin squatter scene. By analyzing four decades of squatting, he explores how the commons, or commoning, take geographical shape. The squatters possess the will to create not only housing and live-and-work commons, but see the city as a commons. In contrast to Sargisson’s more inward-looking communities, these housing squats are sites of broader political struggle to transform the city into a site of alternative living with new forms of urban citizenship. Vasudevan explores the micropolitical tactics of the squatters in rebuilding houses, taking action in public spaces, and participating in broader political processes, and argues that these can be described as attempts to create autonomous urbanism, i.e., “spaces where people desire to constitute non-capitalist, egalitarian and solidaristic forms of political, social and economic organization through a combination of resistance and creation” (Pickerill & Chatterton, 2006, p. 730). The notion of the commons is further elaborated on in Chapter 15 by the architects Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu. In their research-based practice, they are working on retrofitting the Parisian suburb of Colombes to become more ecologically resilient and socially just. They are developing a set of collective facilities: self-built ecological cohousing, a workspace for ecoconstruction and recycling, a fab lab (i.e., a small fabrication laboratory), and an agro–cultural unit with a microfarm, community gardens, energy production, and spaces for cultural and pedagogical activities. These collective facilities are intended to serve as sites for social organization, learning, and reskilling. They are to be managed and organized by the residents themselves, by local organizations, and/or run as social enterprises. The intention of this pilot project, conducted jointly with the municipality and local organizations, is to exemplify how participatory retrofitting of metropolitan suburbs could be done. They call their approach R-Urban, as the intention is to reconsider and develop the urban–rural intersections of the suburbs and to shorten the need–supply chains, making them as local as possible. Historically, utopian urban planning has often taken the form of “ideal cities” materialized in a specific urban form—the Garden City of Ebenezer Howard, Radiant City of Le Corbusier, and Broadacre City of Frank Lloyd Wright. In contrast to this, the R-Urban approach does not propose a specific urban form but rather a process for change starting from the existing urban fabric. In the international best-practice cases of sustainable urbanism, the examples cited are often newly built ecodistricts (Wheeler & Beatley, 2009; Farr, 2008). However, a major challenge from a European and Northern perspective is instead how to retrofit existing areas, perhaps particularly the postwar suburban landscape. In this context, and specifically in the participatory approach of Petcou and Petrescu, the role of the architect is less that of a designer shaping physical objects, but more of a comanager, initiator, negotiator, or enabler of change. The built environment is here regarded as something that ought to be coproduced and

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

15

comanaged by its inhabitants. This approach to architecture is evident in Bradley’s Chapter 11 dealing with peer economies and the coproduction and coconsumption of spaces and products. In the case of the French architect-designer-DJ-cook collective Exyzt, public spaces are coproduced and comanaged together with citizens. The collective comes with an initial idea and certain skills, but then shapes and remakes the public space together with its users, living and working on site. The coproduction of public spaces is also a theme in Meike Schalk’s Chapter 8, which deals with the transformation of the Tempelhof Field, a huge former airfield in Berlin. A current experimental interim use of the site is the so-called pioneer fields where citizens can use small plots for noncommercial “‘spontaneous’ temporary self-generated projects” (see Figure 8.2). Schalk is not concerned only with alternative ways of using public space, but even more with how public planning can become more democratic and participatory. She explores how citizen initiatives have influenced the Berlin planning apparatus and what forms of institutional change might be needed for future public planning to become more democratic and transformative. Berlin is known for its radicalism and citizen-driven planning, in which authorities have learnt to incorporate and, in one way or another, use the energy of its active residents. The Berlin context and the experimental use and planning of the Tempelhof Field green space stands in stark contrast to Ylva Uggla’s case of Stockholm and one of its larger urban parks (Chapter 9). Here the urban park, Nationalstadsparken, instead serves to stabilize the existing socioenvironmental order. The public authorities’ emphasis on preserving the unique character and history of the park turns it into a “paradise contrived.” The park contains royal castles, sites associated with famous poets, as well as everyday recreation areas. In the authorities’ management, the park’s historic and pristine character is emphasized— indirectly fostering respectful and law-abiding use of the park. With reference to Kaika (2005), Uggla speculates whether the preservation of the park might in fact legitimize or reinforce socioenvironmental disintegration elsewhere. By highlighting the preservation of the pristine green park, the authorities might fi nd it easier to build housing and expand roads on less pristine green spaces elsewhere in the region. These examples illustrate how the built environment and open spaces can serve as sites of experimentation, utopian desires, and the nexus of contestations over the future, not only over the use and forming of space but over broader ideas about how to live together.

5.4 Small Scale: Big Change The ecological modernization discourse often advocates large-scale, advanced technological solutions. One such recent example is the planned large-scale construction of solar energy plants in the Sahara Desert, where European energy companies are to construct power stations and then

16

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

transport the electricity to Europe (Meinhold, 2009). Even more drastic are the experiments with geo-engineering to offset global warming via solar radiation management techniques, iron fertilization of oceans, or spraying clouds with miniscule droplets of seawater to make them whiter and hence reflect more sunlight back into space (Black, 2012). In Chapter 5, Hornborg criticizes this type of technological utopianism, arguing that it lacks an understanding of thermodynamics and how economic value is created. Moreover, he points out that this technological utopianism fails to address power issues such as: Who will benefit from the technology? Who can afford it? Whose livelihoods will be displaced by it? For example, the promise that biofuel imports would give “green cars” to those in the global North soon proved problematic as the expansion of soy and sugar monocultures to produce these biofuels in countries such as Brazil meant lost biodiversity, lost livelihoods for smaller farmers, and social conflicts (Galli, 2011). In contrast to such centralized mega-energy projects, Martin Hultman (Chapter 14) discusses the 1980s vision of a decentralized hydrogen society. Through an archival analysis, Hultman illustrates how a demonstration project for households and cars run on local hydropower materialized in Sweden, was brought into high-level politics, became internationally recognized, but was then relegated to the refuse heap by the advocates of largescale nuclear energy. This struggle between locally managed energy systems and centralized large-scale systems is still ongoing. Tom Mels (Chapter 10) analyzes the contemporary expansion of large-scale corporate wind power and the conservative anti-wind power movement counteracting this expansion. He argues that both of these strands are problematic and lack a locally rooted desire for a more environmentally just future. Using Harvey’s (1995, 1996, 2009) notion of “militant particularism,” Mels advocates tying together diverse local struggles to achieve larger common goals. In the context of energy provision, this can mean tying together initiatives for locally managed utility systems, such as the wind-power cooperatives common in Denmark and Germany or the decentralized rainwater harvesting schemes mentioned by Gibson-Graham. In Isaksson’s (Chapter 7) search for radical schemes for sustainable mobility, it is also in the decentralized practices of cycling activism that she fi nds most transformative potential. Small Scale, Big Change was the title of an architectural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2011, arguing that it is often in small-scale, localized, and low-budget projects that we today fi nd socially engaged architecture. Compared with the ideologues of modernist utopian manifestos and grand architectural visions, these architects operate through small-scale and collaborative approaches. This book includes examples of such small-scale changes—in housing, transport, energy provision, use of space, consumption, production, and economic exchange—and discussions of whether and how they can be seeds of larger societal transformation. Utopianism’s various guises—imaginaries, critical readings, micropractice transformation, and political reform—all contribute to changing the

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

17

perception of “the possible.” In line with Lucy Sargisson, we hope that this collection of perspectives on and examples of contemporary utopianism can help revitalize the current political climate: Utopias—good places that are no place—are good places from whence to attempt this kind of thinking. They are outside the real world, but engage critically with it. They arise from discontent and attempt creative imaginings of how things might be better. They provide for bodies-ofthought spaces in which creativity is possible, they add momentum and resist the petrification to which academic minds are vulnerable. They give to social and political movements a sense of direction or vision. Utopias are ideal places in which to engage in the kind of thinking that I suggest is appropriate for the contemporary political environment. (Sargisson, 2000, p. 3) NOTES 1. For example, the Global Ecovillage Network is an umbrella organization bringing together ecovillages and intentional communities from various countries—spreading information, exchanging skills, working for various forms of cooperation and global partnership; see http://gen.ecovillage.org, retrieved 12 May 2013.

REFERENCES Astyk, S. (2008). Depletion and abundance: Life on the new home front. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Beckett, S. (1983). Worstward ho. London, UK: John Calder. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Black, R. (2012, 24 August). Geoengineering: Risks and benefits. BBC News Science and Environment. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scienceenvironment-19371833 Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Boström, M. (2012). A missing pillar? Challenges in theorizing and practicing social sustainability: Introduction to the special issue. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, 8(1), 3–14. Carlsson, C. (2008). Nowtopia: How pirate programmers, outlaw bicyclists, and vacant-lot gardeners are inventing the future today. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Darley, J., Room, D., & Rich, C. (2005). Relocalize now! Getting ready for climate change and the end of cheap oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. de Geus, M. (1999). Ecological utopias: Envisioning the sustainable society. Utrecht, The Netherlands: International Books. Farr, D. (2008). Sustainable urbanism: Urban design with nature. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Galli, E. (2011). Frame analysis in environmental conflicts: The case of ethanol production in Brazil. (Doctoral dissertation). KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

18 Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén Goodwin, B., & Taylor, K. (2009). The politics of utopia. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Hajer, M. A. (1995). The politics of environmental discourse: Ecological modernization and the policy process. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Harvey, D. (1995). Militant particularism and global ambition: The conceptual politics of place, space, and environment in the work of Raymond Williams. Social Text, 42, 69–98. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, & the geography of difference. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Harvey, D. (2009). Cosmopolitanism and the geographies of freedom. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hedrén, J. (2002). Critical notes on sustainability and democracy. In U. Svedin & B. Hägerhäll Aniansson (Eds.), Sustainability, local democracy and the future: The Swedish model (pp. 17–48). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Hedrén, J. (2009). Ekologi som kris, livsstil och estetik: den ekologiska retorikens ideologiska och utopiska energier [Ecology as crisis, lifestyle, and aesthetics: the ideological and utopian energies of ecological rhetoric]. In A. Nyblom (Ed)., Kultur~Natur: Konferens för kulturstudier i Sverige 2009, Norrköping 15–17 juni (pp. 431–436). Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings No. 40. Linköping, Sweden: Linköping University Electronic Press. Heilbroner, R. (1996). Visions of the future: The distant past, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Heinberg, R. (2007). Peak everything: Waking up to the century of declines. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Heinberg, R., & Lerch, D. (Eds.) (2010). The post-carbon reader: Managing the 21st century’s sustainability crises. Healdsburg, CA: Watershed Media. Hornborg, A. (2010). Myten om maskinen: Essäer om makt, modernitet och miljö [Myth of the machine: essays on power, modernity, and the environment]. Göteborg, Sweden: Daidalos. Hornborg, A. (2011). Global ecology and unequal exchange: Fetishism in a zerosum world. London, UK: Routledge. Hopkins, R. (2012). The transition companion: Making your community more resilient in uncertain times. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Hou, J. (Ed.) (2010). Insurgent public space: Guerilla urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities. London, UK: Routledge. Jacoby, R. (1999). The end of utopia: Politics and culture in an age of apathy. New York: Basic Books. Jameson, F. (1994). The seeds of time. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jameson, F. (2005). Archeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other science fi ctions. London, UK: Verso. Jameson, F. (2010). Utopia as method, or the uses of the future. In M.D. Gordin, H. Tilley, & G. Prakash (Eds.), Utopia/dystopia: Conditions of historical possibility (pp. 21–44). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kaika, M. (2005). City of fl ows: Modernity, nature, and the city. New York: Routledge. Krueger, R., & Gibbs, D. (Eds.) (2007). The sustainable development paradox: Urban political economy in the United States and Europe. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Kumar, K. (1987). Utopia and anti-utopia in modern times. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kumar, K. (1999). Utopianism. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

19

Latouche, S. (2010). Degrowth. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18, 519–522. Levitas, R. (1997). Educated hope: Ernst Bloch on abstract and concrete utopia. In J.O. Daniel & T. Moylan (Eds.), Not yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (pp. 65–79). London, UK: Verso. Levitas, R. (2001). For utopia: The (limits of the) utopian function in late capitalist society. In B. Goodwin (Ed.), The philosophy of utopia (pp. 25–43). London, UK: Frank Cass. Levitas, R. (2011). The concept of utopia. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Levitas, R., & Sargisson, L. (2003). Utopia in dark times: Optimism/pessimism and utopia/dystopia. In R. Baccolini & T. Moylan (Eds.), Dark horizons: Science fiction and the dystopian imagination (pp. 13–28). New York, NY: Routledge. Macnaghten, P., & Urry, J. (1998). Contested natures. London, UK: Sage. Meinhold, B. (2009, 22 June). World’s largest solar project planned for Saharan Desert. Inhabitat. Retrieved from http://inhabitat.com/worlds-largest-solarproject-sahara-desert Meister, M., & Japp, P.M. (Eds.) (2002). Enviropop: Studies in environmental rhetoric and popular culture. Westport, CT: Praeger. Monbiot, G. (2010, 21 September). Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it’s dead [web log post]. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/20/climate-changenegotiations-failure Moylan, T. (1986). Demand the impossible: Science fiction and the utopian imagination. New York, NY: Methuen. Moylan, T. (2003). “The moment is here . . . and it’s important”: State, agency, and dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling. In R. Baccolini & T. Moylan (Eds.), Dark horizons: Science fiction and the dystopian imagination (pp. 135–154). New York, NY: Routledge. Murphy, P. (2008). Plan C: Community survival strategies for peak oil and climate change. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Parr, A. (2009). Hijacking sustainability. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Pickerill, J., & Chatterton, P. (2006). Notes towards autonomous geographies: Creation, resistance, and self-management as survival tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 30, 730–746. Redclift, M. (2005). Sustainable development (1987–2005): An oxymoron comes of age. Sustainable Development, 13, 212–227. Robinson, J. (2004). Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development. Ecological Economics, 48, 369–364. Sargent, L.T. (2003). The problem of the “flawed utopia”: A note on the costs of eutopia. In R. Baccolini & T. Moylan (Eds.), Dark horizons: Science fiction and the dystopian imagination (pp. 225–232). New York, NY: Routledge. Sargisson, L. (1996). Contemporary feminist utopianism. London, UK: Routledge. Sargisson, L. (2000). Utopian bodies and the politics of transgression. London, UK: Routledge. Sargisson, L. (2007). The curious relationship between politics and utopia. In T. Moylan & R. Baccolini (Eds.), Utopia method vision: The use value of social dreaming (pp. 25–46). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Seyfang, G. (2010). Low-carbon communities and the currencies of change. In M. Peters, S. Fudge, & T. Jackson (Eds.), Low carbon communities: Imaginative approaches to combating climate change locally (pp. 108–122). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Siefkes, C. (2007). From exchange to contributions: Generalizing peer production into the physical world. Berlin, Germany: Siefkes-Verlag. Soper, K. (1995). What is nature? Culture, politics and the non-human. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

20 Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén Spaargaren, G., & Mol, A.P.J. (1992). Sociology, environment, and modernity: Ecological modernisation as a theory of social change. Society and Natural Resources, 5, 323–344. Stillman, P. G. (2001). “Nothing is, but what is not”: Utopias as practical political philosophy. In B. Goodwin (Ed.), The philosophy of utopia (pp. 9–24). London, UK: Frank Cass. Suvin, D. (2003). Theses on dystopia 2001. In R. Baccolini & T. Moylan (Eds.), Dark horizons: Science fiction and the dystopian imagination (pp. 187–202). New York, NY: Routledge. Swyngedouw, E. (2007). Impossible “sustainability” and the postpolitical condition. In R. Krueger & D. Gibbs (Eds.), The sustainable development paradox: Urban political economy in the United States and Europe (pp. 13–40). New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Swyngedouw, E. (2010). Trouble with nature: “Ecology as the new opium for the masses.” In J. Hillier & P. Healey (Eds.), The Ashgate research companion to planning theory: Conceptual challenges for spatial planning (pp. 299–318). Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Wheeler, S.M., & Beatley, T. (Eds.) (2009). The sustainable urban development reader (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge. Worldwatch Institute. (2012). State of the world 2012: Moving toward sustainable prosperity. Washington, DC: Island Press. Wright, E. O. (2010). Envisioning real utopias. London, UK: Verso.

Part I

The Politics of Science

This page intentionally left blank

2

Anthropocenic Politicization From the Politics of the Environment to Politicizing Environments Erik Swyngedouw Let’s start by stating that after “the rights of man,” the rise of the “the rights of Nature” is a contemporary form of the opium for the people. It is an only slightly camouflaged religion: the millenarian terror, concern for everything save the properly political destiny of peoples, new instruments for control of everyday life, the fear of death and catastrophes . . . It is a gigantic operation in the depoliticization of subjects. (Badiou, 2008, p. 139) We should reinvent utopia. But in what sense? There are two false meanings of utopia. One is this old notion of imagining an idea of society which we know will never be realized. The other is the capitalist utopia in the sense of new perverse desires that you are not only allowed but even solicited to realize. The true utopia is when the situation is so without issue, without a way to resolve it within the coordinates of the possible, that out of the pure urge of survival you have to invent a new space. Utopia is not kind of a free imagination; utopia is a matter of innermost urgency. You are forced to imagine it as the only way out, and this is what need today. (Žižek, quoted in Konner & Taylor, 2005)

This chapter explores an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, there is a consensual concern, shared by many politicians, activists, and most scientists, that the environmental conditions of the world are rapidly reaching a potentially irreversible tipping point threatening to plunge humans and nonhumans alike into an abyssal socioenvironmental decline. This concern has been translated into the incorporation of “environmental” themes into practically every policy domain, while explicitly “environmental” policies have been designed to mitigate or manage the growing anxiety over the condition Nature seems to be in. A proliferating literature and committed environmental activism invariably signals the importance of a determined environmentalization of politics to assure a “green future,” one that takes Nature really seriously while assuring that civilization as we know it can continue for a while longer. On the other hand, a growing number of political theorists and proliferating political activism, such as the Arab Spring and various Indignado and Occupy! movements that demand a radical and democratic overhaul of the existing social and political configuration,

24

Erik Swyngedouw

signaled that the past few decades have been characterized by a process of depoliticization whereby political matters have been reduced to the pluralist negotiation of a series of techno-organizational activities designed to manage consensually established issues and problems (including environmental ones), but within a social and political-economic frame—institutional liberal democracy as the sphere for public decision-making and market-led capitalism as the naturalized configuration for organizing the transformation and allocation of nature/resources—that is itself beyond contestation. I shall explore the apparent tension between the process of environmentalizing politics on the one hand and its insertion in an institutional configuration that is marked by alleged deepening processes of depoliticization or post-politicization on the other. More importantly, the elevation of the environmental condition to the status of universal global concern that requires urgent techno-managerial attention has in fact been one of the key drivers through which the annulment of the political has progressed. In addition, the inauguration of a politics of the environment, albeit nurtured by a fear of socioecological disintegration, is sutured by a particular fantasmic scripting of what Nature is, deflects attention from the socioecological predicament we are actually in, solidifies the very dynamics and processes that produce radically uneven and unequal socioecological outcomes and prevents a politicization of the environment understood as the egalitariandemocratic dispute and struggle over the production of the socioecological conditions we wish to inhabit. Producing green utopias cannot be other than a political process. It is precisely the latter that much of the contemporary politics of the environment not only disavows but actually forecloses. All this unfolds in a context in which it is now abundantly clear that environmental conditions are rapidly worsening. Climate scientists, for example, argue that the Kyoto objective of keeping global warming below 2°C is a pipe dream; temperature increases of more than 4°C are indeed very likely and probably inevitable, even if we change course radically today. Despite the promises of the “green” economy and the policy attention to sustainable green futures, the socioenvironmental nightmare that many have warned us of is actually already here. We shall conclude by considering the emergent hesitant forms of repoliticization that may open new avenues for politicizing the environment.

1. THE DEATH OF NATURE: EMERGENT VIBRANT NATURES The death or the end of Nature has been announced many times1 (see, e.g., McKibben, 1989). This “death” does not, of course, imply a dematerialization of human life. On the contrary, humans and nonhumans are ever more entangled through myriad interactions and transformative processes, some which alter the very dynamics of deep geological time itself. “Welcome to the Anthropocene” has become in recent years a popular catch-phrase to

Anthropocenic Politicization

25

inform us that we are now in a new geological era, one in which humans are coproducers of the deep geological time that hitherto had slowly ground away irrespective of human dabbling with the surface layers of earth and atmosphere. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term about a decade ago to refer to the successor of the Holocene. Since the beginning of industrialization, so the Anthropocenic argument goes, humans’ increasing interaction with their physical conditions of existence has resulted in a qualitative shift in the geoclimatic behavior of the earth system. Ocean acidification, biodiversity transformation, gene displacement and recombination, climate change, and major infrastructures affecting the earth’s geodetic dynamics have resulted in knotting together “natural” and “social” processes such that humans have become active agents in coshaping earth’s deep geological time. The term “Anthropocene” affi rms that humans and nature are coproduced and that the particular historical epoch that goes under the name of capitalism forged this mutual determination. The Anthropocene is indeed just another name for Nature’s death. Nature framed as the imaginary externally conditioning sphere of human existence has come to an end. This cannot be unmade, however hard we try. It is from the position of the radical entanglement of the social and the natural that the environmental conundrum ought to be approached. Such perspectives move the gaze from thinking through a “politics of the environment” to “politicizing the environment.” This extends the terrain of the political to domains hitherto left to the mechanics of Nature. The nonhuman world becomes “enrolled” in a process of politicization, and that is precisely what needs to be fully endorsed. The death of Nature signals the demise of particular imaginings of Nature, of a set of symbolic inscriptions that inferred a singular Nature, at once external and internal to humans and human life. Yet particular imaginaries and fantasies about what Nature is still suture the terrain of environmental politics. In Ecology Without Nature, for example, Timothy Morton (2007) calls Nature “a transcendental term in a material mask [that] stands at the end of a potentially infi nite series of other terms that collapse into it” (p. 14). He distinguishes between at least three interrelated places or meanings of Nature in our symbolic universe. First, as a floating signifier, the “content” of Nature is expressed through a range of diverse terms that all collapse in the Name of Nature: DNA, elephants, mineral water, the Andes, hunger, heart-beat, markets, desire, profits, CO2 , greed, competition, etc. Such metonymic lists, although offering a certain unstable meaning, are inherently slippery and show a stubborn refusal to fi xate meaning consistently and durably. Morton’s argument resonates with Slavoj Žižek’s statement that “Nature does not exist!” His Lacanian perspective insists on the difference “between [a] series of ordinary signifiers and the central element which has to remain empty in order to serve as the underlying organizing principle of the series” (Žižek, 2000, p. 52). Nature constitutes exactly such a central (empty or floating) element whose meaning can be gleaned only by relating

26

Erik Swyngedouw

it to other more directly recognizable signifiers. Nature becomes a symbolic tapestry—a montage—of meaning, held together with quilting points. For example, “biodiversity,” “eco-cities,” “CO2 ,” or “climate change” can be thought of as quilting points (or points de capiton) through which a certain matrix of meanings of Nature is articulated. These quilting points are also more than mere anchoring points; they refer to a beyond of meaning, a certain enjoyment that becomes structured in fantasy (e.g., the desire for an environmentally balanced and socially harmonious order). In other words, there is always a remainder or excess that evades symbolization. Second, Morton argues, Nature has “the force of law, a norm against which deviation is measured” (Morton, 2007, p. 14), for example, when Nature is summoned to normalize heterosexuality and to think queerness as deviant and unnatural or to see competition between humans as natural and altruism as a product of “culture” (or vice versa). Normative power inscribed in Nature is invoked as an organizing principle that is transcendental and universal, allegedly residing outside the remit allocated to humans and nonhumans alike, but that exercises an inescapable performative effect and leaves a nonalienable imprint. This is a view that sees Nature as something given, as a solid foundational (or ontological) basis from which we act and that can be invoked to provide an anchor for ethical or normative judgments of ecological, social, cultural, political, or economic procedures and practices. Consider, for example, how the vision of a stable climate is elevated to a “public good,” both by the British parliament and by the UNHCHR: “[T] he delivery of a stable climate, as an essential public good, is an immediate security, prosperity and moral imperative, not simply a long-term environmental challenge” (cited in Hulme, 2010, p. 270). Third, Nature invokes, for Morton, a plurality of fantasies and desires, such as the dream of a sustainable nature, a balanced climate, the desire for love-making on a warm beach under the setting sun, the fear of the revenge of Nature if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Nature is invoked here as the stand-in for other, often repressed or invisible, longings and passions—the Lacanian objet petit a around which we shape our drives and that covers up for the lack of ground on which to base our subjectivity (Žižek, 1999). It is the sort of fantasy displayed in calls for restoring a true (original but presumably presently lost) humane harmony by retrofitting the world to ecological balance and in the longing for a Nature that functions as the big “Other,” the one that guides us on the path to redeeming our predicament. Here, Nature is invoked as the “external” terrain that offers the promise, if attended to properly, of fostering a truly harmonious life, a shiny green utopia, but also from which threat of disaster emanates if we perturb its internal functioning. In sum, these three uses of Nature simultaneously imply an attempt to fi xate its unstable meaning while being presented as a fetishized “Other” that reflects or at least functions as a symptom through which our displaced deepest fears and longings are expressed. As such, the concept of Nature

Anthropocenic Politicization

27

becomes ideology par excellence and functions ideologically, and by that I mean that it forecloses thought, disavows the inherent slipperiness of the concept, and ignores the multiplicities, inconsistencies, and incoherencies inscribed in its symbolization (Morton, 2007, p. 24). For Slavoj Žižek, any attempt to suture the meaning of empty signifiers is a decidedly political gesture. The disavowal or the refusal to recognize the political character of such gestures, the attempts to universalize and suture the situated and positioned meanings inscribed metonymically in Nature, lead to perverse forms of depoliticization, to rendering Nature politically mute and socially neutral (Swyngedouw, 2007). The disavowal of the empty core of Nature by colonizing its meaning, by filling in the void, staining it with inserted meanings that are subsequently generalized and homogenized, is the gesture par excellence of depoliticization, of placing Nature outside the political, that is, outside the field of public dispute, contestation, and disagreement. In addition, such symbolizations of Nature disavow the Real of natures, that is, the heterogeneous, unpredictable, occasionally catastrophic, acting out of socioecological processes that mark the Anthropocene. It is these unsymbolized natures that haunt us in their excessive acting: droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis, killer heat waves, roaming environmental refugees, oil-spills, recombinant DNA, floods, globalizing diseases, and disintegrating polar ice are just a few of the more evocative markers of such socionatural processes. Bruno Latour, albeit from a rather different perspective, equally proposes abandoning Nature and advocates turning to a political ecology that sees the world as fi lled with socionatural quasiobjects. For Latour, there is neither Nature nor Society (or Culture) outside the cultural and discursive practices that produced this binary formulation (Latour, 1993). For him, the imbroglios of human and nonhuman things that proliferate in the world consist of continuously multiplying nature–culture hybrids that stand between the poles of nature and culture. Think, for example, of greenhouse gases, Dolly the cloned sheep, tar sands, dams, oil rigs, cities, or electromagnetic waves. They are simultaneously social/cultural and natural/physical, and their coherence, i.e., their relative spatial and temporal sustainability, is predicated upon assembled networks of human and nonhuman relationships (Swyngedouw, 2006). Natures are always already social. Jane Bennett (2010) extends this by insisting that these socionatural materials are “vibrant matter,” exercising their own performative effect in the shaping of socioenvironmental things, conditions, dynamics, and politics. Much of this thought is perhaps best summarized by the geophilosophical perspectives of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machine together . . . the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever . . . the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within the form of production or industry, just as

28 Erik Swyngedouw they do within the life of man as a species . . . man and nature are not like two opposition terms confronting each other . . . rather they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, pp. 2–5). These perspectives, too, reject retaining the concept of Nature and suggest in its stead to consider the infi nite heterogeneity of the procedures of assembling, disassembling, and reassembling the rhizomatic networks through which things, bodies, natures, and cultures become enmeshed and through which relatively stable quasiobjects come into view (Braun, 2006; Castree, 2003). This gesture also attempts to repoliticize the “environment,” to let quasiobjects enter the public assembly of political concerns (Latour, 2004). Eminent natural scientists echo these critical social theory perspectives. Harvard biologists Lewontin and Levins (2007), for example, also argue that Nature has been filled by scientists with a particular set of universalizing meanings that ultimately depoliticize Nature and facilitate particular mobilizations of such “scientifically” constructed Nature. In contrast, they insist that the biological world is inherently relationally constituted through contingent, historically produced, infi nitely variable forms in which each part, human or nonhuman, organic or nonorganic, is intrinsically bound up with the wider relationships that make up the whole (Harvey, 1996). There is no safety in Nature: Nature is unpredictable and erratic, moving spasmodically and blindly. There is no fi nal guarantee in Nature on which to base our politics or the social, on which to mirror our dreams, hopes, or aspirations. In sum, and in particular as a result of the growing global awareness of “the environmental crisis,” the inadequacy of our symbolic representations of Nature becomes more acute as the Real of natures, in the form of a wide variety of socioecological threats (e.g., global warming, new diseases, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and pollution), invades and unsettles our received understandings of Nature, forcing a transformation of the signifying chains that attempt to provide “content” for Nature, while at the same time exposing the impossibility of capturing fully the Real of natures (Žižek, 2008). The point of the above argument is that the natures we see and work with are necessarily radically imagined, scripted, and symbolically charged as Nature. These inscriptions are always inadequate, they leave a gap, an excess or remainder, and maintain a certain distance from the coproduced natures that are there, which are complex, chaotic, often unpredictable, radically contingent, historically and geographically variable, risky, patterned in endlessly complex ways, ordered along “strange” attractors. In other words, there is no Nature out there that needs or requires salvation in name of either Nature itself or a generic humanity. There is nothing foundational in Nature that needs, demands, or requires sustaining. There is no utopia to be discerned in the inner functioning of Nature. The debate and

Anthropocenic Politicization

29

controversies over Nature and what to do with it, in contrast, signal our political inability to engage in directly political and social arguments and strategies about rearranging the socioecological coordinates of everyday life, the production of new socionatural configurations, the contingencies of material natures, and the arrangements of sociometabolic organization (something usually called capitalism) that we inhabit. In the next section, we shall exemplify and deepen this analysis by looking at sustainability policies and arguments as depoliticizing gestures, predicated upon a growing concern for a Nature that does not exist.

2. THE FANTASY OF SUSTAINABILITY: A POSTPOLITICAL GREEN UTOPIA? There is now a widespread consensus that the earth and many of its component parts are in an ecological bind that may short-circuit human and nonhuman life in the not too distant future if urgent and immediate action to retrofit nature to a more benign equilibrium is postponed for much longer. Irrespective of the particular views of Nature held by different individuals and social groups, consensus has emerged over the seriousness of the environmental condition and the precariousness of our socioecological predicament. While there is certainly no agreement on what exactly Nature is and how to relate to it, there is a virtually unchallenged consensus over the need to be more “environmentally” sustainable if disaster is to be avoided. In this consensual setting, environmental problems are generally staged as universally threatening the survival of humankind, announcing the premature termination of civilization as we know it. The discursive matrix through which the contemporary meaning of the environmental condition is woven is one quilted systematically by the continuous invocation of fear and danger, the specter of dystopian ecological annihilation, or at least seriously distressed socioecological conditions in the near future. “Fear” is indeed the crucial node through which much of the current environmental narrative is threaded, and that continues to feed the concern with “sustainability” (Swyngedouw, 2011a). This scripting of Nature permits and sustains a postpolitical arrangement sutured by fear and driven by a concern to manage things so that we can hold on to what we have (Swyngedouw, 2007). This constellation leads Alain Badiou to insist that ecology has become the new opium of the masses, replacing religion as the axis around which our fear of social disintegration becomes articulated. Such ecologies of fear ultimately conceal, yet nurture, a conservative or at least reactionary message. While clouded in rhetoric of the need for radical change in order to stave off immanent catastrophe, a range of technical, social, managerial, physical, and other measures have to be taken to make sure that things remain the same, that nothing really changes, that life (or at least our lives) can go on as before.

30

Erik Swyngedouw

This sentiment is also shared by Frederic Jameson when he claims that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism” (Jameson, 2003, p. 76). In the call for rebalanced environmental conditions, many actors with very different and often antagonistic cultural, economic, political, or social positions, interests, and inspiration can find common cause in the name of a socially disembodied humanity. An Inconvenient Truth becomes, strangely enough, a very convenient one for those who believe that civilization as we know it (I prefer to call this capitalism) needs to be preserved, rescued from potential calamity and ecological Armageddon. It calls for the rapid deployment of a whole battery of innovative environmental technologies, ecofriendly management principles, and sustainable organizational forms, so that the existing socioecological order really does not have to change radically. The generic signifier that encapsulates these postpolitical attempts to deal with Nature is, of course, “sustainability.” Even more so than the slippery and floating meanings of Nature, “sustainability” is the empty signifier par excellence. It refers to nothing and everything at the same time. Its prophylactic qualities can only be suggested by adding specifying metaphors, hence, the proliferation of terms such as sustainable cities, sustainable planning, sustainable development, sustainable forestry, sustainable transport, sustainable regions, sustainable communities, sustainable yield, sustainable loss, sustainable harvest, sustainable resource (fi ll in whatever you fancy) use, sustainable housing, sustainable growth, sustainable policy, etc. The gesture to “sustainability” already guarantees that the matter of Nature and the environment is taken seriously, that our fears are taken account of by those in charge. The fantasy of imagining a benign and “sustainable” Nature avoids asking the politically sensitive, but vital, question of what kind of socioenvironmental arrangements and assemblages we wish to produce, how these can be achieved, and what sort of environments we wish to inhabit, while at the same time acknowledging the radical contingency and undecidability of natures. Imagining a harmonious “sustainable” Nature is the clearest expression of the structure of fantasy in the Lacanian sense. While it is impossible to specify what exactly sustainability is all about (except in most general or generic of terms), this void of meaning is captured by a multiplying series of fantasies, of stories and imaginations that try to bridge the constitutive gap between the indeterminacies of natures on the one hand (and the associated fear of the continuous return of the Real of natures in the guise of ecological disasters such as droughts, hurricanes, and floods), and the always frustrated desire for some sort of harmonious and equitable socioecological living on the other, one that disavows the absence of a foundation for the social in a Nature that, after all, does not exist. “Sustainability” or, more precisely, the quilting points around which its meaning is woven, is the environmental policy maker and activist’s objet petit a, the thing around which desire revolves, yet simultaneously stands in for the disavowed Real,

Anthropocenic Politicization

31

the repressed core, the state of the situation, i.e., the recognition that the world is really in a mess and really needs drastic and dramatic, that is, revolutionary (a metaphor that of course can never be mobilized, that is banned, censured) action. It is in this phantasmagorical space that the proper political dimension (on which more below) disappears to be replaced by a consensually established frame that calls for techno-managerial action in the name of humanity, social integration, Nature, the earth and its human and nonhuman inhabitants, and all peoples in all places. In sum, postpolitical sustainability policies rest on the following foundations. First, the social and ecological problems caused by modernity/ capitalism are external side-effects; they are not an inherent and integral part of the relations of liberal politics and capitalist economies. Second, a strictly populist postpolitics emerges here: one that elevates the interest of an imaginary “the People,” Nature, or “the environment” to the level of the universal rather than opening spaces that permit us to universalize the claims of particular socionatures, environments, or social groups or classes. Third, these side-effects are constituted as global, universal, and threatening: they are a total threat. Fourth, the “enemy” or the target of concern is thereby, of course, continuously externalized and disembodied. The “enemy” is always vague, ambiguous, socially unnamed and politically uncounted, and ultimately empty. Fifth, the target of concern can be managed through a consensual dialogical politics whereby demands become depoliticized and politics naturalized within a given socioecological order for which there is ostensibly no real alternative (Swyngedouw, 2009).

3. POLITICIZING ENVIRONMENTS As I have argued elsewhere (see Swyngedouw, 2007, 2011a), such consensually established concerns, such as “sustainability,” structured around ecologies of fear that nurture a reactionary stance and urge techno-managerial forms of intervention, are an expression of the current process of postpoliticization and postdemocratization, one that is arranged around distinct biopolitical gestures. Postpolitics refers to a politics in which ideological or dissensual contestation and struggles are replaced by techno-managerial planning, expert management, and administration, “whereby the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives is the primary goal” (Žižek, 1999). Such postpolitical arrangement signal a depoliticized (in the sense of the disappearance of the democratic agonistic struggle over the content and direction of socioecological life) public space whereby expertise, interest intermediation, and administration through governance defi ne the zero-level of politics (see Marquand, 2004). This depoliticized consensual arrangement is organized through postdemocratic institutions of governance, such as the Kyoto protocol, the European Union, or assorted other public–private governing arrangements, that are increasingly replacing the

32

Erik Swyngedouw

political institutions of government (see Crouch, 2004) and are embedded in a broadly and naturalized neoliberal political–economic order. The arguments explored above are, I would argue, of vital importance for grappling with the process of postpoliticization, marked by the dominance of empty signifiers such as Nature or Sustainability, and for moving from a politics of the environment to environmental politics. The call made above to abandon Nature in no way suggests ignoring, let alone forgetting, the Real of natures or, more precisely, the diverse, multiple, whimsical, contingent, and often unpredictable socioecological relationships of which we are part. The claim we make is about the urgent need to question the legitimizing of all manner of socioenvironmental politics, policies, and interventions in the name of a thoroughly imagined and symbolized Nature or Sustainability, a procedure that necessarily forecloses a properly political frame through which such imaginaries become constituted and hegemonized and disavows the constitutive split of the people by erasing the spaces of agnostic encounter. The above reconceptualization urges us to accept the extraordinary variability of natures, insists on the need to make “a wager” on natures, forces us to choose politically between this rather than that nature, invites us to plunge into the relatively unknown, expect the unexpected, accept that not all there is can be known, and, most importantly, fully endorse the violent moment that is inscribed in any concrete or real socioenvironmental intervention. Indeed, the ultimate aim of politics is intervention, to change the given socioenvironmental ordering in a certain manner. Like any intervention, this is a violent act, erasing at least partly what is there in order to erect something new and different. The recognition that political acts are singular interventions that produce particular socioecological arrangements and milieus and, in doing so, foreclose the possibility of others emerging, is of central importance. Any intervention enables the formation of certain socioecological assemblages and closes down others. The “violence” inscribed in such choice has to be fully endorsed. For example, one cannot have simultaneously a truly carbon-free city and permit unlimited carbased mobility. They are mutually exclusive. Even less can an egalitarian, democratic, solidarity-based, and ecologically sensible future be produced without marginalizing or excluding those who insist on a private appropriation of the commons of the earth and its mobilization for accumulation and personal enrichment. Such violent encounters, of course, always constitute a political act, one that can be legitimized only in political terms, and not—as is customarily done—through an externalized legitimation that resides in a fantasy of Nature or Sustainability. Any political act is one that reorders socioecological coordinates and patterns, reconfigures uneven socioecological relationships (while foreclosing others), often with unforeseen or unforeseeable consequences. Consider, for example, how the historical struggle for political emancipation and equality was predicated upon sustained class

Anthropocenic Politicization

33

and political struggle in the face of often sustained and ruthless oppression and opposition. Such interventions that express a choice, take sides, invariably signal a totalitarian moment and the temporary suspension of the democratic understood as the agonistic encounter of heterogeneous views under the aegis of an axiomatically presumed equality of all. The gap between the democratic as a political given, predicated upon the presumption of the equality, on the one hand, and the autocratic moment of political intervention as the (temporary) suspension of the democratic, on the other, needs to be radically endorsed. While a pluralist democratic politics, founded on a presumption of equality, insists on difference, disagreement, radical openness, and exploring multiple possible futures, concrete spatial–ecological intervention is necessarily about relative closure (for some), definitive choice, singular intervention and, thus, certain exclusion and occasionally even outright silencing. For example, tar sand exploitation and fracking cannot coincide with a climate policy worthy of the name. While “traditional” democratic policies are based on majoritarian principles, the democratic–egalitarian perspective insists on foregrounding equality and socioecological solidarity as the foundational gesture for a green future. Thinking through the politics of democratic green futures requires holding together two spheres simultaneously. Jacques Rancière (1998) and others (see, e.g., Marchart, 2007, and Swyngedouw, 2011b, for a review) defi ne these spheres as “the political” and “the police” (the policy order), respectively. The (democratic) political is the space for the enunciation, performative staging, and affi rmation of egalitarian difference, for the cultivation of dissensus and disagreement, for asserting the presumption of equality of all and everyone. The police, in contrast, “is both a principle of distribution and an apparatus of administration, which relies on a symbolically constituted organization of social space, an organization that becomes the basis of and for governance. Thus, the essence of the police is . . . distribution of places, peoples, names, functions, authorities, activities and so on—and the normalization of this distribution” (Dikeç, 2007). As such, the “police” is rather close to Foucault’s notion of governmentality, the conduct of conduct, the “governing” mode of assigning location, relations, and distributions. And this precisely permits the opening up of the abyssal difference between a politics of the environment understood as a form of governing, on the one hand, and politicizing environments as a mode of reasserting the political. It is precisely the various Indignado, Occupy!, and assorted other emerging political movements that express and nurture such processes of embryonic repoliticization. Rarely in history have so many people voiced their discontent with the political and economic blueprints of the elites and signaled a desire for an alternative design of world. Alain Badiou (2011) recently explored the significance of these insurrectional events. For him, the proliferation of these insurgencies is a sign of a return of the generic ideas of

34

Erik Swyngedouw

freedom, solidarity, equality, and emancipation (which generically go under the political “name” of communism), which are marked by procedures of intensification, contraction, and localization. A political Idea/Imaginary cannot find grounding without localization. A political moment is always placed, localized, and invariably operative in a public space. Squares and other (semi-)public spaces have historically always been the sites for performing and enacting emancipatory practices. At the same time, enormous vital energies are mobilized for a sustained period of time. All manner of people come together in an intensive explosion of Bakhtinian acting, of an intensified process of being. And this intensity operates in and through the collective togetherness of a wide variety of individuals who, in their multiplicity and intense process of political subjectivation, stand for the metaphorical condensation of The People (as political category). However, such intense and contracted localized practices can only ever be an event, original but ultimately prepolitical. It does not (yet) constitute a political sequence. A political truth procedure or a political sequence, for Alain Badiou, unfolds when, in the name of equality, fidelity to an event is declared, a fidelity that, although always particular, aspires to become public, to universalize. It is a wager on the truth of the egalitarian political sequence (Badiou, 2008). Such democratic political procedure requires painstaking organization, sustained political action, and a committed fidelity to universalizing the egalitarian trajectory for the management of the commons. This procedure raises the question of political subjectivation and organizational configurations and requires the development of a political name that captures the imaginary of an egalitarian commons. While during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these names were closely associated with “communism” or “socialism” and centered on the key tropes of party, proletariat, and state, the present situation requires a reimagined socioecological configuration that still revolves around the notion of equality. However, state, party, and proletariat may no longer be the key axes around which an emancipatory sequence becomes articulated. While the remarkable uprisings of 2011 signaled a desire for a different political configuration, there is a long way to go in terms of thinking through and acting upon the modalities that might unleash a proper transformative democratic political sequence. What organizational forms are appropriate to the task, what is terrain of struggle, and what or who are the agents of its enactment? Politics, from this perspective, is about enunciating demands that lie beyond the symbolic order of the police, demands that cannot be symbolized within the frame of reference of the police and, therefore, would necessitate a transformation in and of the police to permit symbolization to occur. Yet, these are demands that are eminently sensible and feasible when the frame of the symbolic order is shifted, when the parallax gap between what is (the constituted symbolic order of the police) and what can be (the reconstituted symbolic order made possible through a shift in vantage points, one that starts from the partisan universalizing principle of

Anthropocenic Politicization

35

equality) is fully endorsed. They are the sort of demands that “restructure the entire social space” (Žižek, 1999, p. 208). The urgent tasks to now undertake for those who maintain fidelity to the political events choreographed in the new insurrectional spaces that demand a new environmental politics (that is, a new mode of organizing everyday environments) revolve around inventing new modes and practices of collective and sustained political organization, organizing the concrete modalities of spatializing and universalizing the Idea provisionally materialized in these localized insurrectional events and the mobilization of a wide range of new political subjects who are not afraid to stage an egalitarian being-incommon, imagine a different commons, demand the impossible, perform the new, and confront the violence that will inevitably intensify as those who insist on maintaining the present order realize that their days might be numbered. While staging equality in public squares is a vital moment, the process of transformation requires the slow but unstoppable production of new forms of spatialization quilted around materializing the claims of equality, freedom, and solidarity. This is the promise of the return of the political embryonically manifested in insurgent practices. Politicizing environments democratically, then, becomes an issue of enhancing the democratic political content of socioenvironmental construction by means of identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more egalitarian mode of producing natures can be achieved. This requires reclaiming proper democracy and proper democratic public spaces (as spaces for the enunciation of agonistic dispute) as a foundation for and condition of the possibility of more egalitarian socioecological arrangements, and the naming of positively embodied ega-libertarian—Balibar’s metonymic fusion of equality and liberty (Balibar, 2010)—socioecological futures that are immediately realizable. In other words, egalitarian ecologies are about demanding the impossible and realizing the improbable, and this is exactly the challenge the Anthropocene poses. In sum, the politicization of the environment is predicated upon the recognition of the indeterminacy of nature, the constitutive split of the people, the unconditional democratic demand of political equality, and the real possibility of the inauguration of various possible public and collective socioecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and equality.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Maria Kaika, my doctoral students and the editors for their constructive comments and suggestions. I am grateful to the People Programme (Maria Currie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme; under REAS agreement No 289374—“ENTITLE”. The usual disclaimers apply.

36

Erik Swyngedouw

NOTES 1. I shall use “Nature” to refer to the notion of an imagined universal nature; I shall use “natures” to refer to the kaleidoscopic diversity of things and processes that make up the physical world.

REFERENCES Badiou, A. (2008). Live Badiou: Interview with Alain Badiou, Paris, December 2007. In O. Feltham, Alain Badiou: Live theory (pp. 136–139). London, UK: Continuum. Badiou, A. (2011). Le réveil de l’histoire. Paris, France: Nouvelles Editions Lignes. Balibar, E. (2010). La proposition de l’égaliberte. Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Braun, B. (2006). Environmental issues: Global natures in the space of assemblage. Progress in Human Geography, 30, 644–654. Castree, N. (2003). Environmental issues: Relational ontologies and hybrid politics. Progress in Human Geography, 27, 203–211. Crouch, C. (2004). Post-democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneaopolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Dikeç, M. (2007). Badlands of the republic: Space, politics, and urban policy. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, and the geography of difference. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Hulme, M. (2010). Cosmopolitan climates: Hybridity, foresight, and meaning. Theory, Culture, & Society, 27, 267–276. Jameson, F. (2003). Future city. New Left Review, 21, 65–79. Konner, L. (Producer), & Taylor, A. (Director). (2005). Žižek! [Motion picture]. United States/Canada: Zeitgeist Films, Ltd. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewontin, R., & Levins, R. (2007). Biology under the infl uence: Dialectical essays on ecology, agriculture, and health. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Marchart, O. (2007). Post-foundational political thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Marquand, D. (2004). Decline of the public: The hollowing out of citizenship. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. McKibben, B. (1989). The end of nature. London, UK: Random House. Morton, T. (2007). Ecology without nature: Rethinking environmental aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rancière, J. (1998). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Swyngedouw, E. (2006). Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) natures and (cyborg) cities. Science as Culture, 15, 105–121. Swyngedouw, E. (2007). Impossible/undesirable sustainability and the post-political condition. In J.R. Krueger & D. Gibbs (Eds.), The sustainable development

Anthropocenic Politicization

37

paradox: Urban political economy in the United States and Europe (pp. 13–40). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Swyngedouw, E. (2009). The antinomies of the post-political city: In search of a democratic politics of environmental production. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33, 601–620. Swyngedouw, E. (2011a). Depoliticized environments: The end of nature, climate change, and the post-political condition. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 69, 253–274. Swyngedouw, E. (2011b). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 30, 370–380. Žižek, S. (1999). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. London, UK: Verso. Žižek, S. (2000). The fragile absolute: Or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? London, UK: Verso. Žižek, S. (2008). In defense of lost causes. London, UK: Verso.

3

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene J.K. Gibson-Graham

1. OUR CHALLENGE In this paper we are trying to do something we are not ready to do—which is to begin to rethink regional development as a way of belonging differently in the world. Regional development has been a longstanding interest for us, starting with research on deindustrialization in the New England region of the United States in the late 1970s. Our political economic take on regional development was later broadened by a feminist perspective on household and industry regional restructuring and then by a Foucauldian interest in genealogies of regional identity (Gibson, 2001; Gibson-Graham, 1994). More recently we have taken up action-oriented research on alternative pathways for regional development both in our respective “local” regions as well as at some distance in regions of the majority world (Gibson-Graham, 2010). In all our work thus far, the focus has been on economic activities and human political subjects—hence our unreadiness to write a paper that displaces the assumed primacy of humans to the project of regional development. We have come to see that the scale of the environmental crisis we are part of is creating a new “we” and convening new publics on this planet. No longer can J.K. Gibson-Graham avoid the challenge of how to live differently with others on the earth. In the words of ecofeminist Val Plumwood (2007), If our species does not survive the ecological crisis, it will probably be due to our failure to imagine and work out new ways to live with the earth, to rework ourselves and our high energy, high consumption, and hyper-instrumental societies adaptively . . . We will go onwards in a different mode of humanity or not at all. (p. 1) While Plumwood’s challenge is seemingly directed at all of humanity, we read it as targeting some more than others—most notably those living in Australia and the United States who have the largest ecological footprints in the world and whose lifestyles would require three or more planets if replicated globally. Plumwood’s provocation spoke directly to the amalgamated US-Australian J.K. Gibson-Graham and called us into action as

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

39

specific located beings. Today our familiar slogan “start where you are” has never had more personal or planetary resonance. But how do we start in the United States and Australia to enact a different mode of humanity? How do we proceed as researchers who specifically engage in rediscovering and reenacting economy in particular places and regions? We hope that our familiar methods will still serve us here—for years we have undertaken projects of deconstructing existing local economies to reveal a landscape of radical heterogeneity, populated by an array of capitalist and noncapitalist enterprises; market, alternative market, and nonmarket transactions; paid, unpaid, and alternatively compensated labor; and various forms of fi nance and property—a diverse economy in place (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008; Gibson-Graham, Cameron, & Healy, 2013). In this diverse multiplicity we fi nd glimmers of the future, existing economic forms and practices that can be enrolled in constructing a new economy here and now, one that is more focused on social wellbeing and less on growth and profitability. This kind of exploratory, place-based method still seems like a useful way to proceed. Our methods may feel right, but the way we use our core theoretical categories—subjects, communities, places—betrays our alignment with Plumwood’s old “mode of humanity.” No matter that we treat these categories as empty of prior meaning, as potentialities, as openings for a politics of possibility and becoming, they are still fully human-centered. Each time we invoke them we perform the human/nonhuman binary alongside that of subject/object, constituting a world made up of conscious and acting humans and unconscious or passive others. Feminists and others have seen such binary thinking as deeply implicated in the crisis of life that now engulfs our planet. In Plumwood’s (2002) view, the binary habit of thought creates “hyper-separation” (p. 49); Bruno Latour (2001) sees it as producing “hyper-incommensurability” (p. 61). According to Jessica Weir (2009), thinking hyper-separation places humans in a relation of mastery with respect to earth others and “limits their capacity to respond to ecological devastation” (p. 3). Humankind loses “the ability to empathise and see the non-human sphere in ethical terms”; we gain “an illusory sense of autonomy” (Plumwood, 2002, p. 9, quoted in Weir, 2009, p. 3). Nature remains our dominion, our servant, our resource and receptacle. Deconstruction identifies and breaks down binary hierarchies, opening up a field of radical heterogeneity. Useful though this technique has been to us, we feel that what is required at the moment for our feminist project of belonging is not something deconstruction can provide. What critics of separateness and separation thinking are asking us to do is to think connection rather than separation, interdependence rather than autonomy. In this way we may imbue our categories and practices with a “different mode of humanity.” Thinking “connection” involves sensory and intellectual receptivity and suggests to us a number of ethical projects:

40 J.K. Gibson-Graham (1) The project of actively connecting with the more than human, rather than simply seeing connection. Interestingly, this ethical act is not just the prerogative of human beings. Scientists note that the gray whales of Baja seem to have learned that people in that part of the Pacific no longer intend to harm them. In a wonderful article called “Watching Whales Watching Us,” we read of a mother gray whale that approaches the whale-watching boat and checks out the passengers, turns away briefly and returns with her newborn calf, who raises its head above water and looks the author in the eye. “At precisely the time (calving) when you’d expect them to be most defensive, they’re incredibly social,” says Toni Frohoff, a marine mammal behavioralist. “They’ll come right up to boats, let people touch their faces, give them massages, rub their mouths and tongues” (Seibert, 2009, p. 2). To our whale-watching receptivity, whales respond with an overt act of connecting. The connection here is not just in the act but in the parity, the mutuality, the reciprocity between the species. As Seibert (2009) writes, “I’d never felt so beheld in my life” (p. 3). What is this encounter but a moment of recognized kinship? As Nikolas Kompridis (2009) puts it, to acknowledge “the world as one’s ‘kin’ and ‘twin’ is to see that a change in one’s condition is coextensive with a change in the condition of the world” (p. 259). Or as Francisco Varela (1999) puts it, to change ourselves is to change the world. Our whale-watching receptivity, so different from our former murderous mastery, is a world-changing stance, “coextensive” with whales reaching out in connection. A second project of thinking connection might involve (2) embracing what Jane Bennett calls a “vital materialism” in which humans and nonhumans alike are “material configurations.” This involves an ethical act of subsuming ourselves within the materiality of others as well as our own and tuning into a dynamism that does not originate in human action. “Materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalize the relations between humans, biota, and abiota” (Bennett, 2010, p. 112). We are all just different collections of the same stuff —bacteria, heavy metals, atoms, matterenergy—not separate kinds of being susceptible to ranking. Bennett’s vital materiality captures the alien quality of our own flesh—we are not fully or exclusively human but an array of substances of different types, we are made up of “its” more than “mes”. Her vibrant materiality depersonalizes agency, shifting its locus onto the behavior of assemblages rather than discrete beings. From this perspective the connection of human and nonhuman is not only reciprocity, kinship, resemblance—it is a shared identity (of a substantive rather than symbolic sort). Bennett (2010) encourages connections that will lead to another concept of belonging: I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self and its interests. (p. 122)

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

41

Each of these projects of connection constructs a form of belonging—the fi rst is like belonging to the world as one does to a family, suggesting an affect of love and an ethic of care (one that seems to go both ways); the second involves belonging within a “heterogeneous monism of vibrant bodies” (Bennett, 2010, p. 119), a vital pluriverse, suggesting an affect of uncertain excitement and an ethic of attuning ourselves more closely to the powers, capacities, and dynamism of the more than human. Each form of belonging offers a sense of relief—it’s not all up to us—something else is caring for us and the earth, or contributing vitality to our complex cobeing. Bennett (2010) frames these two slightly different orientations as a distinction between environmentalists and vital materialists: If environmentalists are selves who live on earth, vital materialists are selves who live as earth, who are more alert to the capacities and limitations—the “jizz”—of the various materials that they are. If environmentalism leads to the call for the protection and wise management of an ecosystem that surrounds us, a vital materialism suggests that the task is to engage more strategically with a trenchant materiality that is us as it vies with us in agentic assemblages. (p. 111, emphasis added) We see these two projects as potentially in productive conversation with each other. While we might feel love for other earth creatures and want to accept a responsibility to care for them, might we also extend our love to parasites, or inorganic matter, or to the unpredictability of technical innovation? And might not an ethics of attunement to vibrant matter produce a more sensitive, experimental mode of assembling within the “jizz” of our living environments? The question that arises for us is: What might these different conceptions of connectivity and belonging mean for our practice of regional development, and for the action research that is our avenue of entry into that practice? Indeed, how could a different sense of belonging lead to a very different form of regional development? We have no defi nitive answer, though we sense the importance of thinking connection, convening wider publics, and enrolling lively matter in the “hybrid research collectives” (Callon & Rabeharisoa, 2003) that we hope will emerge. Fortunately, there are great precedents for proceeding in the face of not knowing how to proceed. Ecophilosopher Freya Mathews (2009) points to the Chinese sage who proceeds by cultivating a sensitivity to the “field of influences . . . in which he is immersed” (p. 351); she calls his practice “conformational”; he inhabits “a jigsaw world, everything shaped by and shaping everything else” (p. 12). Mathews’s jigsaw puzzle metaphor conveys an up-close, piecing-it-together, participatory approach to understanding (or performing) the world rather than a big-picture, spectator approach that captures and reduces everything via universal laws. Mathews calls it

42

J.K. Gibson-Graham

“strategy” as distinct from “theory.” The piecing-it-together approach is a way of being in the world; it’s improvisational and experimental. From our perspective, to adopt an experimental orientation is simply to approach the world with the question, “What can we learn from things that are happening on the ground?” This is very different from the question of “what is good or bad” about these things that informs so many investigations. The experimental orientation is another way of making (transformative) connections; it is a willingness to “take in” the world in the act of learning, to be receptive in a way that is constitutive of a new learnerworld, just as Latour’s (2004) concept of “learning to be affected” describes the formation of new body-worlds (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink, 2009). In experimentation there’s no active transformative subject “learning about” a separate inert object, but a subject-object that is a “becoming world.” This brings us to what we tentatively hope to do in this paper—which is to outline an experiment, a set of “adventures in living,” that could potentially proliferate in the form of diverse pathways of becoming in different places and regions. In A Postcapitalist Politics (2006) we introduced a feminist political imaginary. We identified three simple but powerful ingredients of a world-shaping political movement: 1) the decentralized attempts by women to change themselves, 2) the ubiquity of women, and 3) the global compass of a new discourse “woman.” In a similar vein we posit parallel ingredients of a new world shaping movement: 1) assemblages that are experimenting with new practices of living and being together, 2) the ubiquity of these assemblages, and 3) the potential global compass of a new discourse of “belonging” linked to a more-than-human regional development imaginary. Our working defi nition of regional development is: how “we” (that is, all the human/nonhuman participants in the becoming world) organize our lives (or how life organizes us) to thrive in porously bounded spaces in which there is some degree of interconnection, a distinctively diverse economy and ecologies, multiple pathdependent trajectories of transformation, and inherited forms of rule. Not much to go on, but not much is needed. Just enough to bring us down to earth and put us in place.

2. ADVENTURES IN LIVING Since we are at a loss when it comes to thinking about the big picture of “more than human regional development” for the Anthropocene, we take up the strategic piecing-it-together approach as a way to begin. We’ll start with a few jigsaw pieces and see where we go from there. Our first adventure is an experiment in regional development led by individuals and institutions that are motivated in part by an ethic of caring for place and environment.

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

43

2.1 Capturing and Democratizing Wealth to Care for People and Environments in Place The Evergreen Cooperatives are a set of new employee-owned businesses, based on the cooperative model, that hire local residents and contribute to environmental sustainability.1 In the Greater University Circle of inner city Cleveland, Ohio, investment flows easily into world-renowned cultural, educational, and health institutions that were originally established by philanthropic industrialists of a past era. Up against these well-endowed institutions are run-down neighborhoods housing some 43,000 residents whose average median household income is under $18,500 per year (Evergreen Cooperatives, 2009). Little of the massive institutional investment in salaries, procurements, and real estate development stays within these inner ring neighborhoods. According to Bob Eckhardt (2009), senior vice president of the Cleveland Foundation, each institution acts “as if the world ended at its respective property line” (p. 14). The Cleveland Foundation, established as the “world’s fi rst community foundation in 1914,” decided in the mid 2000s to concentrate funding and capacity-building activities on the Greater University Circle to make sure that “as the big institutions grow and prosper, the neighborhood prospers as well” (Eckhardt, 2009, p. 14). Their mission was to create jobs for local residents in green industries and to generate wealth that would circulate within and help stabilize the neighborhood. The Evergreen Cooperatives are the result. Ronn Richard, CEO of Cleveland Foundation, puts it this way: “We’re catalyzing something. We’re catalyzing, you know, a whole new group of companies” (Evergreen Cooperatives, 2009). The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the fi rst experiment to get off the ground. It is an “industrial-scale, environmentally advanced, stateof-the-art, commercial laundry providing services to area hospitals and assisted living centers” (Yates, 2009, p. 15). A feasibility study showed that commercial laundries could pay reasonable wages if they were not under pressure to generate profits for owners and shareholders. With help from the Ohio Employee Ownership Center the feasibility team found that in the 10-county region around Greater University Circle there were “53 hospitals and 259 nursing homes washing an estimated 246 million pounds of laundry per year” (Yates, 2009, p. 17). There was an opportunity to offer cheaper and greener laundry to these institutions, allowing them to use their in-house laundry space “for profitable activities and retrain and redeploy their current laundry employees into better jobs in their growing businesses” (Yates, 2009, p. 17). The idea was to enter the market with a modest objective of supplying 10 million pounds of laundry per year and employing a workforce of 25 employee-owners. Set-up was financed with a mix of private, public, and philanthropic funding. Equipment was intentionally sourced from the United States. The production process has been designed to conserve energy by recycling used water to heat clean water and

44

J.K. Gibson-Graham

to use “green” chemicals, natural light, and ultimately rooftop solar power (Yates, 2009, p. 17). Two more employee-owned businesses have started or are in the set-up phase—Ohio Cooperative Solar, which will own, install, and maintain solar panels on the roof tops of major nonprofit institutions in the University Circle, and Evergreen City Growers, which is a 5.5 acre greenhouse gardening business growing lettuce and herbs for the local hospitals and other institutions. Both will generate additional employment for neighborhood residents and opportunities for them to become equity owners. The Cleveland experiment is attempting to activate a very different development pathway than the export base model that most regional development projects follow. Export base theory posits that, in order to grow, regions must market exports that bring in money so that regional consumers can buy from the larger external economy things that aren’t produced locally (Power, 1996, p. 7). If there are no existing export industries, regional development incentives are usually offered by city governments to enterprises in sectors like manufacturing and tourism (even prisons) to lure them to locate in the region. The dollars they bring in are supposed to circulate through the region, producing the famous multiplier effects of employment and income growth, before eventually exiting to purchase goods and services from outside. This framing of economic development dynamics positions locally oriented economic activity as only ever “derivative or secondary” while “export-oriented economic activity is basic or primary” (Power, 1996, p. 7). The Cleveland adventure fl ies in the face of this hierarchal valuation and targets local rather than export markets. The familiar criticism that nonexporting regions are “just taking in each other’s laundry” is creatively turned on its head in this urban experiment. Dirty laundry is a local asset that has become the means for generating social wealth. But the Evergreen industries are not just providing goods and services for the local hospitals, nursing homes, and educational institutions. They are experimenting with strengthening the enterprise diversity of the economy. All new businesses are worker-owned cooperatives rather than capitalist fi rms. These businesses create local rather than absentee wealth and will not relocate in search of cheap labor. With the Evergreen Cooperatives, Cleveland is explicitly emulating the Mondragon Cooperative complex, a hugely successful grass roots regional development experiment in the Basque region of Spain (Alperovitz, Howard, & Williamson, 2010). Starting in 1956, the Basques of Mondragon began establishing worker-owned cooperatives, fi rst in manufacturing and later in all the other sectors that are key to a thriving regional economy—fi nance, agriculture, social services, health care, education (including a university), housing, and retail. The Mondragon cooperatives now employ over 100, 000 workers and gross around 20 billion euro per annum (Evergreen Cooperatives, 2009; Gibson-Graham, 2010).

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

45

A key strategy for building the cooperative complex has been marshalling and pooling the surplus the workers produce, over and above their wages and costs of production. Rather than being distributed as profit to capitalists, or dividends to shareholders, or bonuses to managers, surplus is distributed to the workers themselves, who have democratically decided to deposit it in the Mondragon bank until they retire. This gives Mondragon a large pool of funds to fi nance the development of new worker-owned cooperatives. Money does not just circulate within the region, it becomes people-centered investment into the region’s productive capacities. The vision here is of work creating wealth that, rather than being siphoned off, can be used to further the livability, prosperity, and dignity of a region. In addition to being guided by the goal of creating employment, Mondragon’s economic decisions are shaped by the shared ethical principles of open admission, democratic organization, sovereignty of labor, instrumental and subordinate nature of capital, self-management, wage solidarity, inter-coop cooperation, social transformation, and education (Gibson-Graham, 2003; 2006, pp. 104–105). What we would like to highlight is the open-ended nature of such a list. The Cleveland cooperatives have purposefully added “care for the environment” to whatever principles they have adopted from Mondragon. In fact, they have put it very high up among their priorities, making all their businesses contribute to this green agenda. Here we have a quite well-developed scenario for regional development that is driven by human intentionality and realized through ethical practices of cooperativism and environmental care. A new kind of belonging has the potential to arise from a process of investing in the wellbeing of inhabitants and environments, replacing the sense of abandonment to environmental and social degradation. The second adventure portrays a vibrant materiality that is leading sociality—offering many possibilities but no clear pathway to regional development.

2.2 Peer-to-Peer Exchange and the Internet/Information Commons We draw here on a video report on the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges by the Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Andy Jordon. 2 Jordon presents a series of interviews that begin with young corporate executives who trade in Ven, a virtual currency used to “buy, share and trade knowledge, goods and services” (Jordon, 2010). Tamara Giltsoff, a sustainable business consultant, is one of the “urban influentials” who are members of Hub Culture, one of many meshworks that have grown out of the social networking capacities of the Internet. In selected world cities, Hub Culture members flock to Hub Pavilions where they can book space to work, meet, trade nontangible value, and recreate (bookings can be made for a personal chef for 10+ people, a personal trainer, or a reflexologist/reiki/polarity therapist). Giltsoff describes using Ven: “It begins to put a value on intangible exchanges, I guess. I have gained Ven by making introductions to other people or doing

46

J.K. Gibson-Graham

favours for people in the network.” Dan George, a promoter for international recording music stars says : “With fluctuating exchange rates you know that if you have a certain amount of Ven you can, sort of, count on it when you are working between countries.” According to Hub Culture’s (n.d.) website: The price of Ven is made up of a weighted basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures and trades against other major currencies at floating exchange rates. Ven is the fi rst currency to include carbon externalities in its pricing factor, making it the fi rst environmentally linked currency in existence. Jordon reports that the founder of Hub Culture and Ven, Stan Stalnaker, “has an interesting theory about rock, pebble and sand currencies. The dollar would be a rock, a corporate currency would be a pebble and any peer-to-peer currency would be sand.” Says Stalnaker: The ocean, in the sense of the internet, breaking down those rocks, essentially breaking down those pebbles, makes everything sand. So we think that at some point there will be millions of different currencies, essentially everyone will have their own personalized currency, and we will trade in some kind of, you know, NASDAQ for personal currencies. . . . You are going to see the movement inexorably toward peerto-peer fi nance. People will trade individually or independently among each other all around the world instantly and digitally. It’s going to happen, there’s no denying it. (Jordan, 2010) This prediction is supported by Eric Harris-Braun, founder of the Metacurrency Project and New Currency Frontiers, who is developing open-source software for new currencies. He tells reporter Andy Jordon: If what we do is create an alphabet that allows any community at any size to issue currencies and to declare what the meaning of that currency is and what kind of value it’s tracking, then we will have the possibility of an economic democracy. (Jordan, 2010) There is something in this video that speaks to us of new possibilities for regional development. What is striking is the inventive vitality unleashed by personal computers and the internet. Open-source Internet access and software is facilitating new forms of sociality at an unprecedented level. While some might be wary of the quality of that sociality when it comes to Facebook or Second Life, this report illustrates how it has enabled the flourishing of alternative currencies that facilitate exchanges based on new registers of value. These currencies are being used as a regional development tool to strengthen local enterprise, increase access to services in cash-

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

47

poor communities, and plug leaks of value out of localities. The rise of complementary currencies over the last two decades has been fueled by the technical capacity for intense interconnection. Whether it is trading in scarce attention or accounting for haircuts and massages, the Internet is an actant in regional development: an actant never really acts alone. Its efficacy or agency always depends on the collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many bodies and forces. (Bennett, 2010, p. 21) Might we belong differently now that the vibrant materiality of the Internet and open-source software allow for new interconnections in a potentially democratized world?

2.3 Distributed Systems and Hybrid Connections Our last jigsaw pieces are adventures in living that combine both kinds of connection—to a world of kin and to a vital pluriverse. At a regional level, the Internet facilitates complex economic experiments such as the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) social business Food Connect. Food Connect uses a website and 20 employees to link some 1,500 urban consumers in direct marketing arrangements with 80 farmers in a 2 to 5 hour radius around Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia. Urban “subscribers” become connected to their farmer producers, who appear on the website explaining their methods of sustainable farming. One farmer includes a film clip with a close-up of a lady-bird crawling over his hand and a description of its important role in combating aphids on his celery crop. Dairy farmers Ross and Karen describe how they spray their nitrogen-deficient pasture with whey, a waste by product of their cheese-making operation, and thereby feed beneficial soil organisms that would have been destroyed by artificial fertilizers (Food Connect, n.d.). Implicit in the work of Food Connect is a different vision of regional development, energized by human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants who interact to produce and distribute healthy, fresh food. Overlaid on this vibrant materiality is an ethic of care for both human and nonhuman participants. Subscribers sign up to absorb the losses usually shouldered by farmers when seasons and crops fail. Through this new economic relationship farmers are supported (not subsidized) to provide the best possible care for country and consumers by promoting agricultural polycultures, genetic diversity, low tillage, and low fossil-fuel farming, yielding “a local/regional food system that looks after our farmers, subscribers and environment” (Food Connect, n.d.). In Boulder, Colorado, the CSA model has been transposed into the suburb, bringing food production and new connections to plant and insect species much closer to home. This Neighborhood Supported Agriculture

48 J.K. Gibson-Graham (NSA) initiative converts a small portion of backyards and front yards of houses and churches into a local food system. Suburban householders become urban farmers growing their own vegetables, sharing their produce with neighbors and other NSA subscribers, selling the surplus product at the local farmers market, or gifting it to families in need (Colorado Transition Network, 2012). Alongside the emergence of these local food systems, all over the world individual households have begun to take charge of their own water collection and energy generation. Using cheaper, widely available technologies and prompted by government subsidies, people are building distributed systems: In the distributed systems model, infrastructure and critical services (for water, food and energy) are positioned close to points of demand and resource availability and linked within networks of exchange. Services traditionally provided by a single, linear system are instead delivered via a diverse set of smaller systems—tailored to location but able to transfer resources across wider areas. (Biggs, Ryan, Wiseman, & Larsen, 2008, p. 3) This last point is important for regional development because these distributed systems can feed their surplus into regional supply grids, relieving pressure on the centralized infrastructure of modern urbanism. Might we be able to work with the potential these systems offer to develop a whole new urban and regional sociality, spatiality and mode of belonging? We fi nd ourselves at the beginning of our new century encumbered by a built environment that ties us to an oil-drunk, individuated lifestyle, hyperseparated from earth others and earth processes. Can we belong in this habitat in new ways? How might we retrofit our suburbs so as to reshape our high consumption lifestyles? How might new forms of social and ecological connection arise? How might we work with the “vital materiality” that is prompting the self-organization of diverse, decentralized currencies and local food, energy, and water distribution networks? The spatiality of production, consumption, reproduction, and exchange is potentially up for grabs as new technologies, old ideas, and the vital capacities of human and nonhuman agents combine in experiments with living in a different mode.

3. PIECING IT TOGETHER THROUGH RESEARCH: “BELONGING” TO A NEW MODE OF HUMANITY We are suggesting experiments in regional development. But who or what is it that experiments? Who or what learns and transforms? How is the becoming world initiated in an intentional, responsive, responsible way? Elsewhere we have nominated for this role a “hybrid research collective,”

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

49

“an assemblage that, through research, increases possibilities for (being in) the world” (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink, 2009, p. 327; see also Callon & Rabeharisoa, 2003 and Roelvink, 2008, 2009). Research is a site where new publics are marshaled around matters of concern and university-based research is where experimentation is supported. So why not conceive of university-based action research as a potential catalyst for going on in a different mode of humanity, starting where we are, in our own regions? What have we got to lose? If we accept our belonging to a planet made up of complex matter that cuts across personhood, animality, and objecthood, what kind of regional development might emerge? Again, we have no concrete idea. But we are interested in outlining some steps toward answering that question by enrolling activities we have employed in regional action research and recalibrating them with sensitivity to the more than human. Our community partnering research has usually begun “starting where we are” by inviting participants to inventory the range of economic practices and “assets” that are often overlooked as potential contributors to regional development. Let’s think about starting with this intervention and extending our regional inventory to encompass the more than human.3 First, there would be the task of compiling a regional profi le. Usually this includes marshaling official statistics about demographic characteristics and trends, housing stock, community services, transport, infrastructure, local government and, most importantly, mainstream economic structure, including capitalist and self-employed business activity, paid employment, and income levels. Our project would build on this regional profi le by including elements of the diverse economy (see Table 3.1). Such an expanded vision of economy is not easily available as there are few official statistics on many activities in the lower cells of any of the diverse economy columns. The process of generating a diverse economy regional profi le would involve enrolling people to collect indicative data about the economic activities they care about. There might be little chance of conducting a comprehensive survey of diverse economic activities, but this may not matter. In the process of compiling and mapping, teams of hybrid researchers would form collective learning assemblages that would potentially become open to belonging in new ways. We have examples at hand of the kinds of diverse economy data that are already being collected and mapped in various parts of the world: • Non-capitalist enterprises: in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, United States, solidarity economy enterprises and initiatives have been inventoried and mapped.4 • Unpaid labor: in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, community gardens and other public spaces in which people are growing their own food for self-provisioning are mapped.5

Alternative Market Cooperative Banks Credit unions Community-based financial institutions Micro-finance Non-Market Sweat equity Family lending Donations Interest-free loans

Alternative Market Fair trade Alternative currencies Underground market Barter

Non-Market Household sharing Gift giving Gleaning Hunting, fishing, gathering Theft, piracy, poaching

Alternative Private Publicly accessible privately owned property State-managed assets Customary (clan) land Community land trusts Indigenous knowledge Open Access Atmosphere International Waters Open source IP

Alternative Paid Self-employed Reciprocal labor In-kind Work for welfare

Unpaid Housework Volunteer Self-provisioning Slave labor

Alternative Capitalist State owned Environmentally responsible Socially responsible Non-profit

Non-Capitalist Worker cooperatives Sole proprietorships Community enterprise Feudal Slave

Note: The items in each cell are only examples of what could be included. Source: Gibson-Graham, Cameron, & Healy (2013).

MAINSTREAM MARKET

MARKET

PRIVATE

FINANCE

WAGE

TRANSACTIONS

CAPITALIST

PROPERTY

LABOR

The Diverse Economy

ENTERPRISE

Table 3.1

50 J.K. Gibson-Graham

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

51

• Nonmainstream fi nance: in New Brunswick, Canada there is an inventory and map of all the credit unions that supply fi nance in the alternative fi nance market.6 The effect of mapping exercises like these would be to get a sense of the mass, spread, and power of “other” economic relationships that sustain our lives. Each map is just one way of representing a community of practitioners and users. With more complex mapping techniques we might be able to portray the place-based networks whose nodes are the points on maps such as these. Our regional profi ling might then move to the challenge of including all those ecological and geomorphological systems that coexist with us in any one region. While some of this data is available from official sources, such as topographical, geological, and vegetation maps, we would need to include more fi ne-grained data drawing on the local knowledge of scientists and “researchers in the wild” (Callon & Rabeharisoa, 2003). Matters of concern in any one region, such as air and water quality, vegetation loss, or species extinction may have already brought citizens, species, and natural systems together in a research assemblage to map, monitor, repair, and care. Through a regional profiling activity, it may be possible to recognize that “we” are entangled in webs of life and death, vitality, and materiality that both constrain and enable movement (or development, in its simplest understanding). From this standpoint, research for the Anthropocene requires that we fi nd innovative and creative ways of inviting ourselves and earth others into a different developmental relationship, one that denies domination and explores mutuality and interdependence. To continue with our jigsaw approach, we can imagine two (among potentially a myriad of) strategies for proceeding. In the Australian context, it would be important to invite Indigenous elders to explain the regional landscape in terms of its meaning as “country” that sings and tells stories or suffers and calls out for care (Rose, 1999). Establishing a connection with people of the land is one way to begin to listen to country/place differently, to learn from the vital materiality of all of its elements. In both the United States and Australia, we might experiment with techniques that render the familiar unfamiliar, and the impossible perhaps possible. Dolores Hayden’s Field Guide to Sprawl (2004) is an inspiring example of such an invitation; it is an illustrated vocabulary, an architectural and environmental “devil’s dictionary,” that teaches us to • observe sprawl as an exercise in understanding habitat (p. 8) • listen for the slang phrases for everyday places that help to sharpen observation (p. 10), and • get a new bird’s eye perspective on the landscape of our unsustainable urban growth.

52 J.K. Gibson-Graham

Figure 3.1 Jim Wark’s aerial photograph of “sitcom suburbs” in the United States (Hayden 2004).

Figure 3.2

A fanciful retro-fit of the “sitcom suburb” by Gibson-Graham.

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

53

With its fabulous aerial photographs by Jim Wark, this field guide provides one window on the vital materiality (as well as the political economy) that has animated the built environment we have to work with. It is easy to see this landscape as an inert, durable obstruction to living differently. But our expanded regional profi le might act as an antidote field guide, one that begins to identify emergent habitats, develop new lexicons, and get a worm’s eye view of possible landscapes of sustainable growth. From this inquiry we might discover vibrant matter we can work with, new dynamics of change that we can move with and against. We might work with people in place to push at elements of the assemblages we are part of to enact new modes of living.

4. CONCLUSION Regional research and mapping may seem like feeble interventions in the face of the challenges of global climate change. But to research and compile an antidote field guide is to marshal a collective of concern around a vital materiality (the region). It can also be seen as triggering a self-organizing process of more-than-human regional development. Such a process is already happening with the solidarity economies that are mushrooming and mapping themselves in regions around the world. The spread of solidarity economy mapping and the power it has to bring new regional economies into another stage of being reminds us not to be too certain about what is weak and what is strong. For a powerful example, we might take a look at regional development in Quebec, which has been “piecing it together” since the mid 1990s, guided by a research collective they call “Chantier de l’economie sociale” (Mendell, 2009). The Chantier is made up of participants in the solidarity or social economy. It provides a full range of research services, including continuous mapping throughout the province as well as coming up with innovations in fi nance and social accounting, the promotion of new sectors, developing policy initiatives, identifying problem areas, and creating new markets. It nurtures an economy that since 2002 has provided over 160,000 jobs in 20 sectors and included 7,000 social enterprises (Mendell, 2009). While the Chantier is largely government funded, governments in the United States and Australia are unlikely to fund such a grassroots organization, suggesting that the home of fi rst resort for a comparable organization in these countries might be the university. In that context, it should be possible to extend solidarity to the more than human world, inviting scientists and activists to participate as spokespersons for the nonhuman stakeholders and vibrant materialities in our regions. So we end with our questions somewhat refi ned. Can our solidarity extend to the more than human? Can we imagine regional social economies connected to ecologies, to country, to place? Can we begin to see regional development as creating ethical connections between species, and

54

J.K. Gibson-Graham

between all sorts of life forms (Rose, 1999; Weir, 2009). Can we engage in development that sometimes demands that we “back off or ramp down our activeness” and sometimes calls for “grander, more dramatic and violent expenditure of human energy”? (Bennett, 2010, p. 122). Can we welcome these overtures and challenges? If we can, that would certainly usher in a new mode of humanity and a new form of belonging.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Taylor and Francis Ltd. for permission to reprint a shortened version of the paper “A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene” by J.K. Gibson-Graham that originally appeared as “A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene.” J.K. Gibson-Graham, Gender, Place, and Culture, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 1–21, February 2011. Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.tandfonline.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. NOTES 1. See the Evergreen Cooperatives Introductory video which can be viewed at http://www.blip.tv/fi le/2749165, retrieved 15 March 2010. 2. See http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0_0_WP_3001.html?currentPlayingL ocation=0¤tlyPlayingCollection=Tech¤tlyPlayingVideoId=% 7b25225F5A-B979–4609-A55D-1BAE9A1BA158%7d, retrieved 15 March 2010. 3. For the moment we are leaving aside any abstract defi nition of a region. While this is a topic of theoretical interest and is worth reflecting on, it is not necessary to have the regional boundaries set in advance of the research, as these may well emerge from the inventory and networking analysis. 4. See http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=112892358 918251834205.000442d4624ee318c9b1d&ll=42.420415,-72.491913&spn =0.84955,1.867676&z=9&om=1, retrieved 11 December 2013. 5. See http://www.communitywalk.com/veil-map, retrieved11 December 2013. 6. See http://atlanticcreditunions.ca/fi nd-a-branch/?results=true&all=true 11 December 2013.

REFERENCES Alperovitz, G., Howard, T., & Williamson, T. (2010, March). The Cleveland model. The Nation, March 1. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Biggs C., Ryan C., Wiseman J., & Larsen K. (2008). Distributed water systems: A networked and localised approach for sustainable water services. Distributed Systems Briefi ng Paper No. 2. Retrieved from the University of Melbourne, Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab website: http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com/uploads/ attachments/234_Distributed%20Water%20Systems.VEIL.pdf

A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene

55

Callon, M., & Rabeharisoa, V. (2003). Research “in the wild” and the shaping of new social identities. Technology in Society, 25, 193–204. Colorado Transition Network. (2012). Community Roots Urban Gardens. Ret r ieved f rom ht t p: //coloradot ra nsit ion net work.org /g roup / communityrootsurbangardens Eckhardt, B. (2009). Revitalizing communities through employee ownership: A unique venture in Cleveland. Owners at Work: The Magazine of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, 21(1), 14–15. Evergreen Cooperatives. (2009, 21 October). Evergreen Cooperatives introductory video [Video fi le]. Retrieved from http://www.blip.tv/fi le/2749165, Food Connect. (n.d.). We do business differently. Retrieved from http://www.foodconnect.com.au/we-do-business-differently/ Gibson, K. (2001). Regional subjection and becoming. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19, 639–667. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1994). “Stuffed if I know”: Reflections on post-modern feminist social research. Gender, Place, and Culture, 1, 205–224. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class. Critical Sociology, 29, 123–161. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2008). Diverse economies: Performative practices for “other worlds.” Progress in Human Geography, 32, 613–632. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2010). Post-development possibilities for local and regional development. In A. Pike, A. Rodriguez-Pose, & J. Tomaney (Eds.), Handbook of local and regional development (pp. 226–236). London, UK: Routledge. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. (2013). Take back the economy: An ethical guide for transforming our communities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K., & Roelvink, G. (2009). An economic ethics for the Anthropocene. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 41, 320–346. Hayden, D. (2004). Field guide to sprawl. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. HubCulture website. (n.d.). Ven is the global, social currency from Hub Culture. Retrieved from http://www.hubculture.com/groups/237/projects/427/wiki/ Jordon, A. (2010). Tech: Jordon’s diary. Wall Street Journal video. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0_0_WP_3001.html?currentPlayingLocation =0¤tlyPlayingCollection=Tech¤tlyPlayingVideoId=%7b25225F5 A-B979–4609-A55D-1BAE9A1BA158%7d Kompridis, N. (2009). Romanticism. In R. Eldridge (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and literature (pp. 247–270). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2001). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2004). How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies. Body and Society, 10(2–3), 205–229. Mathews, F. (2009). Why has the West failed to embrace panpsychism? In D. Skrbina (Ed.), Mind that abides: Panpsychism in the new millennium (pp. 341– 360). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing. Mendell, M. (2009). Three pillars of the social economy: The Quebec experience. In A. Amin (Ed.), The social economy: International perspectives on economic solidarity (pp. 176–207). New York, NY: Zed Books. Plumwood, V. (2002). Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York, NY: Routledge. Plumwood, V. (2007). A review of Deborah Bird Rose’s Reports from a wild country: Ethics of decolonisation. Australian Humanities Review, 42, 1–4.

56

J.K. Gibson-Graham

Power, T.M. (1996). Lost landscapes and failed economies: The search for a value of place. Washington, DC: Island Press. Roelvink, G. (2008). Performing new economies through hybrid collectives. (Doctoral dissertation). Australian National University, Acton, Australia. Roelvink, G. (2009). Collective action and the politics of affect. Emotion, Space and Society, 3, 111–118. Rose, B. (1999). Indigenous ecologies and an ethic of connection. In N. Low (Ed.), Global ethics and environment (pp. 175–187). London, UK: Routledge. Seibert, C. (2009, 8 July). Watching whales watching us. New York Times, p. MM26. Varela, F. (1999). Ethical know-how: Action, wisdom, and cognition. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Weir, J. (2009). Murray River Country: An ecological dialogue with traditional owners. Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies Press. Yates, J. (2009). The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry begins construction: Just the fi rst step . . . Owners at Work: The Magazine of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, 21(1), 16–17.

4

Utopianism in Science The Case of Resilience Theory Johan Hedrén

1. INTRODUCTION Starting from the broadest definition of utopia and drawing on the thorough exploration of utopianism by Ernst Bloch (1986), Chamsy el-Ojeili argues that “utopianism is everywhere, visible across a range of spheres of social and individual life” (el-Ojeili, 2012, p. 79). Utopianism can be sought in many contexts not generally associated with it, such as advertisements, movies, exhibitions, architecture, games, fashion, design, and political campaigns. It spans the huge gap between the many exhibitions and conferences arranged to explore green architecture and planning to, ironically, the right-wing rage against utopia that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989: The denial of any alternative to the capitalist world order, expressed as a declaration of the end of history, was essentially a disguised urge for the utopia of a freewheeling capitalism. Another such context in which utopianism is found is science. Given that science and scientific theories have considerable impact on policies and politics, scrutinizing their ideological and utopian underpinnings is worthwhile. While no longer generally considered a representation of universal Truth, science still often draws on putative neutrality and objectivity, making the present critical analysis, which focuses on science’s fundamentally political dimension, even more important. This chapter presents such a scrutiny, targeting the concept and theory of resilience. Resilience theory has gained a strong and growing position in green discourses in recent decades, not only in the academy but also in a great number of social and political projects devoted to green goals. It has “in the recent past rapidly infi ltrated vast areas of the social sciences, becoming a regular, if under-theorized, term of art in discussions of international fi nance and economic policy, corporate risk analysis, the psychology of trauma, development policy, urban planning, public health and national security” (Walker & Cooper, 2011, p. 143). Several authors and proponents believe it offers the best alternative for the analysis of, and adaptation to, the current global threats to sound development. One prominent example is the “transition movement,” which counts efforts to build

58

Johan Hedrén

community resilience among its main goals.1 Another is the Resilience Alliance, an international network connecting a broad range of organizations in a joint venture for sustainability. 2 A third example is the Stockholm Resilience Centre, a transdisciplinary institution at Stockholm University dedicated to research into the governance of socioecological systems. 3 Utopianism is based on one or several principles or on a set of fundamental values (Stillman, 2001), and those principles are often held to generate a radically different society. This is exactly what the resilience theorists claim will happen if development is orchestrated in accordance with the principle of resilience. One pioneer and leading author in the tradition, C.S. Holling, shares his view of current theory on utopianism: “In the end, we fi nd that we need to create excitement, identify options in the form of alternative visions of the future, and build hope” (Holling, 2008, p. xxi). The questions that arise concern the alternative vision that emerges from resilience theory and the theory’s potential to advance utopian activities and the generation of hope. In this chapter I will explore the literature on resilience through a critical reading in the Foucauldian tradition, i.e., analyzing not only what is explicitly stated in the texts but also the necessary preconditions, underlying logic and values, issues taken as givens, and excluded aspects. The analytical lens will be the paired concepts of ideology and utopia, and the material comprises primarily articles and books frequently referred to in the field of resilience.

2. IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA In his classic text from 1936, Karl Mannheim defi nes ideology and utopia as a pair of contrasting concepts (Mannheim, 1985). Ideology here refers to the thought that supports current social relationships while obscuring the real condition of society. Utopian thinking, on the other hand, is based on interest in transforming a given condition. As Ruth Levitas puts it, to be truly utopian in accordance with Mannheim’s defi nition, ideas also have to “become the expression of the will of a social group, and the inspiration of successful social action in pursuit of change” (Levitas, 2011, p. 80). Though very influential, this defi nition of utopia has been criticized for being too narrow and too similar to “revolution” to be analytically useful (Levitas, 2011; Sargisson, 1996). We should understand ideology and utopia not as mutually exclusive, but instead as two central and correlated aspects in discussions of radical societal transformation. All utopianism emanates from a certain interest position with a corresponding interpretation and evaluation of current social relationships, and I will follow Fredric Jameson in arguing that there is no escape from ideology: . . . we are all ideologically situated, we are all shackled to an ideological subject-position, we are all determined by class and class history,

Utopianism in Science

59

even when we try to resist or escape it. And for those unfamiliar with this ideological perspectivism or class standpoint theory, it is perhaps necessary to add that it holds for everyone, left or right, progressive or reactionary, worker as well as boss, and underclasses, marginals, ethnic or gender victims, fully as much as for the ethnic, race or gender mainstreams. (Jameson, 2004, pp. 46–7) The main reason for this conceptual imprisonment is the conceived impossibility of both grasping and objectively representing social and other relationships on the most fundamental, i.e., global, level (Jameson, 1991). All such attempts will to some degree reflect the very specific and narrow experience of the individual. However, being inevitably caught up in ideology does not mean that we should not attempt to make ideologies the focus of critique. On the contrary, when searching for, and analyzing, utopian thought, such ideology critique is most useful in order to evaluate the social effects of certain utopian principles, as all utopianism also has this bias: . . . it means, not only that all utopias spring from a specific class position, but that their fundamental thematization—the root-of-evil diagnosis in terms of which they are each framed—will also reflect a specific class–historical standpoint or perspective. . . . No matter how comprehensive and trans-class or post-ideological the inventory of reality’s flaws and defects, the imagined resolution necessarily remains wedded to this or that ideological perspective. (Jameson, 2004, p. 47) Historically, utopianism has “worked as both a constructive and destructive force for change” (Harvey, 2000, p. 159). It can support all kinds of interests, from left to right, and it is crucial to counteract the kind of utopianism that strives for blueprints for ultimate solutions, and that so easily ends in totalitarianism (Hedrén & Linnér, 2009; Sargisson, 2011). The roles and preconditions for utopianism vary strongly throughout history. With today’s free market fundamentalism (Jameson, 2010) and postpolitical ethos (Swyngedouw, 2011), one such role is to counter “the ideological closure of the system in which we are somehow trapped and confi ned” (Jameson, 2004, p. 46). This results in two main tasks: 1) to revitalize the utopian impulse and thereby maintain that the world can be different (i.e., to create hope), and 2) to relativize and criticize principles and relationships that are taken for granted or even naturalized in current society. These goals—mobilization through generating hope, diagnosis and critique through seeking the root of evil rather than striving for blueprints— are strongly supported in the utopian tradition (Jameson, 2005). The aims can be met by the generation of estrangement (Jameson, 2005), i.e., the application of techniques for establishing a distance from the present, or for achieving “the disruption of the taken-for-granted nature of present reality” (Levitas, 1997, p. 75).

60

Johan Hedrén

In the analyses below, I will start with an overview of the main ideas of resilience theory. After that follows a discussion of the theory’s potential to scrutinize current social relationships and then an analysis of what explicitly and implicitly appears to be its specific utopia.

3. RESILIENCE THEORY The concept of resilience has become frequently used in both scientific and popular explorations and is related to both the ecological and social areas. Derived mainly from systems theory and functionalism, the concept began to develop in the 1950s. Originally formulated as a theoretical approach to understanding ecological systems, it is now held to be applicable to systems embracing both the social and ecological spheres, so-called social-ecological systems, or SESs (Adger, 2000; Folke, 2006; Gallopin, Funtowicz, O’Connor, & Ravetz, 2001; Holling, 2001; Peterson, 2000; Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004; Young et al., 2006). As demonstrated through a bibliographic study by Janssen, Schoon, Ke, and Börner (2006), a limited number of leading scholars contributed to forming the resilience literature, often publishing jointly, leading one to expect a relatively homogeneous theoretical framework. A telling manifestation of the groupthink that seems to embrace these scholars, who apparently share many interests and motivations, is the above-mentioned network Resilience Alliance: “a research organization comprised of [sic] scientists and practitioners from many disciplines who collaborate to explore the dynamics of socialecological systems, [consisting of] leaders in the ecological and social sciences, covering a range of disciplinary expertise [with] in-depth knowledge of social-ecological systems in Australia, Africa, South East Asia, South America, the USA and Europe, in a variety of terrestrial and aquatic systems used for both production and conservation.”4 Resilience theory has developed in a context of complex systems thinking, and it is argued that nature is seldom linear and predictable (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2008). The dominant understanding today is that complex systems tend to have not one but several equilibrium states, often referred to as stability domains or basins of attraction (Berkes et al., 2008). A complex system organizes itself around one of those domains, and when perturbations occur and conditions change, feedback loops maintain the current state, but only up to a point. When that point or threshold is reached, rapid and catastrophic change, i.e., a “fl ip,” will occur (Berkes et al., 2008). The system’s capacity to withstand or cope with such perturbations is interpreted through the lens of resilience. The understanding of resilience varies considerably in the literature (Adger, 2000; Brand & Jax, 2007; Gallopin, 2006; Klein, Nicholls, & Thomalla, 2003; Walker et al., 2004). It is sometimes understood as a system’s buffering capacity or ability to absorb perturbations. It can also be seen as

Utopianism in Science

61

the magnitude of disturbance that a system can tolerate before it radically changes its structure and functions (Walker & Meyers, 2004). A distinction is sometimes made between ecosystem resilience and the resilience of SESs. “Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary.”5 A SES is “a system that includes societal (human) and ecological (biophysical) subsystems in mutual interaction” (Gallopin, 2006, p. 294). Resilience is a property of the integrated systems of people and the natural environment and has the following three defi ning characteristics: “the amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure, or still be in the same state, within the same domain of attraction; the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization; and the ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation” (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 13). It is argued that the SES can be specified for any scale from the local community and its environment to the global system comprising the whole of humankind (“the anthroposphere”) and the “ecosphere” (Gallopin, 2006). When resilience is analyzed and discussed in connection with SESs, the main concern is with institutions and their capacity to adapt to external pressure such as global environmental change (Berkes et al., 2008). Such a capacity is supposed to depend greatly on the flexibility of these institutions to choose between alternative development paths in order to fi nd the best fit between the natural and social subsystems and on their ability to observe and respond properly to feedback (Davidson-Hunt & Berkes, 2008; Folke, Pritchard Jr, Berkes, Colding, & Svedin, 2007). These systems are extremely complex because of the interdependency between systems on higher and lower levels and because of temporal cross-scale dynamics (Folke, 2006). Ecosystems and social systems are inextricably linked and their overall dynamics are determined by the feedback loops among them (Folke et al., 2010). It is considered irrational, even for analytical purposes, to separate the ecological and the social and try to explain them independently (Folke et al., 2010). Over the years, defi nitions of resilience have ranged from more static conceptions—for example, “the capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity” (Walker et al., 2006)—to those including change and transformation—for example, the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks (Adger et al., 2011; Folke, 2006; Folke et al., 2010; Walker & Meyers, 2004). The inclusion of transformability and adaptive capacity as significant features of resilience is among the most recent changes of the theory. Transformability is the capacity to create new stability domains, the potential to cross thresholds to establish new development trajectories (Folke et al., 2010). Resistance to

62 Johan Hedrén change is not always considered a good thing and transformation is supposed to be preferable sometimes (Folke, 2006; Walker et al., 2004). This understanding reflects a changed comprehension of complex systems and is paralleled by growing interest in concepts such as innovation, renewal, regeneration, and reorganization (Folke, 2006). The leading resilience researchers often highlight what they describe as fundamentally different notions of resilience (Gunderson, 2008; Folke, 2006). If one assumes a single equilibrium, resilience is gauged by the recovery time following a perturbation; the focus then is on recovery and constancy (Folke, 2006). The dominant current understanding is that a system constitutes a web of several possible equilibria, several stability domains, attractors, or basins of attraction, between which the system can flip when affected by certain pressures. In this case, resilience is gauged by the amount of disturbance that can be absorbed before such a fl ip occurs (Folke et al., 2010). It is stressed, however, that even this defi nition represents a radical simplification and that reality is more complicated: The concept of alternative stable states with clear-cut basins of attraction is a highly simplified image of reality in ecosystems. Attractors may be stable points or more complicated cycles of various kinds. Intrinsic tendencies to produce cyclic or chaotic dynamics are blended in intricate ways with the effects of environmental stochasticity, and with trends that cause thresholds as well as the nature of attractors to change over time. Nonetheless we observe sharp shifts in ecosystems that stand out of the blur of fluctuations around trends. Such shifts are called regime shifts and may have different causes. . . . When they correspond to a shift between different stability domains they are referred to as critical transitions. (Folke et al., 2010) Interactions in systems are complex and nonlinear with lags, discontinuities, thresholds, and limits. They also exhibit limited predictability (Folke et al., 2007). Complex systems are generally hierarchical, containing subsystems and nested within larger-scale systems, and will therefore “be analyzed or managed simultaneously at different scales” (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 6). This complexity is sometimes described in terms of panarchy (Walker et al., 2006), which denotes the complex relationship between different physical and temporal scales. Panarchy concerns the many interlinkages between systems and scales, ranging from the micro to macro level, and between adaptive cycles of change (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). The supposed utility of resilience theory is expressed through a number of diverse goals such as explanation, administrative control, prognostication, critique, empowerment, and institutional transformation. All these goals are marginal, however, in comparison with the goal of management, sometimes expressed in terms of coping with change, adaptive management, or

Utopianism in Science

63

adaptation. As a step toward this target, a more general understanding of the system on the highest level is considered necessary: The need to investigate the whole SES arises from the increasingly recognized evidence that understanding and anticipating the behavior of the social and ecological components of SES in many cases requires simultaneously taking into account both components; in other words, SESs are non-decomposable systems. (Gallopin, 2006, p. 294) This aim is obviously very ambitious. Not only should the ecological and social spheres be distinguished, but also a higher level of relationships between these areas and the dynamics of the system as a whole. The extreme complexity of the relationships between driving forces and change in SESs is clearly recognized: These driving forces can include tenure regimes, technological change, international fi nancial assistance and pressure for structural adjustment, government economic and social policy, demographic change, international environmental institutions, and world commodity markets, as well as even more distant determinants of environmental change such as power relations in society, world-view, lifestyle, religion, ethics and values. Some of these driving forces are the subject of research trying to correlate environmental change with external drivers. What is unclear in a general sense are the mechanisms by which changes in driving forces work through to impacts on the proximate causes of environmental change. There are time lags, spatial-diff usion processes, and convoluted transformations of broad-scale socioeconomic and biophysical signals. One task is to identify these time lags and diff usion processes, in itself a gargantuan task—but the further task is to specify the many variations that can invert, buffer, amplify, or otherwise transform driving forces into landscape signatures. (Folke et al., 2007) Resilience theory is frequently presented as tentative and developing, especially when applied to SESs (Folke, 2006; Walker et al., 2006). Folke describes the ongoing effort in resilience research to understand SESs as “still in its infancy” (Folke, 2006, p. 254). However, since the initial formulation of resilience theory (Holling, 1973), many concepts have been interwoven into a complex mass of defi nitions, relationships, and demarcations: adaptability, transformability, basins or domains of attraction, robustness, vulnerability, risk, panarchy, engineering resilience, ecological resilience, nested dynamics, subsystems, scales, latitude, resistance, precariousness, attractors, stability, stability landscapes, social-ecological system (SES), capacity of response, exposure, system trajectory or orbit, multistability, etc. The conceptual repertoire has an apparently abstract character, with very little anchoring in the social sphere; accordingly, there

64 Johan Hedrén is a huge gap between the conceptual framework of complex systems and the empirical landscape of social-ecological relationships thought of as the field of applicability. So is there really any such thing as a resilience theory on SESs? According to C.S. Holling, yes, and it “is a theory that recognizes the synergies and constraints among nature, economic activities, and people—a theory that informs and emerges from empirical practice” (2008, p. xix). Many publications have been dedicated to this endeavor for well over a decade, and many concepts and theoretical claims are found in this literature, but so far little has been done to bridge the gap between the abstract principles of complex systems and the social and social-ecological relationships that are the target.

4. UTOPIAN ESTRANGEMENT: RESILIENCE THEORY AS CRITIQUE The first aspect of utopianism to be discussed here is the potential of resilience theory to expose problematic properties of current society, especially those that are generally treated as normal, natural, or indisputable. What problems are targeted and how are they understood? A key issue for this theoretical project should be the principal understanding of systems as such: What is meant by systems, and what are the rules for their theoretical delimitation? How does one distinguish a system from its broader setting, that is, between the system and its context or environment? Where is feedback generated: within the system, in relation to the context (i.e., the “environment”), or both? What are the central components of a system? How do the ecological, social, and social-ecological systems relate to each other? Folke claims that separating social from ecological systems is an epistemological mistake, but still these systems are treated as separate subsystems that are interconnected in his text (Folke, 2006). There can be no subsystem without separation from other systems, so the understandings of “systems” are confl icting. Such contradictory statements display a lack of rigor, making their applicability confusing, and we never get any serious analysis of this “epistemological mistake.” It is well known that social systems today are rarely fi xed in space, especially not since the advent of cyberspace. How, then, should we understand the relationship between the spatially fi xed ecological systems and the disembedded social systems? The resilience theory authors don’t give any answers. Several additional serious shortcomings in resiliency theory compound the confusion. 1. A recurrent theme in the resilience literature is knowledge. Contemporary society is considered wedded to traditional scientific knowledge, which is held to lack the capacity to analyze fundamental relationships and may even worsen problems (Folke et al., 2007; Gunderson, 2008).

Utopianism in Science

65

Resilience theory is portrayed as radically new and different from “conventional” scientific and technological approaches to resource and ecosystem management, which are considered obsolete and dysfunctional (Berkes et al., 2008). This is because of “the ideology of a strongly positivist resource management science, with its emphasis on centralized institutions and command-and-control resource management. Such management is based on a thinking of linear models and mechanistic views of nature” (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 8). These shortcomings are supposed to emanate from an understanding of distinct social and ecological systems, which are generally treated as separate units, and from a bias toward linear interpretations of development (Folke et al., 2007). Traditional science is also accused of believing that ecological systems are oriented toward single equilibrium states (Gunderson, 2008), and of being fragmentary (Gunderson, 2008; Holling, 2008, p. xix). Moreover, it is argued that surprises are inevitable and that knowledge always will be incomplete (Gunderson, 2008). This is sometimes discussed in terms of bounded rationality and the observation that the environment in which humans operate is complex and poorly understood (Folke et al., 2007). Instead of these “epistemologically flawed” frameworks, a more correct and useful framework is supposed to be found in resilience thinking, a framework intended to be scientific and practical that is described as holistic and more correctly representing the interconnected nature of social and ecological systems. However, this critical view of what are conceived of as shortcomings of conventional knowledge clashes with the absence of epistemological reflection on the status of knowledge generated by the theory of complex systems and resilience thinking. The more profound ontological and epistemological issues remain to be addressed and, as noted by Cote and Nightingale (2012), resilience theory seems to have developed in isolation from critical social science. It supplies no analysis of how knowledge is produced, i.e., no theoretical framing of the linkages between knowledge and power structures, such as various discourses, political hegemonies, or the economic system. Because of all these shortcomings, the analytical and critical potential of resilience theory for analyzing knowledge of SESs should be very weak. 2. Resilience thinking is “a theoretical framework for understanding what drives SESs, centered around the idea of resilience” (Folke et al., 2010). The theory starts with the bold but not yet seriously investigated hypothesis that ecological and social systems are similar, and the analysis is anchored in a number of unjustified assumptions. One concerns the basic functioning of systems: “Resilience in systems is determined by the interactions of a few key variables that operate at different scales, e.g., slower and faster rates in time or smaller or larger extents in space” (Walker et al., 2006). There are no links to empirical investigations of SESs on which this lawlike statement is founded, and the so-called key variables are not yet defi ned.

66 Johan Hedrén 3. The resilience theory literature is still void of systematic and thorough analyses of social change and the historical transformation of society (Cote & Nightingale, 2012; Hornborg, 2013). A number of supposedly important drivers are mentioned but never paid sufficient attention to evaluate their relative importance. The understandings and roles of institutions, the economy, politics, individuals or subjects, discourse, ideology, culture, etc., have been the focus of the social sciences and the humanities for many decades now, and a broad range of conflicting opinions about their ontological status has generated a complex landscape of divergent positions. Resilience theory, though, is rarely, if ever, related to these topics and positionings, and the ontological status of the fundamental social components is still not defi ned more than in fragments. 4. The main motivation for the development of resilience thinking is a perceived threat of critical transition that, to be avoided, calls for profound societal change (Folke et al., 2010). This critique and the accompanying analysis of the problem is never expanded in detail. On the contrary, it is expressed in vague and general terms such as problematic behavior patterns and development paradigms: “It is plausible that current development paradigms and patterns, if continued, would tip the integrated human–earth system into a radically different basin of attraction” (Folke et al., 2010). There is a problem with current behavioral patterns that constitute “a serious impediment for preventing loss of Earth System resilience” (Folke et al., 2010). The same kind of sketchy analysis is applied to resource management, “conventional” resource management being considered pathological as it “tends to increase the potential for larger-scale disturbances and even less manageable feedbacks from the environment” (Folke et al., 2007). 5. These authors identify the problem in many current societies as a lack of fit between institutions and ecological systems, further arguing that these societies employ norms and rules that rely on future technological fi xes. Moreover, these societies employ narrow indicators of welfare, draw on world views that alienate people from their life-support ecosystems, and believe in technical substitutes for the loss of ecosystem services (Folke et al., 2007). Nature has been viewed merely as a storehouse of raw materials, it is argued. The idea of a general fit between institutions and ecological systems is odd from a social scientific point of view and hinges on the longsince-buried tradition of natural law or natural right. Nature is taken as a given, and social relationships are thought of as ideally modeled on natural principles. In terms of utopianism, this exemplifies the heavily criticized blueprint view generally associated with totalitarianism and, as a foundation for critique, it lacks a supporting ontology and epistemology. 6. A central aspect of resilience is adaptive capacity. Such capacity can be described as the power of actors, individuals, or groups to maintain or change social or ecological relationships according to their specific preferences and interests. However, the degree and character of any transformation is always dependent on current power relationships, and change

Utopianism in Science

67

generally supports some interests while counteracting others (Mouffe, 2005). Consequently, any social system will be beneficial for some people and disadvantageous to others, regardless of whether or not change occurs. It seems to be taken for granted in resilience theory, however, that systems essentially move between more or less “desirable configurations” (Folke, 2006, p. 260), i.e., inhabitants are understood as sharing all central interests and values. This analysis does not say whose will, interests, or preferences should be supported, except those of a generalized “we.” As Alf Hornborg, Paul Nadasdy, and others have noted in their critical analyses, resilience theory barely takes account of power or interest conflicts (Hornborg, 2009, 2013; Nadasdy, 2007). Such a lack is of course devastating in a theoretical framework intended for application in critical analysis. 7. Resilience is defi ned as both the “ability to cope with perturbations” and the “ability to withstand perturbations”: But resilience is not only about being persistent or robust to disturbance. It is also about the opportunities that disturbance opens up in terms of recombination of evolved structures and processes, renewal of the system and emergence of new trajectories. In this sense, resilience provides adaptive capacity . . . that allow for continuous development, like a dynamic adaptive interplay between sustaining and developing with change. Too much of either will ultimately lead to collapse. It does not imply that resilience is always a good thing. It may prove very difficult to transform a resilient system into a more desirable one. (Folke, 2006, p. 259) “Ability to cope with perturbations” might equally entail choosing a new domain of attraction as managing to retain the current one. This current, more encompassing defi nition of resilience, which includes the ability to adapt and transform, results in a notion without any potentiality: a resilient society is one that can choose between following or changing its current development path as preferred, i.e., it is a society with functional planning and administrative institutions. 8. A stronger focus on economic development as part of globalization within a social-ecological context is called for (Folke et al., 2007). Because of the globalization processes that have been transforming the world over hundreds of years, there are no longer any separate areas (local systems) where the economic, ecological, and social relationships can be fully understood as locally and internally coordinated. As thoroughly demonstrated by Ulrich Beck (1992), Manuel Castells (1996), Fredric Jameson (1991), Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), David Harvey (1989), and many others, the most encompassing scale must be used in any attempt to analyze the general and long-term development of a society, but nowhere in the resilience literature can we fi nd such an exploration. Accordingly, resilience theory has no critical potential to analyze these relationships.

68

Johan Hedrén

9. When resilience thinking turned, in the 1990s, to research into social relationships, it tended to develop along different lines from previous resilience research, which had focused on ecological relationships. Mainstream social science concepts such as management, governance, epistemic communities, and social learning dominate the discourse rather than the very specific and abstract concepts connected to current systems and resilience theory. The network metaphor sometimes replaces the system concept when the societal level is analyzed, and the advanced toolbox of resilience and complex systems tends to be neglected. Instead of a thorough analysis based on a unique conceptual toolbox, we get fragmentary discussions and narrow case studies based on mainstream theories applying consensus approaches. The result is that current consensual notions of social relationships are confirmed rather than problematized, i.e., we get no estrangement effects and no displacements or changed views of generally taken-for-granted social relationships. On the contrary, as elaborated on by Hornborg (2013) and Fabinyi (2008), resilience theory seems instead to accentuate and support the dominant consensual reasoning that so effectively conceals conflicting interests and inequalities. As the discussions and analyses tend to focus on governance and management rather than on truly political issues including power, confl icting interests, and values, they also support and confirm the postpolitical ethos, and the ideological effect is mystification favoring the dominant groups rather than the critical exposure of unequal relationships and power structures that would empower the poor and stimulate the utopian impulse.

4. UTOPIA: A RESILIENT SOCIETY The second aspect of utopianism to be clarified is the suggested alternative: What are the main features of a resilient society? What are its organizing principles? What is the role of science in this society? The utopia is a society governed by resilience thinking: . . . resilience thinking incorporates the dynamic interplay of persistence, adaptability and transformability across multiple scales and multiple attractors in SESs. Fruitful avenues of inquiry include the existence of potential thresholds and regime shifts in SESs and the challenges that this implies; adaptability of SESs to deal with such challenges, including uncertainty and surprise; and the ability to steer away from undesirable attractors, innovate and possibly transform SESs into trajectories that sustain and enhance ecosystem services, societal development and human well-being. (Folke et al., 2010) This quotation aptly illustrates that the ideal society demands continuous analysis based on resilience theory and/or complex systems theory,

Utopianism in Science

69

and that the analytical task is extremely demanding due to the perceived complexity. A society with the capacity to avoid transformative change is one with proper institutions able to recognize the thresholds and tipping points and to steer safely due to appropriate or fitting governance structures (Adger et al., 2011). The focus is on institutions, including science, which can guarantee a correct response to feedback from multiple systemic contexts. As well, management systems that “fl ow with nature” are sought (Folke et al., 2007). A main criterion of a resilient society, therefore, is that it be built on adaptive and flexible management processes, providing the ability to deal with surprise and uncertainty and the capacity to adapt to change: “In a resilient social-ecological system, disturbance has the potential to create opportunity for doing new things, for innovation and development” (Folke, 2006, p. 253). Institutional learning, awareness of the importance of feedback, and systemic experimentation in policy development are considered necessary components of a resilient society (Berkes et al., 2008). Sustainability demands resilience and a sustainable society is one with “institutional capacity to respond to environmental feedback, to learn and store understanding” and with the capacity to allow change (Folke, Colding, & Berkes, 2008, p. 354). The roles of individual enterprise and flexibility (Folke et al., 2010; Holling, 2008) have been increasingly stressed in the resilience literature, as has a general appreciation of novelty, innovation, and renewal (Gunderson, 2008; Gunderson & Holling, 2002): “Novelty, or the ability to innovate, is an essential element of adaptability and hence of resilience” (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 20). The best context for this flexibility is an organization that maintains diversity and variability, leaves some slack and flexibility, and does not try to optimize certain parts of the system but maintains redundancy (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 15). Flexible linkages with broader sets of actors or networks are preferred (Gunderson, 2008) as are redundant structures rather than a few large, optimized structures. Overall, this results in a society that treats policies as hypotheses and management as experimentation, that acknowledges ever-present uncertainty, allows participation by various stakeholder groups, and breaks down the barriers between research and management (Folke et al., 2007). The focus should be on process instead of form and on change instead of equilibrium (Davidson-Hunt & Berkes, 2008), and the goal is to defi ne the kinds of institutions best able to handle such dynamic processes. The challenges of sustainable development demand a proper understanding of the links between ecosystems and socioeconomic systems in the local, regional, national, and continental contexts (Folke et al., 2007). The goal is a new systemic totality of the ecological, economic, and sociocultural dimensions (Folke et al., 2007). Proper institutions—rules, laws, constitutions, behavioral norms, conventions, and self-imposed codes of conduct—are required.

70 Johan Hedrén The level of resilience of an SES is the outcome of a certain configuration of identity, core values, worldview, agency, actor groups, social learning processes, networks, organizations, institutions, governance structures, incentives, political and power relationships, and ethics (Folke et al., 2010). Novelty and change in a resilience approach might lead to a new identity of the SES, a process based on interactions within and across scales (Folke et al., 2010). Accordingly, the utopian resilient society comprises an organized mix of institutions that smoothly correlates all of these processes and integrates scientific knowledge of complex systems with local knowledge and practical experience, all for the sake of adaption and, if required, radical transformation (Berkes et al., 2008). These processes are sometimes discussed in terms of self-organization: Self-organization is one of the defining properties of complex systems. . . . The self-organization principle, operationalized through feedback mechanisms, applies to many biological systems, social systems and even to mixtures of simple chemicals. High-speed computers and non-linear mathematical techniques help simulate self-organization by yielding complex results and yet strangely ordered effects. (Berkes et al., 2008, p. 6) It is apparent that science is believed to play key roles in governing development, and that resilience thinking is a kind of science that is supposed to be fundamental to the utopia of resilience. It has already been demonstrated above that resilience thinking shares some properties with the “blueprint utopias” developed along with the project of modernity. In these blueprint utopias, science often replaces politics in seeking a consensual, harmonious society based on universal truths and principles (Kumar, 1999).

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS In this fi nal section of the chapter I will return to the initial question about the potential of resilience theory to contribute to utopian activities and the generation of hope: Does the utopia of resilience radically challenge current society by exposing the root causes of socioenvironmental problems and confronting it with clear alternatives? Can it function as a trigger contributing to distanced reflection on relationships taken for granted in current society, engendering hope, the understanding that another world is possible? In sum, resilience thinking about SESs concerns their ability to move into desirable states. It demands a so-called proper understanding of the system as a whole. All systems share general properties regulating their functioning, structure, feedback, and identity, it is argued. The goal is to

Utopianism in Science

71

fi nd an ideal set of institutions for managing social-ecological systems. In that sense, there can be “a perfect fit” between institutions and ecological systems irrespective of when, where, or on what scales, so an important task for resilience theory is to identify the properties of these institutions. Given that conflicting interests, values, meanings, or identities are never seriously addressed in this theory, the resilient utopia makes its appearance as a society in perfect harmony, without confl icting interests and values, and with a common identity. It is regulated by institutions identified to be perfect for controlling the system and handling its dynamics. It has great flexibility, supports individual enterprise, and encompasses a general appreciation of novelty, innovation, and renewal. The advanced science of complex systems and resilience thinking has central roles, and the society is void of genuine politics. When stripped of all its systems theory rhetoric, a pretty familiar beast appears: the utopia of resilience is strikingly similar to the current postpolitical society ordered by a capitalist economy. Flexibility and innovation within a capitalist framework show up as ecological modernization and flexible accumulation: a society ruled by the production and consumption of the many for the profit of the few. Void of any serious analysis of the root of evil, resilience theory reaches a dead end in suggestions that, within the unquestioned capitalist framework, would probably bring the postpolitical ethos to a position of even stronger hegemony. The promotion of proper governance structures, a recurring theme in the resilience literature in recent years, is a very weak compensation for loss of the political power necessary to constructively handle fundamental conflicts from the local to global levels. On the other hand, exactly this conventionalism, this anchoring in concepts far from the many traditions of critical social science, likely partly explains why this theory has gained so much support among many groups today. Through its many universalistic claims (e.g., perfect fit, proper understanding, general rules and principles, appropriate governance structures, proper institutions, and correct response to feedback), resilience theory counteracts a sound utopianism in which the unavoidable anchoring in a certain political (or ideological) standpoint is acknowledged. Instead, it recalls the heavily criticized blueprint utopianism that has been recognized to support totalitarian projects, in which a framework is sought that prescribes a number of institutional features and rules for organizing any society—irrespective of its cultural, geographical, historical, economic, or ecological specificities. A few more comments need to be made concerning topics missing from resilience theory, when considering both its critical potential and its proposed alternative, i.e., its utopia. As has already been touched upon above, one such lack concerns its epistemological underpinnings. Reflexive examination of the relationship between the many theoretical concepts and the extreme ecological and social complexity that they are intended to capture

72 Johan Hedrén seems almost nonexistent. Where is this theoretical tradition situated in the landscape of positivism, social constructivism, dialectics, phenomenology, critical theory, poststructuralism, critical realism, etc.? What are the limits of scientific knowledge and how should we relate to them? We are never told. This silence extends to the realm of motivation. What is the role of science today, and what should it be? What is the ideal position of a scientist in relation to other actors, such as governments, authorities, capitalist stakeholders, political organizations, laypeople, people in need of empowerment, etc.? There are plenty of motivations in the resilience literature regarding perceived management needs, but almost nothing is said about the theory’s epistemological and political underpinnings. Why, for whom, and wielding what knowledge claims should resilience thinking and complex systems theory engage in social processes? This silence stands in sharp contrast to the many other theoretical frameworks that strive to grasp global relationships, i.e., those developed by Fredric Jameson, Immanuel Wallerstein, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Alf Hornborg, and Ulrich Beck. And there are seeds within the tradition of systems analysis that seem to be neglected too, such as the extensive epistemological writings of Gregory Bateson (1972), developed more recently by Felix Guattari (2000). A main concern of the latter is the relationship not only between what are generally considered the ecological and social spheres, but also with the ecology of mind, which should be essential to any understanding of “learning”—a theme high on the research agenda of resilience theorists. Current resilience theorists criticize earlier notions of resilience for depicting single equilibrium states in ecological systems as the goal of ecosystem management, and this earlier take on resilience theory is sometimes called engineering resilience (Folke, 2006). However, the engineering perspective is still strikingly apparent in this literature, even among those scholars who offered this criticism. The systems are approached from a fictitious position beyond place and history. It is the engineer’s gaze shaped by abstract concepts and relationships developed through interrogating ecological systems. This is probably one reason for the omission of familiar social science concerns, and it at least partly explains why issues such as justice, power, dignity, needs, rights, wellbeing, and meaning are downplayed in the literature, superseded by a repertoire of esoteric abstractions such as domains of attraction, panarchy, and feedback loops. As Cote and Nightingale state in their suggestions for amalgamating resilience theory and social science, resilience theory “has grown out in remarkable isolation from critical social science literature on the human dimensions of environmental change” (2012, p. 476). However, on the basis of the analysis presented in this chapter, I doubt that such an amalgamation will be possible given the burden of the blueprint utopia. To release resilience theory from that burden, its fundamental statements, approaches, and perspectives must be abandoned, and it is difficult to see any remaining contribution that would add to the already rich and germane theoretical traditions

Utopianism in Science

73

of relevance here such as political ecology, human ecology, ecological economics, neo-Marxism, postcolonialism, feminist theory, and ecologically engaged poststructuralism. NOTES 1. http://www.transitionnetwork.org/support/12-ingredients, retrieved 15 May 2013. 2. http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/member_organizations, retrieved 15 May 2013. 3. http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/about-us.html, retrieved 15 May 2013. 4. http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/about_ra, retrieved 12 April 2013. 5. http://www.resalliance.org/576.php, retrieved 12 April 2013.

REFERENCES Adger, N.W. (2000). Social and ecological resilience: Are they related? Progress in Human Geography, 24, 347–364. Adger, W.N., Brown, K., Nelson, D.R., Berkes, F., Eakin, H., Folke, C., Galvin, K., Gunderson, L., Goulden, M., O’Brien, K., Ruitenbeek, J., & Tompkins, E. L. (2011). Resilience implications of policy responses to climate change. WIREs Climate Change, 2, 757–766. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society. London, UK: Sage Publications. Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (2008). Introduction. In Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (Eds.) Navigating social–ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change (pp. 1–29). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brand, F. S., & Jax, K. (2007). Focusing the meaning(s) of resilience: Resilience as a descriptive concept and a boundary object. Ecology and Society, 12(1), 23. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art23/ Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Cote, M., & Nightingale, A.J. (2012). Resilience thinking meets social theory: Situating social change in socio-ecological systems (SES) research. Progress in Human Geography, 36, 475–489. Davidson-Hunt, I.J., & Berkes, F. (2008). Nature and society through the lens of resilience: Toward a human-in-ecosystem perspective. In F. Berkes, J. Colding, & C. Folke (Eds.), Navigating social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change (pp. 53–82). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. el-Ojeili, C. (2012). Politics, social theory, utopi,a and the world-system: Arguments in political sociology. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Fabinyi, M. (2008). The political aspects of resilience. Proceedings of the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 7–11 July (pp. 971–975). Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change, 16, 235–267. Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chapin, T., & Rockström, J. (2010). Resilience thinking: Integrating resilience, adaptability, and

74 Johan Hedrén transformability. Ecology and Society, 15(4), 20. Retrieved from http://www. ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/ Folke, C., Colding, J., & Berkes, F. (2008). Synthesis: Building resilience and adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems. In F. Berkes, J. Colding, & C. Folke (Eds.), Navigating social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change (pp. 352–387). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Folke, C., Pritchard, Jr., L., Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Svedin, U. (2007). The problem of fit between ecosystems and institutions: Ten years later. Ecology and Society, 12(1), 30. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/ iss1/art30/ Gallopin, G.C. (2006). Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity. Global Environmental Change, 16, 293–303. Gallopin, G.C., Funtowicz, S., O’Connor, M., & Ravetz, J. (2001). Science for the 21st century: From social contract to the scientific core. International Social Science Journal, 168, 219–229. Gunderson, L.H. (2008). Adaptive dancing: Interactions between social resilience and ecological crises. In F. Berkes, J. Colding, & C. Folke (Eds.), Navigating social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change (pp. 33–52). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gunderson, L.H., & Holling, C.S. (2002). Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Washington, DC: Island Press. Guattari, F. (2000). The three ecologies. New Brunwick, NJ: The Athlone Press. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hedrén, J., & Linnér, B.-O. (2009). Utopian thought and the politics of sustainable development. Futures, 41, 210–219. Holling, C.S. (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1–23. Holling, C.S. (2001). Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological and social systems. Ecosystems, 4, 390–405. Holling, C.S. (2008). Foreword: The backloop to sustainability. In F. Berkes, J. Colding, & C. Folke (Eds.), Navigating social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change (pp. xv–xxii). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hornborg, A. (2009). Zero-sum world: Challenges in conceptualizing environmental load displacement and ecologically unequal exchange in the world system. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 50, 237–262. Hornborg, A. (2013). Revelations of resilience: From the ideological disarmament of disaster to the revolutionary implications of (p)anarchy. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses. Advance online publication. doi:10.1 080/21693293.2013.797661 Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. New York, NY: Verso. Jameson, F. (2004). The politics of utopia. New Left Review, 25, 35–54. Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other science fi ctions. New York, NY: Verso. Jameson, F. (2010). Utopia as method, or the uses of the future. In M.D. Gordin, H. Tilley, & G. Prakash (Eds.), Utopia/dystopia: Conditions of historical possibility (pp. 21–44). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Janssen, M.A., Schoon, M.L., Ke, W., & Börner, K. (2006). Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change. Global Environmental Change, 16, 240–252.

Utopianism in Science

75

Klein, R.J.T., Nicholls, R.J., & Thomalla, F. (2003). Resilience to natural hazards: How useful is this concept? Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards, 5, 35–45. Kumar, K. (1999). Utopianism. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Levitas, R. (1997). Educated hope: Ernst Bloch on abstract and concrete utopia. In J.O. Daniel & T. Moylan (Eds.), Not yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (pp. 65–79). New York, NY: Verso. Levitas, R. (2011). The concept of utopia. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Mannheim, K. (1985). Ideology & utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. San Diego, CA: Houghton Miffl in Harcourt. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. New York, NY: Routledge. Nadasdy, P. (2007). Adaptive co-management and the gospel of resilience. In D. Armitage, F. Berkes, & N. Doubleday (Eds.), Adaptive co-management: Collaboration, learning, and multi-level governance (pp. 208–227). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Peterson, G. (2000). Political ecology and ecological resilience: An integration of human and ecological dynamics. Ecological Economics, 35, 323–336. Sargisson, L. (1996). Contemporary feminist utopianism. New York, NY: Routledge. Sargisson, L. (2011). The curious relationship between politics and utopia. In T. Moylan & R. Baccolini (Eds.), Utopia method vision: The use value of social dreaming (pp. 25–46). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Stillman, P.G. (2001). “Nothing is, but what is not”: Utopias as practical political philosophy. In B. Goodwin (Ed.), The philosophy of utopia (pp. 9–25). Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Depoliticized environments: The end of nature, climate change, and the post-political condition. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 69, 253–274. Walker, B.H., & Meyers, J.A. (2004). Thresholds in ecological and social-ecological systems: A developing database. Ecology and Society, 9(2), 3. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art3/ Walker, B.H., Gunderson, L., Kinzig, A., Folke, C., Carpenter, S., & Schultz, L. (2006). A handful of heuristics and some propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 11(1), 13. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art13/ Walker, B.H., Holling, C.S., Carpenter, S.R., & Kinzig, A. (2004). Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 9(2), 5. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/ art5/ Walker, J., & Cooper, M. (2011). Genealogies of resilience: From systems ecology to the political economy of crisis adaptation. Security Dialogue, 42, 143–160. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: Concepts for comparative analyses. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16, 387–415. Young, O.R., Berkhout, F., Gallopin, G.C., Janssen, M.A., Ostrom, E., & van der Leeuw, S. (2006). The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research. Global Environmental Change, 16, 304–316.

5

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees Technological Utopianism and the Uneasy Relationship Between Marxism and Ecological Economics Alf Hornborg A vast literature about the alternative sources . . . has striven to convince us that such alternatives that will save mankind from its entropic predicament are just around the corner. Of course, by now we know that no such ecological saver has been around any corner. (Georgescu-Roegen, 1993, p. 194)

Ever since the Industrial Revolution saved Britain from ecological crisis in the early nineteenth century, visions of miraculous new technologies have alleviated Euro–American anxieties about the impending doom of the fossil-fuelled capitalism that it inaugurated. Although Malthus’s worries about land shortages were transcended by historical events as well as by Ricardo’s and Marx’s different versions of technological optimism, they were soon reincarnated in Jevons’s warnings about the depletion of coal. Today economists generally dismiss the pessimism not only of Malthus and Jevons, but also of current concerns over peak oil, by expressing faith in human ingenuity, whether in the form of solar panels in the Sahara Desert or other forms of putatively “green” production. To retrospectively ridicule pessimists by referring to technological progress that they did not anticipate has become an established pattern of mainstream thought. Almost regardless of ideological persuasion, the seemingly selfevident concept of “technological progress” inherited from early industrialism has been resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth. The increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power. In this chapter I discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about conventional understandings of what “technology” really is. Moreover, the technological utopianism professed, for instance, by some Marxists raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relationship between thermodynamics and theories of economic value. As I shall demonstrate, the prospect of a global civilization powered by direct solar energy is connected to the debate on how material and semiotic aspects of economic processes are related.

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 77

Figure 5.1 Illustration of planned solar power plant in the Sahara Desert. Source: Seawater Greenhouse Ltd.

1. TECHNOLOGICALLY FEASIBLE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Deliberations about technological futures tend to be based on considerations of what is feasible given current or anticipated knowledge. A common proposition is that a given technical process that has been successfully implemented under laboratory conditions, while still incapable of competing economically with conventional technologies, can soon be expected to be economically viable. Such proposals tend to unite engineers and economists under a common paradigm regarding the nature of technological innovation, even if neither profession is actually prompted to consider technological systems holistically, as simultaneously material and social strategies. To understand the conditions of “technological progress” in such a truly transdisciplinary way, we need to raise a very diverse set of questions, ranging from thermodynamics and material resource requirements to fi nancial politics and the global distribution of purchasing power. No single business or research specialization is equipped to articulate an understanding of technological progress that takes all these diverse factors into serious consideration. Let us begin by suggesting that a successful technical experiment does not provide sufficient evidence that a new technological system is “feasible” or “within reach.” Yet, as I show below, it is noteworthy that such conclusions are very frequently drawn in both academic and public debate. But if we are agreed that technical and societal feasibility are not synonymous, we need to ask what kind of obstacles might obstruct the emergence and expansion of a new technology, once its purely technical feasibility has been proven? On the one hand, there may be material constraints such as unreliability, natural limits on resource availability, or locally perceived inefficiencies in energy conversion. On the other hand, there may be various kinds of social constraints. First among these are cultural constraints such as conservatism or the relative semiotic virtues of competing designs. Second, there may be economic constraints such as high costs, low profitability, and lack of

78

Alf Hornborg

competitiveness. Third, there may be political constraints deriving from ethical considerations, legislation, policy, or trade restrictions. Finally, and more generally, we must consider how various such social constraints may simply be expressions of the fact that the expansion of a given technology is ubiquitously limited to that fraction of the world’s population that has sufficient purchasing power to adopt it. In other words, modern technology is always and everywhere a matter of uneven distribution in global society. This means that the extent to which a given technology is adopted hinges on the distribution of money in the world-system, and the technology itself represents an exchange relationship between different economic segments of world society. The “exchange” orchestrated by a technological system, I have argued (Hornborg, 2001, 2006, 2011), is in fact an asymmetric flow of embodied human time and embodied natural space between sectors where these assets are differently priced. Let me briefly elaborate on this argument before pursuing the prospects of solar energy and the analytical issues raised by such technological utopianism. The conventional scientific and popular understanding of technological innovation is that it increases efficiency in a cumulative development that progresses over time. Counter to this understanding are glaring inefficiencies that paradoxically also seem to increase over time, such as waste of resources, environmental degradation, and economic inequalities. These inefficiencies are often referred to as externalities, which might be mitigated by modifying prices. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the very rationale of capitalism is to keep such externalities external. It has been argued, for instance, that growth-based “dematerialization” is a local illusion, ignoring the displacement of growing environmental loads to world-system sectors with less purchasing power (cf. Fischer-Kowalski & Amann, 2001). Does technological development generally increase efficiency, or does it increase inefficiencies? To address this issue, two questions should be posed: 1) By what parameters is efficiency defi ned? Whereas efficiency is generally assessed in terms of inputs and output of exchange values (money), there is widespread neglect of other resource metrics, such as (embodied/ expended) energy, materials, human time, and natural space, and of the impacts of production and transport on, for example, biodiversity, environmental quality, and human health. 2) How are the boundaries defi ned for the social units assessed? Whereas efficiency may appear to be increasing within a given social unit, A, it may be decreasing within a wider social system of which A is a subsystem. I have proposed that increased technological efficiency may be largely illusory, due to 1) the inadequate consideration of all parameters, and 2) the inadequate defi nition of the boundaries of the social unit under consideration. A case study chosen to empirically illustrate such conditions is the adoption of steam technology in British textile production in the nineteenth century (Hornborg, 2006). The argument is based on 1) consideration of

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 79 international transfers of embodied human labor time and embodied natural space, rather than exchange value/money, and 2) the total implications of this technology within a global system of nations engaged in trade, rather than only within Great Britain. A conclusion of this case study is that it is valid to propose a thorough reconceptualization of technology as a global social phenomenon and cultural category. Rather than a product of local or national innovation generating an increase in overall efficiency, a global perspective reveals that, to a considerable extent, technological development may represent the increasingly unequal redistribution of resources among different sectors of world society. This conclusion raises further questions in need of systematic investigation. A central challenge is to develop methods for assessing under what global market conditions (i.e., relative prices of labor and land in different sectors of world society) a given technological system is profitable and thus feasible. Such calculations should be possible to make experimentally. It should be possible to demonstrate, for instance, that if wage levels and land rent had been equivalent throughout the world, the conditions for technological development in nineteenth-century Britain would have been fundamentally different. The question is, in fact, whether there would have been an Industrial Revolution at all. This line of inquiry is essential to understanding not only global economic history over the past several centuries, but also the prospects of technological development under rapidly changing market conditions, as anticipated over the next few decades. It is against this background that I have serious doubts about the aspirations for a global civilization powered by solar energy.

2. DIRECT USE OF THE SUN’S ENERGY: A HALF CENTURY OF HOPE All human societies, of course, have run principally on solar-derived energy, whether in the form of food, animal fodder, wind, water, or fossil fuels. The shift from premodern to fossil sources of mechanical energy, initiated by the steam engine, did not change this dependence on the sun. While alleviating some premodern problems, such as the constraints posed by a limited land area for the production of food as well as energy, fossil fuels introduced some new ones, primarily the limited nature of supply and the threat of climate change. Although worries about such drawbacks have been voiced from the start, concerns over “peak oil” and “global warming” have become significant ingredients of public consciousness in recent decades. Paradoxically, the celebration of technological progress inaugurated with the adoption of fossil fuels (the so-called Industrial Revolution) later provided the predominant template for envisioning their abandonment. Thus, hydroelectric and nuclear power facilities have been advocated precisely because they represent technologically superior (“cleaner”) alternatives to

80 Alf Hornborg fossil energy, even if most of the infrastructure for such energy sources continues to be built and maintained with the use of fossil fuels.1 Hydroelectric and nuclear power facilities have yet other drawbacks, which need not detain us here but that have contributed to the popularity of visions of a future world powered by the direct use of solar energy. The trust that technological progress will bring us a solar-powered future has been a central strain in much of the debate about global sustainability for several decades. 2 Fifty years ago, the cover of Farrington Daniels’s book Direct Use of the Sun’s Energy (1964) proclaimed that the “most plentiful and cheapest energy is ours for the taking.” Already at that time, Daniels (1964) referred to steady progress in the direct use of the sun’s energy “during the past decade” (p. 260); he asserts that “technologically it could be used to replace the energy now being supplied by fuels and electricity” and predicts that, given more expensive fossil fuels and future development of solar equipment, it will eventually be able to “compete economically with fossil fuels” (p. 253). Daniels (1964) concludes that the main limitations to use of the sun’s energy are “economic rather than technological,” and believes that markets will materialize fi rst among “developing countries where there are difficulties in international payments” (p. 259). Twenty-three years later, the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) in the so-called Brundtland report, Our Common Future, predicts that, with “constantly improving solar thermal and solar electric technologies, it is likely that their contribution will increase substantially” (p. 193). Referring to renewable energy systems generally, the Brundtland report asserts that “they offer the world potentially huge primary energy sources, sustainable in perpetuity and available in one form or another to every nation on Earth” (p. 192). A few years ago, however, the prominent energy expert Vaclav Smil (2006, p. 188) observed that direct conversion of solar radiation to electricity by photovoltaics “has succeeded only in small niche markets that can tolerate the high cost.” The two main reasons for the limited commercial success of photovoltaics are low conversion efficiency—the best field efficiencies “deteriorate to less than ten per cent”—and the high cost, which still makes it unable to compete with fossil fuels. Nevertheless, Smil (2006) affi rms that photovoltaic conversion remains “the most appealing of all renewable sources” (pp. 203–204). Another study concedes that “solar power is relatively expensive today,” but predicts that it will be “cost-competitive by as early as 2020” (Delucchi & Jacobson, 2011, p. 1174). It has been demonstrated that the (modest) expansion of renewable energy use tends to “simply be added to the energy mix without displacing fossil fuels” (York, 2012, p. 2). The same author acknowledges that photovoltaic power and wind power “require large amounts of material, some of it toxic and energy-intensive to produce, as well as large areas of land to produce substantial amounts of energy” (York, 2012, p. 3, with reference to Smil, 2003). As David MacKay (2012, p. 4) warns us, “someone who

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 81 wants to live on renewable energy, but expects the infrastructure associated with that renewable not to be large or intrusive, is deluding himself.” The comparatively low EROEI (“energy return on energy investment”) of photovoltaic power, even in as sunny a nation as Spain, has recently prompted experts (Prieto & Hall, 2013) to doubt that solar power would be able to provide a significant net energy surplus to global society. The optimistic forecasts regarding solar energy ubiquitously rely on the promises of anticipated, but as yet unrealized, technological progress. The boundary between “technological” and “social” phenomena in these deliberations tends to be blurred and unexplored. Thus, a proposal recently published in Energy Policy suggests that the barriers to providing all global energy from wind, water, and sunlight are “primarily social and political, not technological or even economic” (Delucchi & Jacobson, 2011, p. 1170). For many social scientists, however, it is impossible to extricate a purely “technological” consideration from social, political, or economic ones (e.g., Dickson, 1974; Hornborg, 1992; Latour, 1996; Nye, 2006; Pfaffenberger, 1992). The objective materiality and apparent “factuality” of technological objects render them seemingly autonomous vis-à-vis societal power structures, symbolic systems, and global resource flows, but this autonomy is an illusion. Discussions of technological options that do not consider social power, semiotics, and international trade are thus fundamentally flawed. Jacobson and Delucchi (2011) claim that it is “technically feasible” to provide all global energy from wind, water, and sunlight (p. 1155), that “wind and solar power are available today” (p. 1157), and that solar energy “can power the world . . . 15–20 times over” (p. 1159), which suggests to many social scientists that they and engineers live in different universes. This becomes even more evident when we turn to popular sources such as Wikipedia (n.d.), where the entry on “Solar Energy” claims that its uses are “limited only by human ingenuity,” and the entry on “Solar Power”— observing that photovoltaic electricity costs four times that generated by coal—naively notes that “developing countries in particular may not have the funds to build solar power plants.” If solar energy was already presented as an attractive option fi fty years ago, not least for developing countries, why has its adoption remained so marginal? Although physicists, engineers, economists, and other social scientists tend to address the issue from divergent vantage points, it should be important to consider their different perspectives in order to assemble a less fragmented, more encompassing understanding of the conceptual, social, and material dimensions of solar energy.

3. THE RELEVANCE OF THERMODYNAMICS FOR ECONOMICS The prospect of a widespread shift to the direct use of solar energy is inextricably intertwined with the issue of whether the physical laws of

82 Alf Hornborg thermodynamics significantly constrain economic processes. The economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971) importantly demonstrated that economic activities evoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as they inevitably result in a dissipation of available energy (i.e., exergy) and an increase in total entropy. This observation has become fundamental to the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics. However, Georgescu-Roegen (e.g., 1993, pp. 197–199) also presented the more controversial argument that not only energy but matter, too, is inexorably and irreversibly degraded (i.e., disordered and rendered less available) in economic processes, making the claim explicitly to challenge “salvation programs” based on solar power (p. 26). Georgescu-Roegen’s examples include the dissipation in soil, water, and air of minerals such as copper and phosphorus and of other refined substances such as the rubber in car tires. This argument is necessarily at odds with expectations of indefinitely continued economic growth. Critics have objected that there is no theoretical reason why the direct use of solar energy could not be harnessed to counteract the dissipation of matter by concentrating and recycling essential substances. This objection has been raised by physicists (e.g., Ayres, 1998; Kåberger & Månsson, 2001) as well as by Marxists committed to scenarios based on global technological progress (e.g., Schwartzman, 1996, 2008). It highlights fundamental questions regarding the relationship between Marxist theory, thermodynamics, and social-science understandings of nineteenth-century technological evolutionism. Georgescu-Roegen (1982, p. 10) observes that it is “beyond any question that matter dissipates primarily through friction of solids or fluids.” He urges readers to think of “automobile tires, of the river banks, of the body of any living creature, briefly, of any material object with a defi nite form” (p. 10) and rejects what he calls “the modern energetic dogma,” which holds that dissipated matter can be completely recycled, if only sufficient energy can be applied. As even the economic processes that organize recycling convert available energy and matter into waste (i.e., unavailable energy and matter), there can be no complete recycling of matter, regardless of the amount of energy applied. Any effort at recycling will produce additional waste. “This,” writes Georgescu-Roegen (1986, p. 7), “is a regress without limit.” The difficulties involved, he observes (1982, p. 16), are “instructively revealed by planning how to reassemble all the rubber molecules eroded from automobile tires by road friction.” In the context of rejecting “the modern energetic dogma,” Georgescu-Roegen (1986, pp. 26–33, 8–10) also dismisses various versions of an energy theory of economic value proposed, for instance, by Sergei Podolinsky, Howard T. Odum, and Robert Costanza. Finally, to illustrate that a “feasible” technology is “not necessarily viable,” Georgescu-Roegen expresses strong doubts about the prospects of the direct use of solar energy (1986, pp. 15–17): in spite of “the loud din about the solution of the energy crisis by the ‘cheap and renewable’ solar energy,” he argues that the weakness of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface means that “we need a disproportionate

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 83 amount of matter to harness solar energy in some appreciable amount” (cf. 1993, p.196). Energy analyst Vaclav Smil (1992, pp. 1–2) concedes that “Georgescu-Roegen is correct in principle” in that the human species would need to “minimize the entropic drift—and such a strategy would eventually require a gradually declining population rather than just a stationary one (even when at a fraction of our current level), in order to channel the finite amount of solar radiation into the increasingly more energy-intensive procurement of materials.” Smil observes that biological processes “dissipate both matter and energy” and uses expressions such as “low-entropy energies and materials” (p. 2). Smil (1992) also agrees with Georgescu-Roegen’s criticism of an energy theory of economic value, arguing in particular with Howard T. Odum. Although disagreeing with his use of thermodynamics, the physicist Robert Ayres (1998) nevertheless sympathizes with Georgescu-Roegen’s conclusion that “material dissipation does impose real constraints on the economic process.” Like Smil, Ayres uses expressions such as “low” versus “high entropy materials,” and agrees with the proposition that “materials can never be recycled with 100% efficiency because there are always entropic losses” (p. 3). Even if Georgescu-Roegen’s pessimism cannot be based on valid inferences from the laws of thermodynamics, Ayres (1998) apparently argues, the practical conditions for complete recycling would be “very hard to satisfy” (p. 10). Ayres (1998) bases this conclusion on calculations demonstrating that the “wastebasket of inactive high entropy materials” would need to be “very large in mass terms” (p. 8). The question of what is technically “feasible” versus “impossible,” it seems, can be addressed at different levels of theoretical rigor. The practical impossibility of complete material recycling may not be mathematically derived from the laws of thermodynamics, but may still constitute a very real constraint on the implementation of utopian engineering. Physicists Tomas Kåberger and Bengt Månsson (2001), like Ayres, reject aspects of Georgescu-Roegen’s use of thermodynamic theory. Furthermore, they are optimistic about the direct use of solar energy to sustainably recycle material resources. Although Kåberger and Månsson (2001) concede that the concept of entropy applies both to matter and energy (p. 167), and praise Georgescu-Roegen’s attempt to bring “economists and economics back towards reality” (p. 172), they maintain that “with appropriate technology and social organization, it is possible to slow down or even to reverse such dissipation processes, thereby building up stocks of low entropy material in society while exporting the corresponding entropy from the Earth” (p. 169). In a revealing discussion of the relationship between entropy and economic value, Kåberger and Månsson (2001, pp. 173–174) agree with Georgescu-Roegen that “low entropy is not sufficient for something to be valuable,” citing his example that “a person may prefer an omelette to an intact egg.” On the other hand, it should be observed, preparing an omelet requires the dissipation of exergy, which validates Georgescu-Roegen’s

84

Alf Hornborg

general point—accepted by Kåberger and Månsson—that, taken together, as a “necessary consequence” of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, “it is true that ‘matter-energy’ enters the economic process in a state of lower entropy than the state at which it leaves” (Kåberger & Månsson, 2001, p. 173). As any economic process will have produced entropy, “the more valuable products and waste materials, taken together, will have greater entropy than the total entropy of the less valuable inputs” (Kåberger & Månsson, 2001, p. 174). Although the economic value (i.e., market price) of particular commodities cannot be expected to correlate with the amount of labor or other energy expended in their production (Hornborg, 2011), it would be wrong to conclude, as do Kåberger and Månsson (2001), that “it is difficult to defend any general, meaningful statement on the relation between entropy and value” (p. 174). As these authors on the very same page have offered precisely such a statement, it is worth repeating: The more valuable products and waste materials, taken together, will have greater entropy than the total entropy of the less valuable inputs. Exactly this is Georgescu-Roegen’s most fundamental point, but neither he nor any other economist or physicist that I am aware of has drawn the logical conclusion that I suggested over twenty years ago (Hornborg, 1992), viz., that the market exchange of fi nished industrial products for fuels and raw materials will inexorably reward the dissipation of such resources with more resources to dissipate. In other words, the more resources we have dissipated today, the more new resources we will be able to dissipate tomorrow. Regarding the prospects of the direct use of solar energy, Kåberger and Månsson (2001, p. 177) simply declare that Georgescu-Roegen’s conclusion is “wrong.” They envisage a future “industrial society independent of the Earth’s deposits of low entropy resources, a society that, like natural ecosystems, uses the solar radiation to manage and reduce the entropy of matter,” confidently claiming that “technologies are already available for running all currently fossil-fuelled processes with solar energy alone” (Kåberger & Månsson, 2001, p. 177). For many social scientists, such statements from physicists engaged in engineering sciences sound too good to be true. To whom are these technologies available? If they are available to everybody, why on Earth do we continue, at increasing cost, to extract fossil fuels from tar sands and deep-sea drill-holes? We have to ask why 86% of global industrial energy is derived from fossil fuels, why 80% of global photovoltaic energy is generated in five of the wealthiest countries in the world, and why, in each of these countries, solar power accounts for only around 1% of all energy use (Prieto & Hall, 2013, pp. 7–9).

4. MARXISM, PHYSIOCRACY, AND ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS The technological pessimism exemplified by Georgescu-Roegen has prompted objections not only from mainstream engineers and physicists, but also from

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 85 Marxists (e.g., Schwartzman, 1996, 2008). This convergence is interesting, as it suggests a common confidence in technological progress, regardless of ideology. Ted Benton (1989, p. 55) has argued that the “bad blood” and “mutual suspicion” between Marxists and ecologists derives from a “defect” in Marx’s economic thought that makes it unable to recognize and explain ecological crises and that ultimately derives from “an insufficiently radical critique of the leading exponents of Classical Political Economy.” Among Marxist notions adopted from classical political economists such as David Ricardo, Benton (1989) claims, are the reluctance to admit significant natural constraints (p. 61) and the labor theory of value (p. 76). In fact, Benton (1989) suggests that Marx can be understood as “a victim of a widespread spontaneous ideology of 19th-century industrialism” (p. 61). In response to Benton, Reiner Grundmann (1991, pp. 118–119) observes that Marx’s contradictory approach to machine technology was “to attribute all negative aspects of machine technology to its capitalist use, and to attribute all positive aspects to machine technology as such.” As argued above, it is precisely this notion of “technology as such” that social science can no longer consider tenable.3 It thus remains a central problem of Marxism. With an article entitled “Solar Communism,” the Marxist biologist David Schwartzman (1996, p. 1) hopes to dissipate a “fog of confusion” generated by Georgescu-Roegen’s understanding of entropy as an “indicator of the ultimate limits of a growing economy.” Although Schwartzman (1996) concedes that Georgescu-Roegen’s argument regarding the relationship between entropy and the economy is “particularly fertile for an economy based on non-renewable energy” (p. 5), he asserts that, given recycling and a “waste-free technology,” the “use of solar energy will make possible an increase in the physical throughput (material processing) in the human-made technosphere without adverse impact on the biosphere” (p. 10). Referring to a source published in 1993, Schwartzman (1996) is convinced that photovoltaics “now have a bright future as a preeminent renewable energy source” (p. 11) and that a solar-based economy is “a necessary condition for a global civilization realizing the Marxian concept of communism” (p. 1). In a more recent article, Schwartzman (2008, pp. 43–44) dismisses concerns about peak oil and other natural constraints on the economy as neo-Malthusian, “regressive ideologies” and repeats his critique of Georgescu-Roegen’s argument as based on “very shaky foundations” such as “conflating isolated and closed systems.” In particular, Schwartzman (2008, p. 50) criticizes Paul Burkett (2005) for supporting “Georgescu-Roegen’s theory of entropy in an apparent attempt to seek convergence of Marxist theory with ecological economics.” Schwartzman’s technological utopianism is evident in his dismissal (2008, pp. 52–53) of photosynthesis as a “low efficiency” collection of solar radiation, and his prediction that, in the distant future, “humanity will plausibly expand outward in our solar system and even further into the galaxy.” Schwartzman (2008, pp. 53–54) asserts

86

Alf Hornborg

that the “spectre” of unavailable matter is irrelevant to a “future solarized physical economy,” and that tapping the “solar flux has a huge potential as the energy basis of a solar utopia.” In fact, it seems that the feasibility of such a solarized economy is essential to any “concrete visions of communist utopia,” the material prerequisites of which include a “progressive dematerialization of technology” through the expansion of information technology and an “elimination of sprawl leaving extensive biospheric reserves” (Schwartzman, 2008, pp. 56–57). If this technological utopia is “simply wishful thinking,” Schwartzman (2008, pp. 57–58) concludes, then “any meaningful progress for humanity in this century” is unthinkable. The main target of Schwartzman’s (2008) critique, it seems, is Paul Burkett’s (2005) efforts to reconcile Marxist theory and ecological economics.4 These efforts are significant and instructive, for they reveal divergent assumptions about economic processes that ultimately cannot be reconciled. In an earlier article, Burkett (2003) compares the perspectives of ecological economics, Physiocracy, and Marxism regarding the sense in which nature can be considered a source of economic value. Burkett (2003, pp. 138–141) points out that, while many ecological economists treat “nature as a direct source and substance of value,” others (including Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Herman Daly) are content with observing that natural resources (sources of “low-entropy matter-energy”) are consumed and dissipated in the production of valuable goods and services, while the definition of the latter as “valuable” is based on immaterial utility contributing to “psychic income” and the “enjoyment of life.” The difference between these two schools of thought is important. The former approach offers a physical (e.g., energy) theory of value, in effect equating economic value with quantifiable, past investments of some material resource. The latter approach actually accepts the mainstream perception (among neoclassical economists) of consumer utility as equivalent to economic value (i.e., market price), while adding the crucial observation that the production of economic value (utility) simultaneously increases entropy and environmental degradation. This analytical distinction between the largely cultural dimension of consumer value and the material dimension of physical resource theory is essential to any attempt to reconcile the interaction between semiotic and material aspects of economic processes (Hornborg, 1998, 2011). Rather than reducing economic value to embodied quantities of a physical force or flow, this distinction makes it possible to show how these two phenomena are related to each other. The comparison between Marxism and Physiocracy (including its revival in ecological economics) is quite illuminating. Thomas Malthus referred to that special “quality of the earth by which it can be made to yield a greater portion of the necessaries of life than is required for the maintenance of the persons employed on the land” (quoted by Benton, 1989, p. 61, with reference to Ricardo). Whereas the Physiocrats had perceived land as the ultimate generator of economic value and growth, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx shifted the focus to labor, but the structure of the

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 87 argument is very similar. All sought to identify a factor of production with the special quality of being able to yield more value than is required for its maintenance. The structural similarities between Marxism and Physiocracy (including “neo-Physiocrat” ecological economics) are further revealed in Lonergan’s (1988) analysis of theories of unequal exchange. Both Marxists and ecological economists tend to understand unequal exchange as the deviation of market prices from real “values.” Whether these values are defi ned in terms of labor or energy theories of value, Lonergan concludes, the methods and models used “are almost identical.”5 Burkett (2003, p. 139) similarly observes that the embodied energy theory of value “closely and consciously parallels the Ricardian labor-embodied theory of value, with energy replacing labor as the primary factor of production.” Although ecologically oriented Marxists tend to reject narrowly defined energy theories of value, they hold that there are biophysical values in nature that are exploited in capitalism (Burkett, 2003, p. 140). In contrast to modern mainstream economics, both Marxist and ecological economics retain the concern of Physiocracy and classical economics with the physical, material aspects of economic activity. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, this concern focused on the productivity of agricultural land, which the Physiocrats recognized as the source of subsistence for all labor, including nonagricultural labor (Burkett, 2003, p. 143). After the transition to fossil fuels and steam engines—and the articulation of the laws of thermodynamics— ecological economics has focused predominantly on energy as defined by physics (Burkett, 2003, pp. 141–142). While Marxism has maintained its emphasis on the generative capacity of labor, the transition from Physiocracy to ecological economics has entailed a shift from a concern with land to a concern with energy. The latter shift seems a logical consequence of the transition from agrarian to industrial society, i.e., from a society deriving its energy resources from horizontal land surfaces to one drawing its energy from vertical shafts through the Earth’s crust (Hornborg, 2013). Ultimately, the attention of Marxism, Physiocracy, and ecological economics to the physical aspects of economic processes all share a concern with energy, as both labor and land can be expressed as measures of available energy.6 Burkett (2003, pp. 142–150) demonstrates the extent to which Marx sympathized with the concerns of the Physiocrats. In 1770, Turgot had referred to the ability of the agricultural laborer to “produce over and above the wages of his labor.” Unlike modern economists, including Georgescu-Roegen, neither the Physiocrats nor Marx were content with identifying economic value with the immaterial, psychic “enjoyment of life,” but struggled to relate it to “the material basis and substance of human life.” Marx thus praised the Physiocrats for conceptualizing value and surplus value in terms not of consumption, but of production, and for analyzing capitalist production in terms of “eternal natural laws of production.” However, Marx simultaneously recognized that economic value in industrial capitalism could not simply be reduced to material

88

Alf Hornborg

parameters. In his view, the Physiocrats confused “value with material substance.” Instead, Marx famously argued that the labor power of workers had a unique ability to produce commodities containing more economic value than their wages. Although surplus production as conceived by the Physiocrats seemed a purely material phenomenon, modeled after the physical processes of agricultural production, it was presented as fundamental to the business of making money (rent) from owning land. The attempt to account for monetary gain in terms of physical processes recurs in Marx’s understanding of surplus production in industrial capitalism. This confl ation of the material flows of (labor) energy and the semiotic flows of exchange values (money) pervades the Marxian labor theory of value. It builds on important intuitions about connections between energy flows and economic processes, but ultimately does not clarify the nature of those connections. Marx acknowledged that surplus production in an agricultural society is easier to conceptualize than in industrial society, primarily because it can be identified without the mediation of monetary measurement, but maintained the ambition to understand industrial capitalist profits using a materialist approach largely inspired by Physiocracy. His struggle to reconcile the material and monetary aspects of the economy resulted in inconsistencies such as the implication that the labor theory of value applies only to capitalist forms of production, not to noncapitalist forms.7 At times, Marx’s understanding of economic value formation strongly echoes that of the Physiocrats, as when he refers to the “naturally originating productivity of labour . . . which of course rests on qualities of its inorganic nature—qualities of the soil, etc.” (Marx 1867/1967, quoted by Burkett, 2003, p. 150). Burkett accounts for “Marx’s endorsement of this kernel of truth in Physiocratic doctrine” as based on the point that “without an agricultural surplus, there can be no surplus labour in agriculture and no means of subsistence for nonagricultural workers, hence no surplus value in the economy as a whole.” The confusion regarding the relationship between biophysical factors of production (e.g., energy) and monetary, economic growth (i.e., capital accumulation) became particularly pronounced in the merchant capitalist states of early modern Europe. Whereas most societies until then had shared an intuitive acknowledgement of the sun’s energy as the vital essence flowing through all living things, the experience of long-distance traders instead suggested that the essential flow was that of money (Hornborg, 2013). This certainly became a predominant world view in the Portuguese, Dutch, and British trading empires, and to this day it no doubt remains a perplexing question for most people whether energy or money is ultimately the most important vital flow animating human society. A reasonable response today would be that the significance of money is precisely that it can provide access to energy, indicating that energy in the fi nal instance is more indispensable than money. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the Physiocrats and Marxists had great difficulties reconciling

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 89 the physical and semiotic aspects of economic growth. Both agricultural and industrial economies were based on material processes of production requiring physical inputs, yet the market valuation of their products—and thus their income from sales—hinged on semiotic processes determining people’s willingness to pay. The concept of economic “value” belongs to the vocabulary of the market. The desire to explain economic value in terms of physical inputs, whether of labor, land, or more generally energy, confuses two levels of reality that ought to be kept analytically distinct. Recent debates between Marxists and ecological economists illuminate this ancient source of confusion. In what Burkett (2003, pp. 152–156) calls “natural value theory,” environmental problems are the result of an underpayment of natural resources. Like other Marxists, however, Burkett argues that the underpayment of natural resources is fundamentally different from the underpayment of labor and that ecological economists err in failing to “capture capitalism’s specific relation of exploitation: wage labour.” In referring to the specificity of capitalist exploitation of labor-power as a reason to reject ecological economics, this argument is not only circular,8 but raises the same kind of objections as Burkett directs toward natural value theory: If all values (land and labor) were properly measured by money prices, rather than underpaid, would all problems—environmental destruction as well as socioeconomic inequalities—automatically be corrected? Do not Marxist utopias envisaging egalitarian collectivism and technological progress also rest on the notion that what is underpaid (in capitalism) can be properly remunerated (in socialism), i.e. that land and labor have “real” values to which socialism would do justice? But do not the technological achievements of (any) industrial society hinge precisely on keeping externalities external, i.e., on not fully compensating its labor and other energy assets for their contributions to the accumulation of infrastructure? What Burkett (2003, p. 160) calls the contradictions between monetary exchange values and “the real wealth of nature” are rooted not so much in “capitalism’s alienation of the producers vis-à-vis the conditions of their existence” as, more fundamentally, in the ambiguous relationship between money and energy in economic processes. Economies are semiotic–material hybrids and have thus escaped analyses attempting to reduce semiotic to material aspects or vice versa. The conundrum they pose to our Cartesian categories has spawned centuries of debate, including the challenges of ecological to mainstream economics, and of energy reductionist Sergei Podolinsky to Marxism (Burkett & Foster, 2006; Foster & Burkett, 2004; Martinez-Alier, 1987, 2011; Martinez-Alier & Naredo, 1982; Podolinsky, 1883/2008). These issues are reflected in “the close relationship between those thinkers who had pioneered in ecological-economic thinking and classical Marxism,” which some authors consider close enough to qualify Marx as “one of the founding figures of ecological economics” (Foster & Burkett, 2008, pp. 3, 27).

Environmental costs are The capitalist mode of insufficiently internalized production generates in market prices environmental destruction

Technological progress Technological progress and the market will solve and a shift to socialism all problems can solve all problems

A result of market power, A result of the underpaysuch as monopoly ment of labor

WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS?

WHAT IS UNEQUAL EXCHANGE?

Neo-Physiocrat ecological economics (e.g., H.T. Odum, R. Costanza)

By consumer preferences

Nonreductionist ecological economics (e.g., N. GeorgescuRoegen, H. Daly)

The prospects of technological progress are limited by the laws of entropy A result of the underpay- A result of the interaction ment of natural values of market valuation and such as embodied energy physical laws

Technological progress and restraints on consumption can solve all problems

Economic value creation Natural values such as generates entropy embodied energy are insufficiently internalized in market prices

By the quantity of embod- By the quantity of ied labor time embodied energy or other natural values

Marxism

WHY ARE THERE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS?

Neoclassical economics

By consumer preferences

ISSUES

Some Essential Differences Between Four Traditions of Economic Thought

HOW IS ECONOMIC VALUE DEFINED?

Table 5.1

90 Alf Hornborg

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 91 Rather than engage in further exegesis, it will here suffice to outline the essential differences between the main positions in these debates (Table 5.1). It will be noted that different foundational assumptions unite different traditions of economic thought. “Neo-Physiocrat” ecological economics, which reduces economic value to physics, thus tends to share with neoclassical economics the understanding of environmental problems as the result of insufficiently internalized ecology,9 with Marxism a materialist approach to economic value and unequal exchange, and with what I call “nonreductionist” ecological economics a concern with the contradictions between market valuation and nature. Marxism tends to share with neoclassical economics a conspicuous confidence in technological progress. Whereas neoclassical economics does not seriously consider material constraints on economic processes, both Marxism and both varieties of ecological economics aspire to unravel how their semiotic and material aspects are related. However, only in the nonreductionist economics of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen do we find a consistent analytical distinction between the semiotics of market valuation and its material consequences. His conclusion, that the products of economic processes simultaneously represent greater value and greater entropy than the inputs in such processes, remains a formidable challenge to any advocate of economic growth and technological progress.

5. CONCLUSIONS: WHY SOLAR PANELS DON’T GROW ON TREES Technological utopianism is based on a conception of technology that reflects the historical experience of core nations of the capitalist world-system. This conception envisages technological solutions as straightforward challenges of engineering, rather than as societal strategies embedded in both economics and ecology. After half a century of rhetoric on the imminent expansion of solar technology, it is high time to scrutinize this utopia in terms of its feasibility in relation to the global distribution of purchasing power and environmental degradation. Given its high costs and resource requirements, it is legitimate to ask to whom it will be accessible, and at the expense of whose resources and labor. In an increasingly desperate pursuit of optimistic visions of a viable future for modernity, journalists have visited remote villages in Algeria, where solar panels have been installed to generate electricity for some light bulbs. The light bulbs seem to be appreciated as long as they work, even though the villagers have had to wait for years for repairs. Unfortunately, our collective dream of a technological salvation beyond peak oil tends to rest on such frail foundations. With all due respect to light bulbs, after fi fty years of rhetoric about solar power it would be heartening to fi nally see locomotives, tractors, or bulldozers propelled by the sun. The sun has generated billions of years of biological evolution on our planet, but why do we imagine that our species should be able to construct

92

Alf Hornborg

technologies that are more efficient at harvesting solar energy than photosynthesis? The whole idea that we could harvest direct solar energy in order to replace human labor should be scrutinized by the social rather than the technological sciences. If the Sahara desert will one day be covered with solar panels, the electricity generated by those panels will no doubt be reserved for the people who can afford it—more likely Germans than Algerians. The same global elite, in other words, that today can afford oil. Solar technology thus seems unable to solve problems of global distribution, but there are also several difficult questions regarding its economics (will even Germans be able to afford it in the midst of fi nancial crisis?) and ecology (where will the rare earth minerals be extracted, and at what price?). The conventional dilemmas of modern technological society appear to be able to resurface, whatever the technology. As Georgescu-Roegen realized, there are also absolute physical limits to growth and resource extraction, ultimately defi ned by the laws of thermodynamics. The inclination of most economists and proponents of economic growth to dismiss this obvious ecological truth is remarkable. Even if no one can predict when in history or where in the world such limits will be encountered, it is obvious that they exist. From a local perspective, to be sure, it seems as if technology has made progress, but not until recently have we begun to realize the extent to which such “technological progress” boils down to a redistribution of temporal and spatial resources in global society. For instance, the historically increasing agricultural harvests that give the growth optimists such hopes for the future have primarily been based on imports of guano, phosphates, oil, and other resources from extractive sectors of the world economy. Is this kind of resource-intensive agriculture to serve as a model for “less developed” nations? The decisive question, in order for it to be rational to replace labor in one part of the world with technologies based on imports of natural resources and embodied labor from other parts of the world, is how labor and resources are priced in the different areas. This is why “technology” is ultimately a question for the social sciences, rather than engineering. For whom will it be possible to invest in solar energy or household robots? Marxism and ecological economics share a concern with the material prerequisites of economic processes, but also a tradition of analytically merging the physical and semiotic aspects of such processes in misleading ways.10 Rather than viewing industrial production as inherently problematic, as does Georgescu-Roegen, Marxists and “neo-Physiocrat” ecological economists tend to understand sustainability problems in terms of the underpayment of resources (cf. Foster & Holleman 2014). In analytically distinguishing the physical and semiotic aspects of economic processes in a consistent way, Georgescu-Roegen recognizes problems of sustainability as generated by the very interaction of physical laws and the logic of money. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to elaborate our options, but given the contradiction between thermodynamics and the logic of money, it should

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 93 be obvious which of these two conditions is amenable to political change (see Hornborg, 2011). A lingering question is, fi nally, in what sense the existence of a given modern technology can be said to be possible in the absence of unequal exchange and environmental load displacement. The question might be answered by comparing technology to organic life. It has been suggested that biological “genotypes” exist only as abstractions; it is only as “phenotypes”—actual, material processes and relationships—that organisms realize themselves (Ingold, 2000). Similarly, while a technological blueprint may seem theoretically feasible in the sense that its material realization appears to be possible to achieve independently of the socioeconomic context, the viability of its implementation as a mode of socioecological organization is dependent on specific socioeconomic conditions. Our everyday understanding of technological progress tends to be that it is a product of new knowledge generated in the engineering sciences. However, new knowledge is a necessary but not suffi cient condition for the adoption of a new technology. For even a single prototype to be constructed, of course, the inventor would need to have access to certain amounts of money, resources, and labor. More importantly, for the widespread adoption of the technology to be feasible, its metabolic properties in terms of required inputs and possible outputs would have to be aligned with the market prices of those inputs and outputs. The technology, in other words, needs to be able to serve as a crystallization or mediator of extant market relationships. To give a drastic example, a spacecraft for interplanetary travel could probably be constructed in the very wealthiest centers of capital accumulation, but this does not mean that we can imagine space travel as a feasible future technology disembedded from the global impoverishment of people and ecosystems. NOTES 1. Cf. Prieto and Hall’s (2013, p. 34) pertinent observation, explicitly applicable to solar power, that any monetary cost in a global society where 86% of industrial energy derives from fossil fuels represents “not only money but also the fossil energy that the money represented.” Note the implication that, rather than encouraging the development of photovoltaic energy—as is generally assumed—rising oil prices will make solar power even more expensive. 2. Actually, the president of the American Chemical Society already in 1902 predicted that the United States would be running on solar energy by the 1970s (Nader, 1996, p. 262), and in the 1950s the president of Harvard University thought that it would be the dominant energy source by the end of the century (Nader, 2004, p. 801). 3. When I argue that any technology which the average global citizen cannot afford is likely to depend on privileged purchasing-power and unequal exchange, I often hear the objection that the technology “per se” does not imply inequalities. I respond that there is no such thing as technology “per se,” i.e. an abstract technical blueprint that is disembodied from actual

94 Alf Hornborg

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

socioecological processes. Technical knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the existence of a given technology. Burkett (2005) agrees with Georgescu-Roegen that the dissipation of matter and the practical impossibility of complete recycling significantly constrain human economies. Although Lonergan does not criticize these theorists of unequal exchange for confusing monetary and material aspects, it is noteworthy that the net labor “value” that Arghiri Emmanuel (1972) and Samir Amin (1976) identify as having been transferred from less to more developed regions in the 1960s is measured in dollars (Lonergan, 1988, p. 135). If surplus “value” is measurable in dollars, it should suffice to conclude that, for a successful capitalist, the price of labor (or energy) is cheaper than the price of its products. There is no need, in other words, to ascribe to labor (or energy) uniquely generative powers (cf. Burkett, 2003, p. 139; Martinez-Alier & Naredo, 1982, p. 218). Foster and Burkett (2008, p. 25) agree with Rabinbach (1990) that “Marx always emphasized the energetic basis of labour power and saw it connected to thermodynamics because labour involved mechanical work.” According to these authors (Foster & Burkett 2008, p. 26), there are phrasings of the Marxian labor theory of value that suggest that it is the excess of “productively expendable energy encapsulated in labour power” over the “caloric quantity of useful work needed to produce the worker’s commodifi ed means of subsistence” that “enables the capitalist to extract surplus value from the worker,” implying that the worker’s sale of his labor time is “an energy subsidy for the capitalist.” The very concept of “labour power,” it seems, “arose in part from the new thermodynamics” (p. 29). Burkett and Foster (2006, p. 126) explicitly refer to Marx’s “energy income and expenditure approach to surplus value.” But if Podolinsky was wrong about the derivation of economic value from energy, as Marxists have argued, it is difficult to see why they should need to attribute a cognate perspective to Karl Marx. The controversy about the “Podolinsky business” (Martinez-Alier & Naredo 1982; Martinez-Alier 1987, 2011; Foster and Burkett 2004; Burkett and Foster 2006) has concerned the question of whether Marx and Engels were adequately versed in thermodynamics, but the crucial question is why that should have been necessary, given that the Marxian labor theory of value calculates in money, not energy. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how a rejection of Podolinsky is compatible with the endorsement of Howard T. Odum (Foster & Holleman 2014). It is difficult to see why labor-power invested in export production in commercial, precapitalist civilizations should have been less significant for the creation of profit than in nineteenth-century capitalism. That is, it proposes that capitalist profits cannot be founded on the underpayment of natural resources, because capitalist profits, per defi nition, can only be founded on the exploitation of labor. This insufficiently internalized ecology is variously expressed in terms of, for example, “environmental costs,” “ecosystem services,” “emergy,” or “natural values.” The discussion around Podolinsky’s suggestion that surplus value was basically a matter of surplus energy (Martinez-Alier 1987, 2011; Foster & Burkett 2004; Burkett & Foster 2006) continues to illustrate this confusion. A truly materialist account of surplus production cannot avoid evoking physics, as Podolinsky recognized, but precisely in not being able to assimilate this insight, the Marxian theory of surplus value revealed itself to be entrenched not only in the operation of capitalism, but even in its fundamental analytical categories.

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 95 REFERENCES Amin, S. (1976). Unequal development. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Ayres, R.U. (1998, May). The second law, the fourth law, recycling, and limits to growth. INSEAD Working Paper No. 98/38/EPS/CMER. Fontainebleau, France: INSEAD. Benton, T. (1989). Marxism and natural limits: An ecological critique and reconstruction. New Left Review, 178, 51–86. Bunker, S.G. (1985). Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, unequal exchange, and the failure of the modern state. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Burkett, P. (2003). The value problem in ecological economics: Lessons from the Physiocrats and Marx. Organization & Environment, 16, 137–167. Burkett, P. (2005). Entropy in ecological economics: A Marxist intervention. Historical Materialism, 13(1), 117–152. Burkett, P., & J.B. Foster (2006). Metabolism, energy, and entropy in Marx’s critique of political economy: Beyond the Podolinsky myth. Theory and Society 35:109–156. Costanza, R. (1980). Embodied energy and economic evaluation. Science, 210, 1219–1224. Daniels, F. (1964). Direct use of the sun’s energy. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Delucchi, M.A., & Jacobson, M.Z. (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies. Energy Policy, 39, 1170–1190. Dickson, D. (1974). Alternative technology and the politics of technical change. Glasgow, UK: Fontana/Collins. Emmanuel, A. (1972). Unequal exchange: A study of the imperialism of trade. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Fischer-Kowalski, M., and Amann, C. (2001). Beyond IPAT and Kuznets curves: Globalization as a vital factor in analyzing the environmental impact of socioeconomic metabolism. Population and Environment, 23, 7–47. Foster, J.B., & Burkett, P. (2004). Ecological economics and classical Marxism: The “Podolinsky business” reconsidered. Organization & Environment, 17, 32–60. Foster, J.B., & Burkett, P. (2008). Classical Marxism and the second law of thermodynamics: Marx/Engels, the heat death of the universe hypothesis, and the origins of ecological economics. Organization & Environment, 21, 3–37. Foster, J.B., & Holleman, H. (2014). The theory of unequal ecological exchange: A Marx-Odum dialectic. Journal of Peasant Studies, in press. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The entropy law and the economic process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1982). The energetic theory of economic value: A topical economic fallacy. Working Paper No. 82-W16. Nashville, TN: Department of Economics and Business Administration, Vanderbilt University. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1986). The entropy law and the economic process in retrospect. Eastern Economic Journal, 12, 3–25. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1993). Thermodynamics and we, the humans. In J.C. Dragan, E.K. Seifert, & M.C. Demetrescu (Eds.), Entropy and bioeconomics, proceedings of the First International Conference of the E.A.B.S (pp. 184–201). Milan, Italy: Nagard. Grundmann, R. (1991). The ecological challenge to Marxism. New Left Review, 187, 103–120. Hornborg, A. (1992). Machine fetishism, value, and the image of unlimited good: Towards a thermodynamics of imperialism. Man (New Series), 27, 1–18.

96 Alf Hornborg Hornborg, A. (1998). Towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange: Articulating world system theory and ecological economics. Ecological Economics, 25, 127–136. Hornborg, A. (2001). The power of the machine: Global inequalities of economy, technology, and environment. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Hornborg, A. (2006). Footprints in the cotton fields: The Industrial Revolution as time–space appropriation and environmental load displacement. Ecological Economics, 59, 74–81. Hornborg, A. (2011). Global ecology and unequal exchange: Fetishism in a zerosum world. London, UK: Routledge. Hornborg, A. (2013). The fossil interlude: Euro–American power and the return of the Physiocrats. In S. Strauss, S. Rupp, & T. Love (Eds.), Cultures of energy: Power, practices, technologies (pp. 41–59). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling, and skill. London, UK: Routledge. Jacobson, M.Z., & Delucchi, M.A. (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy, 39, 1154–1169. Kåberger, T., & Månsson, B. (2001). Entropy and economic processes: Physics perspectives. Ecological Economics, 36, 165–179. Latour, B. (1996). Aramis or the love of technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lonergan, S.C. (1988). Theory and measurement of unequal exchange: A comparison between a Marxist approach and an energy theory of value. Ecological Modelling, 41, 127–145. MacKay, D. (2012). Sustainable energy: Without the hot air. Retrieved from www. withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf. Martinez-Alier, J. (1987). Ecological economics: Energy, environment, and society. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Martinez-Alier, J. (2011). The EROI of agriculture and its use by the Via Campesina. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 145–160. Martinez-Alier, J., & Naredo, J.M. (1982). A Marxist precursor of energy economics: Podolinsky. Journal of Peasant Studies, 9, 207–224. Marx, K. (1967). Capital (Vols. 1–3). New York, NY: International Publishers. (Original work published 1867) Nader, L. (1996). The three-cornered constellation: Magic, science, and religion revisited. In L. Nader (Ed.), Naked science: Anthropological inquiry into boundaries, power, and knowledge (pp. 259–275). London: Routledge. Nader, L. (2004). The harder path—shifting gears. Anthropological Quarterly, 77, 783–803. Nye, D.E. (2006). Technology matters: Questions to live with. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Odum, H.T. (1996). Environmental accounting: Emergy and environmental decision making. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Social anthropology of technology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 491–516. Podolinsky, S. (2008). Human labour and unity of force. Historical Materialism, 16, 163–183. (Original work published 1883) Prieto, P.A. & Hall, C.A.S. (2013). Spain’s photovoltaic revolution: The energy return on investment. New York: Springer. Rabinbach, A. (1990). The human motor: Energy, fatigue, and the origins of modernity. New York, NY: Basic Books. Schwartzman, D. (1996). Solar communism. Science & Society, 60, 307–331.

Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees 97 Schwartzman, D. (2008). The limits to entropy: Continuing misuse of thermodynamics in environmental and Marxist theory. Science & Society, 72, 43–62. Smil, V. (1992). Elusive links: Energy, value, economic growth, and quality of life. OPEC Review, 16, 1–21. Smil, V. (2006). Energy: A beginner’s guide. Oxford, UK: Oneworld. Wikipedia. (n.d.). “Solar energy.” Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Solar_energy Wikipedia. (n.d.). “Solar power.” Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Solar_power World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. York, R. (2012). Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels? Nature Climate Change, 2, 441–443.

This page intentionally left blank

Part II

Transforming Politics and Planning

This page intentionally left blank

6

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

A major challenge in contemporary planning practice and research is how to change the direction of societies, making them more sustainable. We currently face enormous challenges, such as climate change and the unfair distribution of the earth’s resources, that call for new ways of thinking about sustainable development. Rockström et al. (2009), focusing on the anthropogenic pressures on the earth system when defi ning today’s threats, propose that sustainability concerns nine planetary limits that constrain humanity’s safe existence: the climate system, ocean pH, stratospheric ozone, the biogeochemical nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles, global freshwater availability, land use patterns, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading. They estimate that humanity has already exceeded the planetary limits for the climate system, biodiversity loss, and global nitrogen cycle. If we add to these factors environmental injustice and groups’ differing opportunities to shape their own lives, we face even more challenges. We can no longer walk along familiar paths, but need to rethink current relationships and explore new ways to create sustainable futures. It is important to acknowledge that diverse societal goals require that different choices be made today. The concept of sustainable development is multidimensional with many historic roots, but it only became better known to the general public through the so-called Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). The Report advocated resolving the confl ict between social and economic development and also protecting the natural resource base. This idea was emphasized during the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This conference highlighted the importance of citizen and other stakeholder participation in making and implementing decisions regarding activities affecting the environment. The vision of democracy espoused by the Conference is similar to what Dryzek (2000) describes as consensus based and to the notion that sufficient dialogue will likely lead to agreement. This consensus-based approach has been prominent in planning practice and research as well, so it comes as no surprise that, although sustainability issues are considered important, planning practice and research in recent decades have offered

102

Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

few suggestions for more radical transformation (Bradley, 2009; Keil, 2007). Instead, sustainable development is viewed as something that can be planned for within society’s current frames. The environmental-political debate in Stockholm, Sweden, will be cited to exemplify the consensus debate on sustainable development. This example illustrates that, despite the multiplicity of sustainability discourses, actual plans tend to ignore the debate and instead seek to hide confl ict. This chapter highlights the need to think in novel ways about the future and to use images of the future to clarify the political dimensions of planning for sustainable development. Bringing the perspective of futures studies, or utopian thought, into planning is not new. As long as there have been cities, people have endeavored to “perfect the art and science of citybuilding” (Sandercock, 2003, p. 1). This utopian impulse was especially strong around the turn of the nineteenth century, when planners responded to the ills of Western industrialized cities (Sandercock, 2003, p. 2). While this utopian thinking was about formulating one plan as the rational solution to the specified problems, this chapter advocates not one image of the future but several.

1. POSTPOSITIVIST PLANNING The utopian impulse has been strong in town planning and perhaps peaked in the early and mid 1900s. Ebenezer Howard dreamt of small-scale planned and self-sufficient garden cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while Frank Lloyd Wright planned Broadacre City, a suburban development based on the notion that each family should be given one acre of land on which to build a home. In contrast, Le Corbusier proposed urban schemes to handle the housing crisis, advocating large-scale residential buildings placed in parklike environments. All these ideals have influenced planning around the world. Concrete examples of utopian planning are the construction of Brasilia in Brazil in the late 1950s and of largescale housing blocks in Europe to relieve housing shortages. One example of the latter is the “Million Program” in which the Swedish government built one million new dwellings between 1965 and 1974, simultaneously demolishing old and outdated dwellings. However, even at that time planners and citizens had started to criticize such modernist urban planning, and although its legacy is now crumbling, “there is still no agreement as to what might replace that grand social project” (Sandercock, 2003, p. 2). Perry (1995) noted in the 1990s that the planning profession was undergoing a crisis, and Campbell (2010) very recently questioned whether those in the planning community still believed in the idea of planning. Harris (2002, pp. 24–25) relates this crisis of confidence to the failure of planning to develop, depict, and describe convincing urban development alternatives. Fainstein (2006, p. 2) concludes that planning today is characterized

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

103

by modest ambitions and that most planners and planning theorists “argue that visionaries should not impose their views upon the public.” Much postpositivist planning theory has instead been characterized by criticism of both rational and postmodern planning, the latter characterized by consensus-driven dialogues and public–private partnerships (Allmendiger, 2002, p. 13; Fainstein, 2000, p. 472).

2. COMMUNICATIVE PLANNING AND ITS CRITICS Communicative planning, according to Allmendiger (2002, p. 16), is the most significant planning theory that has emerged in the post-positivist landscape. Along similar lines, Harris (2002, p. 22) claims that “collaborative planning” is now a key term in the planning theory vocabulary. Healey (1996) even speaks of a paradigm shift, noting that new ideas treating collaboration, public participation, and power as important concepts are gaining prominence. Orrskog (2002, p. 95) states that these ideas “concentrate on the role of planning as an arena for discussions between different private as well as public actors.” Communicative, or collaborative, planning is a response to “rational” top–down expert planning (Fainstein, 2000, p. 453) arising from the strong deliberative shift in democracy theory of the 1990s (Dryzek, 2000). Democracy had previously been understood in terms of the aggregation of preferences through voting and representation; now, democratic legitimacy is increasingly being seen in terms of opportunity to participate in deliberations to make collective decisions (Dryzek, 2000). Collaborative planning is based on the idea that the participants can learn from each other and reach agreement through the process of deliberation (Healey, 1997). Planning becomes a consensus-building process with the planner acting as mediator. “Ideal speech” becomes the goal of planning and there is an “assumption that if only people were reasonable, deep structural confl ict would melt away” (Fainstein, 2000, p. 455). Writers such as Hendriks, Dryzek, and Hunold (2007) emphasize that deliberative processes should be open and diverse but pay less attention to the outcomes. Critics claim that communicative planning is likely to be vulnerable to various disruptive power plays (Richardson, 1996) and that open processes do not necessarily produce just results (Bradley, GunnarssonÖstling, & Isaksson, 2008; Fainstein, 2000; Larsen & Gunnarsson-Östling, 2009). Mouffe (2005) criticizes the whole idea of dialogic democracy because of its antipolitical vision that refuses the agonistic dimension of the political. She believes that the effort to achieve universal and rational consensus is the wrong track in democratic thought and argues instead that “the task for democratic theorists and politicians should be to envisage the creation of a vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted” (Mouffe, 2005, p. 3). Today, much of the talk about dialogue and deliberation means nothing,

104

Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

since no real choices are on the table, and Mouffe (2005) even claims that we are actually living in postpolitical times. Instead of apprehending various forms of subordination in society, such as struggles concerning class, gender, and the environment, today’s dialogic democracy defends the notion of one common good. Participants in discussions are supposed to act as rational individuals knowing their wants and needs, not as parts of social groups entangled in power relations. Thinking politically means emphasizing that planning is not just about technical issues solvable by experts. Some conflicts lack rational solutions, so planning sometimes involves choosing between conflicting alternatives.

3. AN ENVIRONMENTAL-POLITICAL VACUUM: THE EXAMPLE OF STOCKHOLM To illustrate how consensus thinking on sustainability issues can materialize, I will use the example of environmental and sustainability politics in Stockholm, Sweden. Since the creation of Stockholm City Council in 1863, issues such as air quality and wastewater treatment have been debated by Stockholm politicians, but the word “environment” was not used in the political debate before 1966 (Lilja, 2011). In the early 1970s, the concept of the environment became more institutionalized in Stockholm; Stockholm’s fi rst environmental political action plan was proposed in 1976, and the seventh such plan—now called an “environmental program”—came into effect in 2012. In reviewing these programs, and the political debate about them in City Council, I have demonstrated elsewhere how the environmental discourse that began to emerge in the 1960s has changed over time (Gunnarsson-Östling, 2013). The 1976 debate on the fi rst environmental program displayed a strong consensus among the political parties. Environmental issues were not primarily seen as political, but as problems that arose inadvertently and could be corrected by rational and scientific means. The proposed solutions were seen as achievable with more monitoring and accordingly better knowledge. This trend persisted over the years, although ideological differences have also been evident, for example, when the advantages and disadvantages of the capitalist versus communist systems were discussed or of freedom versus control as a way of solving environmental problems (GunnarssonÖstling, 2013). A different approach emerged in 1995, when the formulation of the environmental program was preceded by broader consultation with various actors and by citizen involvement. This shift was a direct result of the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which highlighted the importance of citizen and other stakeholder involvement in deciding on and implementing environmental activities. The 1995 program also adopted a more global and progressive approach. This

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

105

meant, for example, acknowledging that life in Stockholm was dependent on resources from around the world—something known earlier but not emphasized. The program also noted that the city’s consumption of goods and products made for unidirectional flows of materials. This progressive approach was abandoned already in the 2003 program, and in the 2008 program, transport, previously described as a major problem, was instead treated as important to the welfare state because it wasn’t a prerequisite for global competitiveness. Economic growth had become a compelling consideration, and sustainable development could not stand in the way of it. The 2012 program follows this trend while increasing the focus on urban development. The economistic and growth-oriented perspective has strengthened, and the issue of transport, for example, is treated even more as simply a matter of efficiency as a prerequisite for competitiveness, acknowledging that the transportation system lacks capacity and that more roads are needed (Gunnarsson-Östling, 2013). The political parties are more or less united around the aims, and the political debate has become largely a numerical exercise of setting targets, adjusting them slightly up or down by a few percentage points. The debate was started by the Alliance (i.e., the Liberal and right-wing parties), who pointed out that, under their direction, environmental issues have become part of the city’s brand and that having clear environmental standards makes Stockholm an attractive city to visit and in which to live, work, and start businesses (Stockholm City Council, 2012, p. 56, statement by PerAnkersjö, the Centre Party). The Alliance also maintained that environmental problems should be managed and that environmental technologies should contribute to growth. The Left and Green parties partly disagreed, applying a stronger understanding of sustainability that views natural capital not as interchangeable with economic capital, but as something to be kept intact. However, the debate did not concentrate on the differences between the parties, but was ultimately a depoliticized numerical exercise on how environmental objectives should be expressed in numbers and percentages. A Liberal representative even pointed out that what was most remarkable in the debate was not that the parties had different aims in terms of targets and percentages, but that they did not really envisage different ways of achieving them (Stockholm City Council, 2012, p. 69, statement by Frida Johansson Metso, the Liberal Party). Environmental issues are largely seen as apolitical in Stockholm City Council, as problems to be solved efficiently using more and better knowledge and science.

4. PRESCRIPTIVE POSTMODERN PLANNING Although the focus on process and communication dominates planning theory, other writers focus not only on the process, but also on the effects of such planning on social and environmental outcomes. Campbell (2010)

106

Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

highlighted the need to envision alternatives in an editorial in Planning Theory & Practice: It is all too easy to identify obstacles and constraints, reasons why failure is inevitable. However, this is a moment in which we as planners need to focus attention on our capacities to envisage alternatives and demonstrate the possibilities for a better world. (p. 475) Campbell (2010, p. 473) states that planners and planning theorists cannot continue to blame others for their shortcomings and that influencing and helping steer the future is their responsibility. Most postpositivist planning theory does not offer concrete and appealing suggestions, but some more prescriptive postmodern planning does call for politicized defi nitions of planning or even suggests alternative visions (see, e.g., Allmendiger, 2002; Bradley, 2009; Fainstein, 2000; Oranje, 2002). By suggesting the “Just City” approach, Fainstein (2000, 2006, 2009, 2010) falls within the more prescriptive postmodern tradition. The Just City approach is a “normative position concerning the distribution of social benefits” (Fainstein, 2000, p. 467) highlighting process values and desirable outcomes. The approach recognizes that just processes do not necessarily result in just outcomes, an issue also discussed by, for example, Bradley et al. (2008), Gunnarsson-Östling and Höjer (2011), and Larsen and Gunnarsson-Östling (2009). Campbell (2010, p. 472) also emphasizes values and better outcomes, stating that planners and planning theorists “have to be able to articulate our [i.e., their] underlying values and demonstrate the beneficial outcomes which result.” This is a move away from the tradition of merely criticizing urban and regional phenomena and instead trying to “specify the nature of a good city” (Fainstein, 2000, p. 467). Fainstein (2000, 2006, 2009, 2010) claims that the purpose of planning is to recommend nonreformist reforms and thus improvements to be made within current structures, calling this a form of “realistic utopianism” (2010, p. 20). This entails planning in a way that does not disadvantage already excluded groups; it also entails using existing planning institutions to produce a more just city. The goal is to create just cities characterized by three primary qualities: equity, demo cracy, and diversity. Precisely what this means is context dependent, Fainstein writes, while also stating that planning for equity in societies with democratic–egalitarian norms entails that “all new housing development should provide units for households with income below the median, either onsite or elsewhere” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 172). Fostering diversity requires, for example, that “boundaries between districts should be porous” and that “ample public space should be widely accessible and varied” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 174), while promoting democracy means, for example, that “groups that are not able to participate directly in decision-making processes should be represented by advocates” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 175).

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

107

However, “the discussion does not go so far as to investigate the broader concept of the good city” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 58). Harvey (2009) criticizes the approach of acting within the capitalist regime and questions capital accumulation and economic growth as prime targets in city development. He claims that the question of what city we desire is inseparable from that of what kind of people we want to become (Harvey, 2009, p. 45). However, he also stresses that a “static endpoint is not desirable” and that “a Just City has to be about fierce conflict all of the time” (Harvey, 2009, p. 47). Sandercock (2003, p. 2) also emphasizes dynamics; she wants “to practice utopia, a city politics of possibility and hope” and therefore calls for a utopian, critical, creative, and audacious planning imagination. The goal is a truly multicultural “cosmopolis” where diversity, democracy, and social justice are seen as important. This future is truly multicultural and is characterized by the acceptance of every person having a cultural identity (which is not static, but always evolving). Researchers in political ecology have also called for alternative modes of development and alternative ways of describing the future. Swyngedouw (2007) sees a need to imagine and name socioenvironmental futures, while Keil (2007, p. 57) notes that radical change is needed and proposes a radical urban political ecology, meaning that sustainability cannot be achieved within capitalism as we know it. The feminist economic geographers Gibson and Graham go one step further under their pen name Gibson-Graham (1996/2006), imagining, strengthening, and building noncapitalist enterprises and spaces in order to challenge the capitalist hegemony.

5. NORMATIVE IMAGES OF THE FUTURE The planning types described above are not all-embracing, but do represent a move away from a purely critical perspective. They exemplify attempts to provide a guiding ethic for our time. In describing desirable futures, the prescriptive postmodern planning approach is similar to futures studies, especially the branch of futures studies that develops normative images of the future. Although people have always been thinking about the future, futures studies as an academic field emerged only in the mid 1960s (Andersson, 2006; Bell, 2003, Chapter 1, p. 279). The plural term “futures” indicates that the future is uncertain and opens the way for various visions or stories of the future. There are some future events that we can be certain about, that we can predict, but other future events are socially constructed and therefore not predictable. Myers and Kituse (2000, p. 225) capture this by saying that the future has “past, present, and future components.” Another way of stating this is that images of the future will inevitably bear traces of yesterday’s as well as today’s zeitgeist. Simonsen (2005) and Orrskog (2005) are two of many writers in the field of geography/planning

108

Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

who demonstrate that the dominant stories about today’s and tomorrow’s city tend to be fairly streamlined. Instead of pluralistic ways of describing cities, many cities are described in similar neoliberal and growth-oriented ways. However, there are also challenging stories presenting alternative solutions. There are, for example, feminist collectives and ecovillages where people not only try to describe different futures, but also try to live differently. There are real, possible, dreamed, and forgotten visions of the city (Orrskog, 2005, p. 29). The field of futures studies is characterized by a plurality of research approaches, which can be classified by how they respond to one of the following three questions: “What will happen?”; “What can happen?”; and “How can a specific target be achieved?” In this way, future studies explores the three categories of predictive, explorative, and normative scenarios (Börjeson, Höjer, Dreborg, Ekvall, & Finnveden, 2006). The prescriptive postmodern planning approach resembles that of most normative scenarios. These in turn can be divided into preserving and transforming scenarios, the former depicting images of the future based on today’s societal structures (Börjeson et al., 2006, pp. 728–729); Fainstein’s (2010) concept of a Just City developed within current structures would fall into this category. In transforming scenarios, the goals are seen as very difficult to achieve given today’s structures, so major societal changes are considered necessary. A common form of transforming scenario study is backcasting. Robinson (1990, p. 822) writes that “the major distinguishing characteristic of backcasting analyses is a concern, not with what futures are likely to happen, but with how desirable futures can be attained.” Dreborg (1996, p. 814) states that backcasting is especially useful for “long-term complex issues, involving many aspects of society as well as technological innovations and change.” Backcasting focuses on critical societal problems and is often used when describing low-energy futures (Dreborg, 1996). The approach involves many actors and one “important aim of backcasting studies, in the Swedish tradition is, accordingly, to provide different actors in society with a better foundation for discussing goals and taking decisions to act or to seek further knowledge” (Dreborg, 1996, p. 824). Backcasting studies often come up with new and unconventional solutions to societal problems, which has prompted detractors to claim that backcasting is a political rather than scientific methodology. However, Dreborg (1996, p. 825) emphasizes that “solutions conforming to business as usual are seldom regarded as political”; because they are in line with habitual ways of thinking, their value dependence is less obvious. He also stresses the importance of identifying the value-related considerations underlying images of the future, pointing out that backcasting studies can provide a set of images of the future, based on various norms and values, that can help societal groups grasp the issues at stake. Backcasting studies typically focus on changing physical or technical aspects, but without

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

109

asking who should change and not highlighting particular social structures (Wangel, 2011). Contemporary planning is usually not particularly transformative in nature. It can instead be seen as a form of preserving normative scenario work, since it often starts with a set of environmental, social, economic, and cultural targets to achieve within current structures (Börjeson et al., 2006, p. 728).

6. PLANNING WITH MULTIPLE IMAGES OF THE FUTURE The shift of planning practice and research from being utopian, then rational, to fi nally being consensus oriented may be problematic, because there are divergent interests in the planning process that cannot addressed by consensus. The city we desire cannot be separated from the people we want to become, how we want to live our lives, and the opportunities we want others to have. As we saw in the Stockholm example, current planning is very much about making the city attractive to residents and businesses in the interest of global competitiveness, although this is not necessarily what all people desire the most. Planners must more clearly present a range of possible futures based on various norms and values. This would facilitate discussion of, for example, what societal groups we wish to accommodate, for whom the projected futures are good/bad, and what environmental impacts these futures might give rise to and why. Normative futures studies, such as backcasting studies, could be useful in projecting the future starting from specific values, such as a fair distribution of environmental space or the protection of biodiversity. In this way, planners could clarify how different interpretations of concepts such as justice and different views of the value of future generations result in different operationalizations of how, for example, environmental space should be distributed between currently living humans (and other species) and future generations. In this way, normative images of the future can be juxtaposed and analyzed from various perspectives. Given the critical situation with respect to sustainability, an issue such as climate change, which is considered important by many, should be analyzed in this way, as should other discursive aspects of sustainable development. This entails shedding light on tacit preconditions and underlying norms, examining the environmental goods and externalities to be distributed, among whom and according to what principles of justice (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 71). Normative images of the future can clearly be a way of politicizing planning, of exposing its political content. To exemplify how normative images of the future can be used, I should mention an attempt, in which I participated, to create feminist images of the future. Feminist or gender perspectives in futures studies are rare

110 Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling and often marginalized, but there is also a feminist quest for feminist descriptions of the future (see Gunnarsson-Östling, 2011). In exploring how feminist futures could be envisaged, three of us arranged three oneday workshops designed to elaborate on feminist futures (GunnarssonÖstling, Svenfelt, & Höjer, 2012). The aim was twofold: to explore the possibilities of creating feminist images of the future and to develop and test participatory workshop methods for doing this in various settings. The participants were guided through a sequence of activities including brainstorming and visioning with the ultimate aim of creating images of feminist futures, fulfi lling a prespecified goal: a society free of structural inequalities based on gender. In two workshops, participants were not constrained in terms of the philosophical or moral frames they could apply in developing images of the future; in one, however, they developed images of the future based on three particular feminist schools of thought, i.e., liberal, radical, and postmodern feminism, all linked to the overarching goal of a society free of gender oppression (Verloo & Lombardo, 2007, p. 316). These three schools are in line with the claim of Milojevic, Hurley, and Jenkins (2008, p. 316) that, despite a common feminist core, opinions differ as to whether the preferred future is “(1) androgynous, (2) polarized into two separate but equal (male and female) sexes, or (3) composed of the multiplicity of diverse genders.” When participants were unconstrained, they had greater difficulties developing images of the future, but when they followed specific feminist approaches and used avatars to describe life in the future, they found it easier to make their described future more concrete and different from today. Although it may at fi rst glance seem less innovative to have participants follow specified schools of thought, doing so helped delineate various different, but not necessarily desirable, futures. The intention was not to formulate policy packages, but to test participatory methods, thereby making gender perspectives more visible in the futures studies field and emphasizing and clarifying feminism’s inherent struggle for change. The intention was not to develop one feminist future that would unify feminists, but to clarify the pluralism of feminism and demonstrate that there are several different ways of describing a feminist future that are sometimes incompatible (Gunnarsson-Östling et al., 2012). This exposed the reality that the “coherent” Swedish emphasis on gender equality may in fact mean different things depending on whether, for example, it is interpreted to mean that women should have the same opportunities as men, or that society must be reformulated to recognize other ideals, based on women’s experiences. Describing and naming different futures, using a method similar to that of the feminist workshops described above, will clarify the political dimensions and consequences of planning. Normative images of the future, and the methods associated with creating them, can help provide a set of images of the future, based on different norms and values.

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

111

This chapter started by stating that a major challenge in contemporary planning practice and research is how to change the direction of societies, making them more sustainable. Although sustainable development is often understood as a unifying concept that resolves tensions between social and economic development while protecting the environment, there is considerable disagreement as to its precise meaning. Although most people agree that sustainability is important, diverging views exist as to what is needed to satisfy human needs, what needs are most urgent/whose interests should take priority, and the degree of conflict existing between socioeconomic development and environmental protection. There are different ways of operationalizing sustainability depending on how it is defi ned and what related issues are considered most important (see, e.g., Harvey, 1996; Redclift, 2005). Consequently, sustainable development has come to be seen by many scholars as “one of the most diversely applied concepts among academics and professionals discussing the future” (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999, p. 5). However, as we saw in the case of environmental politics in Stockholm (Gunnarsson-Östling, in press), these various sustainability discourses are not always highlighted; instead, there is a political consensus to view sustainability issues as solvable only when we have enough knowledge. If we instead take an agonistic perspective and provide confl icting alternatives, we can grasp the true challenge of democracy and affi rm that the choices we make today affect our common future. Planning can help clarify what various conceptualizations of sustainable development might entail, not by suggesting just one plan that balances various societal goals for the common good, but instead by describing several images of the future based on different interpretations of what goals are important for sustainable development. These should also be described in terms of their environmental and social consequences to see how and for whom a given plan is beneficial. In this way, planning can help reveal the future’s various impacts on the environment and on different societal groups. If this were done, instead of fi nding virtually no difference between, in the Stockholm case, the ways in which the political parties want Stockholm to change, their different views would be clearly elucidated. Instead of a superficial consensus on the importance of the environment, it would become clear that for some sustainable development means business as usual combined with a belief that technological development can solve all problems, for others it means reducing oil dependency, for example, by minimizing car traffic and sharing environmental resources justly (which would radically change living conditions in Stockholm), while for still others it means yet something else. Since people have different desires and political ideals, there will always be conflict over what constitutes the good or sustainable city. Planning could highlight these confl icts and clarify that there is not one static endpoint for which we are striving, but that the goal will always evolve. When planning consciously points out how various societal goals might be in conflict, politicians will have to make clearer choices about the goals they

112

Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling

are prioritizing. This would help people understand the difference between political parties’ views of urban development, rather than assuming that they all want the same thing.

7. CONCLUDING REMARKS In this chapter, I have demonstrated that the consensus-oriented way of planning for and envisioning sustainable development can hide confl icting views of issues such as what constitutes a fair share of environmental space or what is meant by justice. Instead, I advocate rethinking the future and using images of it to reveal the political dimensions and confl icts in play when planning for sustainable development. The argument is not one of nostalgia, dreaming of the modernist and rationalist planning approach, but that planning should propose several different normative images of the future, based on different values, that can be juxtaposed and analyzed from various perspectives. Given the critical situation with respect to sustainability, an issue such as climate change, which is considered important by many, should obviously be analyzed in this way. Also meriting attention are questions of who would be affected by a given image of the future and whether and, if so, how certain societal groups systematically are more affected by or generate more environmental problems compared with others. Using futures studies methods will emphasize not only the planning output, but also the process values by fostering the participation of various societal groups. By creating not only one plan, but various images of the future, the political content of planning can be rendered visible. In naming and framing a range of futures, it becomes clear that there are real alternatives to strive for and that today’s decisions affect our common future.

REFERENCES Allmendiger, P. (2002). The post-positivist landscape of planning theory. In P. Allmendiger & M. Tewdwr-Jones (Eds.), Planning futures: New directions for planning theory (pp. 3–18). London, UK: Routledge. Andersson, J. (2006). Choosing futures: Alva Myrdal and the construction of Swedish futures studies, 1967–1972. International Review of Social History, 51, 277–295. Bell, W. (2003). Foundations of futures studies: Human science for a new era. Vol. 1: History, purposes, and knowledge. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Bradley, K. (2009). Just environments: Politicising sustainable urban development. Doctoral dissertation, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Retrieved from http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:209293 Bradley, K., Gunnarsson-Östling, U., & Isaksson, K. (2008). Exploring environmental justice in Sweden: How to improve planning for environmental sustainability and social equity in an “eco-friendly” context. Projections: MIT Journal of Planning, 8, 68–81.

Politicizing Planning through Multiple Images of the Future

113

Börjeson, L., Höjer, M., Dreborg, K.-H., Ekvall, T., & Finnveden, G. (2006). Scenario types and techniques: Towards a user’s guide. Futures, 38, 723–739. Campbell, H. (2010). The idea of planning: Alive or dead? Who cares? [Editorial]. Planning Theory & Practice, 11, 471–475. Dreborg, K.-H. (1996). Essence of backcasting. Futures, 28, 813–828. Dryzek, J.S. (2000). Deliberative democracy and beyond: Liberals, critics, contestation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Fainstein, S.S. (2000). New directions in planning theory [Featured essay]. Urban Affairs Review, 35, 451–478. Fainstein, S.S. (2006, April). Planning and the just city. Paper presented at the Conference on Searching for the Just City, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York, NY. Fainstein, S.S. (2009). Planning and the just city. In P. Marcuse, J. Connolly, J. Novy, I. Olivo, C. Potter, & J. Steil (Eds.), Searching for the just city: Debates in urban theory and practice (pp. 19–39). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Fainstein, S.S. (2010). The just city. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist critique of political economy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. (Originally published 1996) Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2011). Gender in futures: A study of gender and feminist papers published in Futures, 1969–2009. Futures, 43, 1029–1039. Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2013). Mellan ekologi och tillväxt: Miljöpolitiska handlingsprogram i Stockholm 1976–2012 [Between ecology and growth: Environmental action plans in Stockholm 1976–2012]. In T. Nilsson (Ed.), Du sköna nya stad: Privatisering, miljö och EU i Stockholmspolitiken [Brave new city: Privatization, environment and EU in the Stockholm politics] (pp. 117–160). Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholmia förlag. Gunnarsson-Östling, U., & Höjer, M. (2011). Scenario planning for sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden: Environmental justice considerations. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35, 1048–1067. Gunnarsson-Östling, U., Svenfelt, Å., & Höjer, M. (2012). Participatory methods for creating feminist futures. Futures, 44, 914–922. Harris, N. (2002). Collaborative planning: From theoretical foundations to practice forms. In P. Allmendiger & M. Tewdwr-Jones (Eds.), Planning futures: New directions for planning theory (pp. 21–43). London, UK: Routledge. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, and the geography of difference. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Harvey, D. (2009). The right to the Just City. In P. Marcuse, J. Connolly, J. Novy, I. Olivo, C. Potter, & J. Steil (Eds.), Searching for the just city: Debates in urban theory and practice (pp. 40–51). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Healey, P. (1996). The communicative turn in planning theory and its implications for spatial strategy formations. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 23, 217–234. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies. London, UK: Macmillan. Hendriks, C.M., Dryzek, J.S., & Hunold, C. (2007). Turning up the heat: Partisanship in deliberative innovation. Political Studies, 55, 362–383. Keil, R. (2007). Sustaining modernity, modernizing nature. In R. Krueger & D. Gibbs (Eds.), The sustainable development paradox: Urban political economy in the United States (pp. 41–65). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Larsen, K., & Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2009). Climate change scenarios and citizen-participation: Mitigation and adaptation perspectives in constructing sustainable futures. Habitat International, 33, 260–266. Lilja, S. (2011). “Miljö” som makt i Stockholmspolitiken 1961–1980 [”Environment” as power in Stockholm politics 1961–1980]. In T. Nilsson (Ed.),

114 Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling Stockholm blir välfärdsstad: Kommunpolitik i huvudstaden efter 1945 [Stockholm becomes a welfare city: municipal politics in the capital since 1945] (pp. 295–331). Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholmia förlag. Milojevic, I., Hurley, K., & Jenkins, A. (2008). Futures of feminism. Futures, 40, 313–318. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political: Thinking in action. New York, NY: Routledge. Myers, D., & Kitsuse, A. (2000). Constructing the future in planning: A survey of theories and tools. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 19, 221–231. Newman, P., & Kenworthy, J. (1999). Sustainaibilty and cities: Overcoming automobile dependence. Washington, DC: Island Press. Oranje, M. (2002). Planning and the postmodern Turn. In P. Allmendiger & M. Tewdwr-Jones (Eds.), Planning futures: New directions for planning theory (pp. 172–186). London, UK: Routledge. Orrskog, L. (2002). Planning as discourse analysis. In F. Snickars, B. Olerup, & L.O. Persson (Eds.), Reshaping regional planning: A northern perspective (pp. 238–271). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Orrskog, L. (2005). Stora och små berättelser om svenskt stadsbyggande [Great and small narratives about Swedish town planning]. In O. Broms Wessel, M. Tunström, & K. Bradley (Eds.), Bor vi i samma stad? Om stadsutveckling, mångfald och rättvisa [Do we live in the same city? On urban development, difference, and justice]. (pp. 27–38). Stockholm, Sweden: Pocky. Perry, D.C. (1995). Making space: Planning as a mode of thought. In H. Liggett & D.C. Perry (Eds.), Spatial practices: Critical explorations in social/spatial theory (pp. 209–242). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Redclift, M. (2005). Sustainable development (1987–2005): An oxymoron comes of age. Sustainable Development, 13, 212–227. Richardson, T. (1996). Foucauldian discourse: Power and truth in urban and regional policy making. European Planning Studies, 4, 279–292. Robinson, J. B. (1990). Futures under glass: A recipe for people who hate to predict. Futures, 22, 820–842. Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F.S. III, Lambin, E., et al. (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2), 32. Sandercock, L. (2003). Cosmopolis II: Mongrel cities in the 21st century. London, UK: Continuum. Simonsen, K. (2005). Byens mange ansigter: Konstruktion af byen i praksis og fortælling [The many faces of the city: construction of the city in praxis and storytelling]. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde Universitetsforlag. Stockholm City Council. (2012, 30 January). Minutes of Proceedings for Stockholm City Council meeting, held at Stockholm City Hall. Protocol 2012:1. Archive of the Stockholm City Hall, Stockholm. Swyngedouw, E. (2007). Impossible “sustainability” and the postpolitical condition. In R. Krueger & D. Gibbs (Eds.), The sustainable development paradox: Urban political economy in the United States (pp. 13–40). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Wangel, J. (2011). Exploring social structures and agency in backcasting studies for sustainable development. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 78, 872–882. Verloo, M., & Lombardo, E. (2007). Contested gender equality and policy variety in Europe: Introducing a critical frame analysis approach. In M. Verloo (Ed.), Multiple meanings of gender equality: A critical frame analysis of gender policies in Europe (pp. 21–50). Budapest, Hungary: CEU Press. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

7

Mobility Transitions The Necessity of Utopian Approaches Karolina Isaksson

1. INTRODUCTION This chapter is inspired by the obvious paradox shaping the European transport policy agenda: Although we have profound knowledge of the urgent need for rapid transition, it is still difficult for policy makers to develop and implement policies that radically challenge the existing mobility paradigm. Even so, change is endemic: From the EU level, individual nations, industry, and civil society, there is a continuous striving for innovations and solutions that may break the existing unsustainable trends in energy consumption, climate impact, and other environmental and social factors. But although many of the initiatives being suggested in European transport policy over the last decade have been politically, technically, and economically challenging, few have sought to break with the existing mobility paradigm in any fundamental sense. Path dependencies and power relationships in policy and planning serve to restrain the potential for radical change, often making policy measures and other initiatives less radical than they could be (Banister, 2004; Richardson, Isaksson, & Gullberg, 2010). We seem to need a different approach to mobilizing the political energy required to enact transformation. In policy making, visions and utopias have traditionally been used to generate such political energy. As stated by Tight et al. (2011), a key to developing desirable transport futures lies in the conceptualization and defi nition of different futures. Contemporary transport policy and research often applies a future-oriented approach. However, there is an essential difference between being future oriented in a general sense and in a way that can enact deeper transitions. This chapter highlights this difference by discussing the concept of utopia and the potential—and necessity—of utopia in the context of mobility transitions. The aim is to explore the potential of a utopian approach to mobility transitions. In terms of theory, the chapter is inspired by utopian writings of the last decade, in which utopian thinking is introduced as an element of hope, a desire for a different world, and an impulse to transform the status quo. This chapter is based on a discussion of existing policy-oriented research into sustainable mobility and/or mobility transitions. It refers to existing

116

Karolina Isaksson

studies from the field and aims to make a conceptual contribution by introducing the concept of utopia into the discussion. Empirically, it focuses on several current initiatives to break with existing mobility trends: 1) the EU White Paper on transport, 2) the Doubling Project, and 3) microlevel initiatives for nonmotorized transport that are currently proliferating in cities around Europe. These microlevel initiatives illustrate a bottom–up approach that is more local and fragmented than are the other examined initiatives. These initiatives illustrate in a general sense the utopian (or antiutopian) content of current mobility transition initiatives and provide a basis for discussing the necessity of utopian ambitions in this context. The analysis of these initiatives is empirically based on existing written documentation, i.e., printed documents, other documentation that is publicly available, and Internet-based sources such as websites and wikis. For the fi rst two initiatives, selecting written documentation was fairly easy since a main information document exists for each initiative. For the microlevel initiatives, the task was more challenging. There are numerous contemporary microlevel initiatives to promote nonmotorized urban transport, with considerable documentation available on the Internet. For the purpose of the present study, it was relevant to focus on initiatives that explicitly critique the existing mobility paradigm. This was the main motivation for deciding to focus on the Critical Mass movement and a few other initiatives with a similar critical content. After this introductory section, the chapter continues by briefly discussing current mobility trends and tendencies. Thereafter follows a short introduction to research into sustainable mobility from the last decade, followed by a discussion of the concept of utopia. The subsequent section is an empirical overview of the studied initiatives to enact mobility transition. The chapter concludes by discussing the necessity of utopia in this context, specifically focusing on the potential to develop more clearly utopian approaches in both research and policy concerning alternative mobility futures.

2. MOBILITY TRENDS AND TENDENCIES Mobility is vital to life and a key issue in urban and regional development. However, the current mobility paradigm, with its focus on motorized transport based on fossil energy (Urry, 2007), has led to a range of problems such as greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable energy consumption, resource depletion, pollution, negative health effects, and an aesthetically and functionally impaired urban landscape. The negative effects of the current mobility paradigm are often unequally distributed, with most negative impact typically burdening other groups of citizens than those behind the wheels of the vehicles causing most of the problem (Bradley, GunnarssonÖstling, & Isaksson, 2008; Bullard & Johnson, 1997; Lucas, 2004).

Mobility Transitions

117

From both the social and ecological standpoints, there is a need to transform the current transport system. Doing so, however, is proving to be hugely complex. Transport and mobility are closely intertwined with various aspects of life at both the macro and micro levels. Globalization, macroeconomic structures, the (re)organization of work and social life, urban and regional structures, the ICT revolution, demographics, tourism, energy prices, etc., are some of the factors that drive transport demand (Sessa & Enei, 2009). Moreover, transportation is not only a derived demand but also a valued activity in itself (Banister, 2008). How much and by what means people travel is historically, culturally, and institutionally embedded, expressing individual habits and preferences; spatial, economic, and time restrictions; and social norms and identity (Eriksson & Forward, 2011; Sheller, 2004; Urry, 2007). European transport and mobility trends indicate continued and growing transport demand over the last decade. Figures from 1995–2009 indicate a more mobile European population, among whom passenger kilometers (pkm)—a unit indicating one passenger being transported one kilometer— traveled have increased from 5,327,000 in 1995 to 6,503,000 in 2009, for an overall increase of 22% (EC 2011a, Table 2.3.2). However, it should be noted that the speed of this increase slowed around 2007, and a slight decrease was even evident starting in 2009 (EC, 2012, Table 2.1.2). This decrease is usually explained by increasing oil prices and the recession, not by changing mobility patterns or weakened transport demand (EEA, 2011). However, there are indications that we may be at historical juncture when several features of the currently dominant mobility paradigm are becoming destabilized. Concepts such as “peak travel” and “peak car” refer to changing trends in vehicle ownership, vehicle use, and overall transport demand. According to a recent analysis, the steady growth of “automobility” that has been the rule for several decades may in fact have halted—at least if this growth is seen in relation to GDP growth (Millard-Ball & Shipper, 2011, cf. Newman & Kenworthy, 2011; Puentes & Tomer, 2008). In the EU, there is still an overall tendency for continued growth in the number of passenger cars per capita (EC, 2012, Table 2.6.1), and the passenger car remains the dominant travel mode in pkm (EC, 2012, Table 2.3.2), even though public transport in a broad sense (including trams, buses, and rail travel) is increasing its market share (EC, 2012). Taken together, this means that, while some indications suggest that private car use may be declining, the overall mobility patterns are still far from sustainable in terms of energy, climate impact, and a range of other factors.

3. TWO STRANDS OF MOBILITY TRANSITION RESEARCH Research into mobility transition is extensive. I will briefly describe just two of the most significant themes in that part of this research that treats planning and policy-making for alternative and/or “sustainable” mobility futures.

118

Karolina Isaksson

3.1 Research into Sustainable Mobility Strategies The insight that there is a need to break away from current unsustainable mobility patterns is far from new. Since the 1960s, there has been broad awareness of the negative environmental consequences of motorized transport, specifically, the private car. This has prompted researchers and policy makers to develop policy measures to help transform the transport system in a more sustainable direction. Nykvist and Whitmarsh (2008) have noted that such strategies typically relate to: a) improving the efficiency and reducing the impact of vehicles. This may involve developing and introducing new technology to improve current vehicles, or more radical innovations such as new types of vehicles or new fuel technology. Over the past decade, considerable research has also focused on developing “intelligent” transport systems (ITS) to improve the efficiency of road use and the transport system as a whole (Mitchell, Borroni-Bird, & Burns, 2010; Nykvist & Whitmarsh, 2008). b) pushing for more sustainable modes of travel. This may involve policy initiatives to increase the use of “sustainable” travel modes such as public transport, walking, and cycling and to change how current modes are used, with a focus on new combinations and a generally more intermodal approach to meeting travel demand (Nykvist & Whitmarsh, 2008). c) initiatives to reduce the need to travel. These may involve mobility management and land use planning and typically strive for denser cities or at least a more functional connection between housing, workplaces, schools, and leisure activities, with priority being given to public transport, walking, and cycling (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999; Nykvist & Whitmarsh, 2008) and increased use of, for example, ICT and telecommuting (Santos, Behrendt, & Teytelboym, 2010). In his writings about “the sustainable mobility paradigm,” Banister (2008) notes that sustainable mobility requires a shift away from a traditional transport policy paradigm that has made cars the dominant mode of travel, and emphasise the need for measures that promote modal shift, fewer trips, and reduced trip lengths. He also stresses the need to distinguish between accessibility and mobility (and to prioritize the former), to work strategically with visions and scenarios instead of forecasts, etc., and, consequently, to prioritize sustainable transport modes such as walking, biking, and public transport instead of motorized transport, as is conventionally the case (Banister, 2008). As part of his conceptualization of sustainable mobility, Banister (2008) emphasizes several process qualities, stressing community and stakeholder involvement in the discussion, decision making, and implementation processes. Much current research into sustainable mobility seeks more general conclusions regarding factors that could hinder or enhance the successful implementation of sustainable mobility initiatives. This field of research typically builds on case studies of the outcomes of various policy measures

Mobility Transitions

119

intended to promote sustainable mobility transition (see, e.g., Attard & Ison, 2010; Banister, 2004; Isaksson & Richardson, 2009; Ison & Rye, 2005; Richardson et al., 2010). Recent examples of successfully implemented policy measures indicate that even initiatives that radically challenge car-based mobility could gain acceptance. At the same time, there seems to be a tradeoff between how “radical” a policy measure is and its possibility of being implemented (Banister, 2004; Richardson et al., 2010).

3.2 Transition-Oriented Research into (Auto)Mobility Futures Several researchers have drawn attention to recent tendencies that seem to indicate instability in the automobile society, at least in the countries of the “north.” This instability is manifested, for example, through changed attitudes toward car ownership (see below), a new wave of policy initiatives in cities around the world to reduce car use and congestion, and ongoing discussions of the “peak car” phenomenon (Millard-Ball & Shipper, 2011; Newman & Kenworthy, 2011; Puentes & Tomer, 2008). In a paper about infrastructure provision for car-based mobility, Goodwin (2012) refers to the last two decades of transport planning in the UK and notes a “fundamental transition in the discourse and analytical tools of thought about the planning and use of transport infrastructure” (p. 156); however, this “new regime” has not yet been put into practice in most cases, so the outcome of the process remains unclear (Goodwin, 2012). Geels, Kemp, Dudley, and Lyons (2012) conclude a recent book on automobility transitions by discussing current “cracks” in the automobile mobility regime. These cracks relate to: a) the capacity of the physical infrastructure, especially in cities, where issues connected to livability and land use have prompted authorities to develop measures to restrict car use, b) perceptions of the car that indicate a more critical attitude toward car ownership among younger consumers in various countries, c) decreased growth in car mobility noted in several countries of the “north,” d) policy makers in general expressing less commitment to the automobility regime, the formerly dominant “predict-and-provide” paradigm being replaced with principles more in line with sustainable mobility (although other policymakers and industrial interests still clearly support automobility), and e) an overall recognition of “landscape pressures” (i.e., environmental limits, such as climate change and peak oil) that limit car growth (Geels et al., 2012, pp. 255–356).

4. UTOPIA: FROM A PERFECT SOCIETY TO A PROCESS OF IMAGINING In a paper from 2003, Levitas introduced the concept of utopia by stating that “the idea of utopia implicit in most lay usage of the term is of a perfect society, which is impossible and unattainable. It is either an idle dream,

120

Karolina Isaksson

or, if attempts are made to create that society, a dangerous illusion” (Levitas, 2003, p. 3). Most current writings in this field strongly recall Thomas Moore’s idea of utopia as a “good place which is no place, and which, in seeking a place, becomes its opposite, dystopia” (Levitas, 2003, p. 3). In this respect, a utopia is a complete conceptualization of society, with a clear territoriality and fi nality, which was logical in modern society, sharing its basis of universalistic scientific claims and Eurocentric values, but not today (Bauman, 2003; Hedrén & Linnér, 2009; Levitas, 2003). In a more postmodern era we need to reconceptualize the term “utopia.” Levitas suggests a broad and flexible understanding of utopia; building on the writings of Ernst Bloch (1986, 2000), she suggests that utopia can be defi ned as any “expression of desire for a better way of living” (Levitas, 2003, p. 4). However, acknowledging that this definition may be too broad and therefore not very useable, she emphasizes that utopia is necessarily oriented toward transforming current society (Levitas, 2003, p. 5, with reference to Mannheim, 1979). Levitas also refers to Mannheim’s famous distinction between ideology and utopia as “functional opposites, with ideology serving to sustain the status quo and utopia serving to transform it” (Levitas, 2007, p. 289, with reference to Mannheim, 1979). Levitas (2003, 2007) and Bauman (2003) both refer to utopia as a constitutive feature of humanity, but state that a relevant understanding of utopia today requires that focus be shifted from the old idea of utopia as a comprehensive imagining of a complete, perfect society, or of specific, fi xed programs and projects aiming to achieve such an ideal, to the process of utopian imagining (Bauman, 2003; Levitas, 2003). Although the utopian impulse is necessary to human life, Levitas notes that the current political culture appears to be antiutopian, since it leaves no place for explicit attempts to explore or develop alternative trajectories for society. In practice, the political culture is as utopian as ever, but it does not understand itself in that way. Instead, “utopianism” has today become a pejorative term, used mainly to dismiss initiatives and proposals that suggest any change to the mainstream political paradigm. Hence, Levitas refers to contemporary political discourse as an “anti-utopian utopianism”—a political discourse in which the constant claim of pragmatism “serves to repress its utopian character” and in which any explicit espousal of transformation is rejected as “utopian” (and therefore unrealistic), while other ideological/utopian claims are placed beyond scrutiny (Levitas, 2007, p. 298). Still, and partly because of the current antiutopian political culture, Levitas stresses the importance and inevitability of utopianism. Utopianism, she argues, is important because it makes it possible to introduce ideas about alternative trajectories and other conceptualizations of the good society into the sphere of democratic debate (Levitas, 2007, p. 299). Her line of argument is closely related to Harvey’s discussion of the need to revitalize the utopian tradition (Harvey, 2000, referring to Bloch, 1988) and to

Mobility Transitions

121

Jameson’s proposition about “anti-anti-utopianism” as a way forward in exploring possible futures (Jameson, 2005, p. xvi).

5 THE UTOPIAN ELEMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY INITIATIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY

5.1 The EU White Paper on Transport Over the last decade, EU policy has expressed great awareness of the climate issue and the need to fi nd more “sustainable” development paths for transport and mobility in this respect. The Vice-President of the European Commission and past Commissioner for Transport, Antonio Tajani, framed the task fatefully in a 2009 communication on sustainable transport development for Europe: Now we are facing new and formidable challenges: science is urging us to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, growing demand and declining production are pushing oil prices to unprecedented heights, and congestion is approaching intolerable levels in many cities, airports and ports. The scope of these challenges is such that a profound transformation in the transport system will be required in the coming decades. (EC, 2009, p. 3) The communication was one of the preparatory documents for the EU White Paper on transport, published in 2011. The White Paper is a strategic EU transport policy document, aiming to provide a roadmap for the sustainable development of the European transport system. Its point of departure is that European transportation is “at its cross roads,” and the need to break with oil dependency is stressed (EC, 2011b, p. 3). 2 The White Paper is clearly future oriented, and one section of the introductory part explicitly states: Looking 40 years ahead, it is clear that transport cannot develop along the same path. If we stick to the business as usual approach, the oil dependence of transport might still be little below 90%, with renewable energy sources only marginally exceeding the 10% target set for 2020. CO2 emissions from transport would remain one third higher than their 1990 level by 2050. (EC, 2011b, p. 5) This passage calls for an urgent redirection of the current transport system. However, the White Paper also declares that “curbing mobility is not an option” (EC, 2011b, p. 5). Acknowledging the pivotal role of transport in the European economy and society, the strategy for achieving a sustainable transport system is to break the oil dependence without

122 Karolina Isaksson compromising mobility. To enable this, it is clearly stated that “new transport patterns must emerge,” with a larger share of public transport or other, more resource-efficient combined modes (EC, 2011b, p. 5). There is a focus on “clean vehicles,” multimodal travel, new information technology, and new road pricing initiatives, as well as on urban planning to achieve higher population densities that make “public transport choices . . . more widely available, as well as the option of walking and cycling” (EC, 2011b, p. 8). The document discusses the importance of promoting sustainable behavior, which is explored in terms of, for example, vehicle labeling, supporting ecodriving, and the use of fuel-efficient, safe, and low-noise tires (EC, 2011b). At the EC website, key points from the White Paper are presented more accessibly. The Paper’s overall message is that “transport matters—it keeps the economy moving and gives us the freedom to travel. The EU’s new strategy will take us to 2050, developing cleaner, greener and more efficient transport.” Three other key slogans emphasize “putting sustainability at the heart of transport,” “plugging into smart solutions,” and “reducing barriers to free movement.” The White Paper illustrates the fundamental paradox shaping national and international policy in relation to mobility transition. On the one hand, it discusses the urgent need to redirect the transport system in a more sustainable direction. On the other hand, the visions and strategies it proposes are still based on—and support—the fundamental norms and mechanisms of the current transport system. Even though the White Paper explicitly seeks something new, what it proposes is not that different from what we already have—at least not in any substantial sense. The specific instruction to not curb mobility even prohibits the pursuit of radically innovative ways of thinking and acting. The White Paper does not identify the need to develop any fundamentally alternative ways of traveling or living. Overall, it very much conveys an anti-utopian utopia that endorses the hypermobile society and leaves no place for any alternative trajectories. Referring to Mannheim’s distinction between utopia and ideology, the White Paper should be understood as an ideological framework, serving to sustain the status quo in the transport sector.

5.2 The Doubling Project Another current initiative to break with existing mobility trends is the Doubling Project. At the international level, the Doubling Project has been advanced by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP—Union Internationale des Transports Publics). Nationally, it has been implemented through concrete projects carried out by public transport stakeholders, often in close collaboration with, public authorities and planning institutions. 3 The overall aim of the Doubling Project is to double the market share of public transport by 2025, as expressed by

Mobility Transitions

123

the slogan “PT×2.” Though the underlying motives for the initiative are probably mixed, the initiative has interesting features in terms of mobility transition. In a leaflet introducing the Doubling Project, UITP frames public transport as “the smart green solution” (UITP, n.d.) and advocates public transport as a way to tackle urban mobility challenges, “instead of continuing with the construction of new highways and encouraging car use” (UITP, n.d., p. 2). It is stated that: Ambitious and visionary strategies are essential to change radically current mobility patterns. . . . Investing in efficient and sustainable transport networks will help stabilize the global energy market; contribute to alleviating the role of transport in climate change and support economic growth as well as quality of life in cities by relieving congestion and offering mobility for all. Public transport means progress for societies. . . . The power to forge together a better mobility for our cities is in our hands! (UITP, n.d., p. 2) The leaflet stresses the potential of public transport to “re-connect socially excluded citizens to the social and economic structures of society” (UITP, n.d., p. 6) and depicts public transport as a means to eliminate slums in less-developed countries (UITP, n.d.). There is an overall focus on public transport as a means to link people from all socioeconomic strata to their jobs and as a way to bring people together: . . . it provides better social inclusion for the whole population . . . [and] improves the health of the city by ensuring better safety for all and by promoting healthier life styles. (UITP, n.d., p. 6) Formulations like these in the document create associations with issues of transport equity. In this respect, the Doubling Project displays some utopian features: Its expressed vision of more equal urban life and overall aim of doubling the market share of public transportation seem utopian in themselves. Moreover, the Project is surely about generating significant change relative to the existing transport system. However, other Project statements indicate a less radical vision, essentially aiming to meet whatever mobility demand may develop as long as this can be done with public transport services. A key stated strategy is to “deliver lifestyle services to become the mode of choice for citizens” (UITP, n.d., p. 11). Two of the specific calls for action here are: to “respond to customers’ needs, expectations and new lifestyle and develop a portfolio of mobility products and services targeting the traditional customer base as well as new segments” and to “become a true mobility provider: develop intermodal strategic partnership and alliances with taxis, bikers and car sharing, parking facilities, information providers and major mobility generators.” The Project’s mission is not primarily to

124 Karolina Isaksson challenge current trends and tendencies but to promote public transport as much as possible within the existing mobility paradigm.

5.3 Micro-Level Initiatives for Nonmotorized Transport Over the last few years, there has been a notable focus on nonmotorized transport in Europe and elsewhere. This has been manifested through various public initiatives to promote walking and biking, such as bike-sharing programs, investments in walking and cycling infrastructure, information services such as bicycle trip advisors, and public campaigns to support modal shifts (see ELTIS, 2012, for a range of European examples). The growing interest in biking among urban residents is illustrated by the increasingly varied flora of bicycles seen today in cities around Europe, including cargo, folding, and electric bikes. There is a range of bottom–up initiatives and events aiming to promote alternatives to motorized urban transport. In some cases, these are loosely organized, ad hoc initiatives; in other cases, they have developed into more organized and recurrent urban events. From a utopian perspective, one of the most interesting examples of such microlevel initiatives is the Critical Mass movement. This movement is not new, having been initiated in San Francisco in 1992, and has spread around the world since then. It is today recognized as a key part of the wider bicycling subculture and is manifested in large group bike rides in cities over the world (Carlsson, 2008). In 2008, there was a Critical Mass event on the last Friday of every month in more than 300 cities around the world (Critical Mass, 2009) and the movement continues to flourish. In 2011 and 2012, Critical Mass events were reported in approximately 300 European cities and in several hundred more around the world (Critical Mass, 2012). Existing documentation of Critical Mass clearly indicates that the movement has no general, formal aim beyond the obvious one: to meet at a predefined time and place and then travel together as a group, on bicycle, through the city in question. The individual and local purposes and perspectives expressed at the events may vary. However, there are common purposes related to the urban environment, the right of individuals to express their preferences about the cityscape and urban transport solutions, and the desire for a space for political engagement outside formal public democratic institutions (Carlsson, 2008). It is stated that Critical Mass should not be seen as a protest movement, but instead as comprising “spontaneous gatherings” where people “celebrate their choice to bicycle” (Carlsson, 2002, p. 5; see also Critical Mass, n.d.). The former Critical Mass website emphasizes that Critical Mass has no leaders and that it should be seen as “an event, not an organization” (Critical Mass, 2012). The defi nition of the gatherings as spontaneous celebratory events is important, because it means that those who decide to initiate a Critical Mass event should not apply for a parade permit from the local police.

Mobility Transitions

125

Figure 7.1 Critical Mass ride, Lions Gate Bridge, Vancouver, 2007. Photo by Tavis Ford. Creative Commons.

The existing documentation of Critical Mass clearly indicates that the events have no overall, generally stated purpose. Instead, the events unite people with many different ideas and interests: It is a space where we come together to share public life, to exchange ideas and swap stories, and to imagine together what a different life may be like . . . Critical Mass is an experiment in alternative political expression, an attempt to establish organic communities with the strength and vision to fight for a better way of life. Among other things, we want more places for pedestrians, children, bicyclists, public gardens, more parks and open spaces, but also a different social system; less rushing, less buying-and-selling frenzy, more enjoyment of social life, more community, more FUN! (D’Andrade et al. 2002, p. 241) Critical Mass appears to be a loosely organized, almost organically growing movement of people who want to claim their interest and desire not only for alternative mobility solutions but also for a different way of living. The key ideas of the Critical Mass movement resemble those proposed at various other bicycling events, conferences, and festivals. One such event was the Pedalafest held in Zagreb, Croatia, in June 2012 (Pedalafest, 2012). This conference included seminars and workshops on, for example, how to repair one’s bicycle (important in a mobility paradigm in which individuals control their mobility more than when dependent on motorized transport),

126

Karolina Isaksson

Figure 7.2 Illustration from the film With My Own Two Wheels, courtesy of Pedal Born Pictures.

and a movie contest. One selected contribution explored the bicycle as a “vehicle for change around the world,” focusing on the bicycle as a critical item for survival and life-quality for citizens around the world. The microscale initiatives discussed here not only promote cycling for reasons such as health, time-saving potential, cost-efficiency, and environmental benefits. As well, the bike is proposed as an essential feature of life, a way to explore an alternative way of living, and the bicycling events are themselves developing into new political arenas for discussion and dialogue concerning the future. This initiative conveys a clear utopian content: an aspiration for something different from the currently dominant mobility paradigm, not least in how the events create arenas and processes that can spark the utopian impulse currently inhibited by “anti-utopian utopianism.” The microscale initiative discussed here seems to constitute a “space of hope” that Harvey (2000) identifies as vital in revitalizing the utopian tradition, and to provide a platform for the “anti-anti-utopiansim” suggested by Jameson (2005).

6. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: UTOPIAN ENERGY FOR ALTERNATIVE MOBILITY FUTURES The initiatives examined here are of three completely different kinds, but all promote mobility transition. The EU White Paper on transport, which illustrates a current top–down initiative to break with existing “unsustainable trends”—not least in terms of climate—appears to articulate an ideologically driven policy that essentially endeavors to support the existing

Mobility Transitions

127

mobility paradigm. The Doubling Project, in turn, has utopian features but only to a limited extent, its key rationale being to promote public transport within the existing mobility paradigm. Microlevel approaches to promoting nonmotorized transport are exemplified here by the Critical Mass movement. It is a more fragmented initiative but the only one with the explicit aim to explore not only alternative mobility futures but also alternative societies, linking the basic features of the urban transport system to issues of self-sufficiency, arenas for political engagement, and emancipation both at the local level and for society at large. Identifying the Critical Mass as the only truly utopian initiative discussed here may seem too much like a stereotypical result. The conclusion, however, is not that only microlevel practices and individual stories, per definition, can be utopian. The fact that the most typical manifestations of utopian thinking—understood here as a process of imagining a better way of living that includes transforming current society (Levitas, 2003, 2007)— are found in such initiatives probably reflects the “anti-utopian utopianism” (Levitas, 2007) shaping contemporary political culture. The EU White Paper on transport is a typical example of the general tendency to approach “wicked” policy problems such as climate change with pragmatic solutions. The incomplete utopian approach evident in the Doubling Project should probably be partly explained in the same way—together with the economic interests of public and private public transport organizations. The utopian content of the microlevel initiative promoting nonmotorized transport discussed here, illustrates the ubiquity of utopian thought in relation to mobility and transport in today’s European urban context. The Critical Mass movement and related initiatives illustrate very clearly that imagining a different life and a different society—i.e., utopia—is a strong and continuous process that should be understood as essential to human life. The fact that thousands of people across Europe and the world come together regularly to express their concern and longing for a different urban mobility paradigm is a call for transition, that should inspire many policy makers. The concurrence of these events and the current phenomena of “peak car” and “peak travel” is likely no coincidence. Perhaps we are at a historical juncture when the potential for transition is much greater than most public policy makers can imagine. Microlevel initiatives carry a strong utopian energy that should be explored further and transformed into concrete policy, planning, and regulatory initiatives. Again, regarding microlevel initiatives as indicating the potential for change that is always at hand, one can conclude that a key challenge facing politicians, planners, policy makers, researchers, and citizens today is to learn more from microlevel initiatives and to use them as resources for developing utopian ideas concerning mobility transition. Such ideas should be integrated into macrolevel initiatives such as the White Paper for transport. To make this possible, the involved citizens, politicians, and other

128

Karolina Isaksson

professional actors and organizations have two key tasks: fi rst, to keep on dreaming, imagining, and practicing alternatives to the status quo and, second, to deliberately strive to challenge the “anti-utopian utopianism” of today’s political culture. This last task is probably the most difficult one and the main barrier to a transition to alternative, and better, mobility futures. NOTES 1. Millard-Ball and Shipper (2011) base their analysis on data from eight countries: the United States, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia. 2. Key points from the EC White paper on Transport can be found through the URL http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/strategies/2011_white_paper_ en.htm, retrieved 17 December 2013. 3. Several of these national projects are presented at the UITP website (www. uitp.com).

REFERENCES Attard, M., & Ison, S.G. (2010). The implementation of road user charging and the lessons learned: The case of Valetta, Malta. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(1), 14–22. Banister, D. (2004). Implementing the possible? Planning Theory and Practice, 5(4), 499–501. Banister, D. (2008). The sustainable mobility paradigm. Transport Policy, 15(2), 73–80. Bauman, Z. (2003). Utopia with no topos. History of the Human Sciences, 16(1), 11–25. Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Bloch, E. (1988). The Utopian function of art and literature: Selected essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bloch, E. (2000). The spirit of utopia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bradley, K., Gunnarsson-Östling, U., & Isaksson, K. (2008). Exploring environmental justice in Sweden: How to improve planning for environmental sustainability and social equity in an “eco-friendly” context. Projections, 8, 70–86. Bullard, R.D., & Johnson, G.S. (1997). Just transportation: Dismantling race & class barriers to mobility. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Carlsson, C. (2002). Introduction. In C. Carlsson (Ed.), Critical mass: Bicycling’s defi ant celebration (pp. 5–8). Oakland, CA: AK Press. Carlsson, C. (2008). Nowtopia: How pirate programmers, outlaw bicyclists, and vacant-lot gardeners are inventing the future today! Oakland, CA: AK Press. Critical Mass (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_ mass. Critical Mass (2009). Website. Retrieved from http://critical-mass.info. Critical Mass (2012). Wiki. Retrieved from http://www.eltis.org/index.php?ID1= 6&id=62&list=&concept_id=15. D’Andrade, B., Verdekal, B., Carlsson, C., Swanson, JR., Roberts, K., French, N., with help from many other friends (2002[1993]). How to make a critical mass. Lessons and Ideas from the San Francisco Bay Area Experience. In C. Carlsson

Mobility Transitions

129

(Ed.), Critical mass: Bicycling’s defi ant celebration (pp. 239–248). Oakland, CA: AK Press. ELTIS (2012). ELTIS: The urban mobility portal. Retrieved from http://www.eltis. org. Eriksson, L., & Forward, S.E. (2011). Is the intention to travel in a pro-environmental manner and the intention to use the car determined by different factors? Transportation Research Part D, 16(5), 372–376. European Commission (EC). (2009). A sustainable future for transport: Towards an integrated, technology-led and user-friendly system. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Commission (EC). (2011a). EU Transport in figures: Statistical pocketbook 2011. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Commission (EC). (2011b). White Paper. Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area: Towards a competitive and resource effi cient transport system. Brussels, Belgium: European Commission. European Commission (EC). (2012). Mobility and transport: Statistical pocketbook 2012. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Environmental Agency (EEA). (2011). Laying the foundations for greener transport. TERM 2011: Transport indicators tracking progress towards environmental targets in Europe (Report No. 7/2011). Copenhagen, Denmark: European Environmental Agency. Geels, F., Kemp, R., Dudley, G., & Lyons, G. (2012). Automobility in transition? New York, NY: Routledge. Goodwin, P. (2012). Providing road capacity for automobility: The continuing transition. In F. Geels, R. Kemp, G. Dudley, & G. Lyons (Eds.), Automobility in transition? (pp. 140–159). New York, NY: Routledge. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hedrén, J., & Linner, B.-O. (2009). Utopian thought and the politics of sustainable development. Futures, 41(4), 210–219. Isaksson, K., & Richardson, T. (2009). Building legitimacy for risky policies: The cost of avoiding confl ict in Stockholm. Transportation Research Part A, 43A(3), 251–257. Ison, S., & Rye, T. (2005). Implementing road user charging: The lessons learnt from Hong Kong, Cambridge, and Central London. Transport Reviews: A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal, 25(4), 451–465. Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other science fictions. New York, NY: Verso. Levitas, R. (2003). Introduction: the elusive idea of utopia. History of the human sciences, 16(1), 1–10. Levitas, R. (2007). Looking for the blue: The necessity of utopia. Journal of Political Ideologies, 12(3), 289–306. Lucas, K. (ed.) (2004). Running on empty: Transport, social exclusion, and environmental justice. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Mannheim, K. (1979). Ideology and utopia. London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mitchell, M., Borroni-Bird, C., & Burns, L. (2010). Reinventing the automobile: Personal urban mobility for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Millard-Ball, A., & Shipper, L. (2011). Are we reaching peak travel? Trends in passenger transport in eight industrialized countries. Transport Reviews, 31(3), 357–378. Newman, P., & Kenworthy, J. (1999). Sustainability and cities: Overcoming automobile dependence. Washington, DC: Island Press. Newman, P., & Kenworthy, J. (2011). “Peak car use”: Understanding the demise of automobile dependence. World Transport, Policy, & Practice, 17(2), 31–42.

130 Karolina Isaksson Nykvist, B., & Whitmarsh, L. (2008). A multi-level analysis of sustainable mobility transitions: Niche development in the UK and Sweden. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 75(9), 1373–1387. PEDALAFEST (2012). Website. Retrieved from www.pedalafest.org. Puentes, R., & Tomer, A. (2008). The road . . . less traveled: An analysis of vehicle miles traveled trends in the U.S. (Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative Series No. 2). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Richardson, T., Isaksson, K., & Gullberg, A. (2010). Changing frames of mobility through radical policy interventions? The Stockholm congestion tax. International Planning Studies, 15(1), 53–67. Santos, G., Behrendt, H., Teytelboym, A. (2010). Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport. Research in Transportation Economics, 28(1), 46–91. Sessa, C. & Enei, R. (2009). EU transport demand: Trends and drivers. ISIS, paper produced as part of contract ENV.C.3/SER/2008/0053 between European Commission Directorate-General Environment and AEA Technology plc. Retrieved from http://www.eutransportghg2050.eu/cms/assets/EU-Transport-GHG-2050 -Task-3-Paper-ISIS-EU-Transport-Trends-and-Drivers-September-2009.pdf. Sheller, M. (2004). Automotive emotions: Feeling the car. Theory, Culture, and Society, 21(4/5), 221–242.Tight, M., Timms, P., Banister, D., Bowmaker, J., Copas, J., Day, A., Drinkwater, D., Givoni, M., Gühnemann, A., Lawler, M., Macmillen, J., Miles, A., Moore, N., Newton, R., Ngoduy, D., Ormerod, M., O’Sullivan, M., & Watling, D. (2011). Visions for a walking and cycling focussed urban transport system. Journal of Transport Geography, 196(6), 1580–1589. Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP). (n.d.) Public transport: The smart green solution! Doubling market share worldwide by 2025. Brussels, Belgium: International Association of Public Transport. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. London, UK: Polity Press.

8

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change Meike Schalk

1. UTOPIAN DESIRES As utopian desires may emerge from entrenched conditions that have been endured for some time, utopian critique focuses on dispositions that are experienced as fundamentally unjust. Utopian desire can consequently be described as a longing to transform society and oneself and to rearticulate power structures to engender change. bell hooks’s (1990) term “yearning” expresses this relationship, which strives for both a different world and for the catalytic activity of breaking personal and common ground. Utopian desire relates, in this sense, to both personal and political change and to the element of process. This form of utopianism allows theorizing about future social relationships and about strategies for informing political struggle beyond facts. The subject of this chapter is the struggle of various actors, including activists, architects, planners, administrators, and politicians, to participate in the planning process for Tempelhofer Feld (Tempelhof Field). In Spaces of Hope, David Harvey (2000) proposes a dialectical utopianism instead of one that envisions a space in which to achieve specific social and moral goals, a utopianism in which spatial form and temporal processes can be converted into the notion of potentially endlessly open experimentation with the possibilities offered by spatial forms: “This permits the exploration of a wide range of human potentialities (different modes of collective living, of gender relations, of production–consumption styles, in the relation to nature, etc.)” (p. 182). At the same time, Harvey (2000) criticizes “the romanticism of endlessly open possibilities” (p. 187) as a failure to create a vision and warns that leaving the question of valid and legitimate authority in abeyance has reduced the concept of utopia to a pure signifier of hope without any meaningful referent in the material world in the form of institutional arrangements or specific spatial form (p. 188). Another concept of utopia is offered by Ruth Levitas (2011) in “The Imaginary Constitution of Society: Utopia as Method,” in which she follows Ernst Bloch’s notion of a human utopian impulse that defi nes utopia as the expression of a desire for a better way of living, as the possibility to address the utopian aspects of a variety of cultural forms and expressions; this

132

Meike Schalk

allows utopia to be fragmented, partial, elusive, and episodic (pp. 53–54). But Levitas (2011) also stresses that without the elements of closure, specificity, commitment, and literalism as to what praxis would actually entail, serious criticism is impossible (p. 57); she suggests that utopianism could be a method to instigate transformation by changing the way we think about our future (p. 65). Both Harvey and Levitas emphasize utopianism as a driver of political change, a critical process, and a political impetus. The right to participate in planning could be considered a utopian ideal. In politics, inclusivity and equal participation are constitutive ideas at the center of every democratic society. However, this participative right is also a counterfactual ideal that can never be achieved in practice. Nonetheless, belief in the utopian qualities of Western society influences not only how we initiate political processes, but also how we plan. In the context of Berlin, this could refer to how we—meaning all the actors involved—develop new approaches to planning that leave space for a range of desires. The history of planning in West Berlin is one of fierce conflict. Many battles, not only over spaces but also over institutional arrangements, have been won and lost by citizen and activist initiatives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city, lacking an active industrial and business sector due to its decades-long isolation, actively courted major investors and, more recently, other global players such as hedge funds, who bought large parts of the formerly communal housing stock. Large-scale investors became influential actors in urban development, receiving building sites and real estate at low cost and often with generous easements, for example, regarding planning limits and environmental regulations. This reality, which stood in contrast to the “sustainability” approach espoused by Berlin and other cities, attracted substantial public criticism, culminating in the so-called Mediaspree protests starting in 2006 against the establishment of a corporate media cluster on the banks of the Spree River. Protesters also demanded a stop to selling off Berlin’s municipally held land and instead advocated introducing a land lease system. Paradoxically, the neoliberal tendencies that weakened governments have also permitted stronger activist- and citizen-driven influences on planning. Berlin’s current situation of financial austerity, the precarious conditions of much of Berlin’s population, and the fear of rising rents and gentrification expressed in protests have prompted the rethinking of planning strategies with the acknowledgement of local talents, skills, and assets. The notion of “city capital” (Stadt Kapital) is often invoked, not in the sense of monetary capital, but emphasizing Berlin’s richness in social capital, initiative, and citizen creativity (Bader et al., 2011; SSU, 2011a). Activists have pointed out that what is needed are mediating agencies supporting the Berlin Senate and linking the administration’s divided departments, helping them escape set procedures, schedules, and fi nancial plans in the interest of connecting the city’s various citizen initiatives. Such agencies have partly existed in various forms, but there is not yet an overall arrangement that could structure and enable new encounters and alliances (Tazlab, 2012). However, the drive for such mediators is not without

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

133

danger, as it could subvert democratic principles; to escape its administrative inflexibility, the Senate itself has formed project companies to serve as planning drivers, companies such as Grün Berlin GmbH, responsible for various green spaces in Berlin, and its subsidiary Tempelhof Projekt GmbH, charged with the task of developing Tempelhofer Feld. This chapter describes some of the various aspirations and relationships influencing planning for the future of Berlin. By highlighting, as an exemplar, the conflicts over spatial and institutional arrangements concerning Tempelhofer Feld and their potential to engender transformation, my aim is to discuss the possibilities for altering planning practice to give citizens more influence in city-making processes. The article is based on interviews with various actors in the context of Tempelhofer Feld—administrators, architects, commissioned experts, citizen initiatives, and “pioneers”—asking them about their desired futures, motivations, strategies, and criticisms, and about the various architectures, in the widest sense, including plans, urban space, and social activities, they are producing. Site visits and my participation in Citizen Initiative meetings, and pioneering research groups have provided further insights into citizen aspirations and approaches. The study of project documents and of written and visual material such as newspaper articles, magazines, blogs, books, flyers, posters, video clips, and exhibitions illuminates the media discourse and reveals how published material has either represented or repressed information concerning Tempelhofer Feld planning in the wider context of planning in Berlin. My discussion begins by presenting the contested participative planning process of Tempelhofer Feld. I then consider the format of the “pioneer fields” established at Tempelhof as representing a balancing act between top–down and grassroots planning practices. I will revisit the experience of a successful participatory process, citing the example of IBA (International Building Exhibition) 1987, and finally reflect on future practices.

2. TEMPELHOFER FREIHEIT Tempelhofer Freiheit (Tempelhof Freedom) is the new name of the former airfield in the center of Berlin, more precisely located between the districts of Tempelhof, Neukölln, and Kreuzberg. It also designates a current participative planning process and the future development plans for the site. Since it opened its gates in May 2010, the field has been frequented by thousands of visitors every day.1 Currently the site has the character of a large meadow. It is only minimally structured and is accessible and usable through temporary facilities. To manage the transformation from airfield to future park, the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development has implemented several approaches to informal participative planning in conjunction with conventional top– down planning and competitions in the development process. When it was initially decided to close the field to air traffic, one vision was to highlight this process and its results in an International Building Exhibition to be held

134

Meike Schalk

in 2020, called IBA 2020. However, despite the Senate’s announced intention to pursue new modes of citizen involvement, the field has already been designated for housing, a commercial zone, and public and other uses on its fringes, which has led to considerable conflict and protest. The idea of a park was not initially the product of planning at all, but arose from citizen initiatives that raised the notion in 1986 and have been fighting for it ever since. Although it has now been decided that the main area of Tempelhof will become a public park, conflict continues over the form of the park and its boundaries, since the citizen initiatives would leave the field open as it stands, while the authorities’ first land-use plan made in 1994 includes building on the fringes of the future park. This dispute has led to public debate about who owns the field, who will be allowed to build there, why construction should be planned at this location at all, and most crucially, who will be entitled to determine the field’s future (Hoffmann-Axthelm, 2011). Tempelhofer Freiheit is an unusual case in many ways. The project area that was freed from its former use in the middle of the city is an enormous 368 ha, of which 240 ha is to remain open parkland (Figure 8.1). Furthermore, it is rare for the citizens of Berlin to be encouraged to submit ideas in a planning project. The history of participative planning in Berlin is one of fierce battles. It began with the fight for housing in the 1980s, which eventually resulted in a 1983 law entitling citizens to participate in urban planning processes. The

Figure 8.1 The former Tempelhof airport in Berlin has become an open space. Photo by Meike Schalk.

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

135

entire process was enabled by the efforts of the International Building Exhibition, which opened in 1987. An exception to this law, however, is green planning, which can theoretically be conducted by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development without citizen consent. Nonetheless, there have been informal participatory processes in green planning, although their lack of formal, legally binding status has made them unsatisfying to both citizens and planners. With its newly published Handbuch zur Partizipation (Handbook of participation), which presents examples of participatory planning processes, the Senate acknowledges various forms of participation as important contributions to city-making; this material was compiled to serve as pedagogical and support material for planners and administrators to encourage them to initiate and perform participatory processes (L.I.S.T., 2012). Visiting Tempelhofer Feld is an overpowering experience: Where in the middle of a city is it possible to look farther than a few hundred meters across a flat, almost bush- and treeless landscape stretching under an open sky? The area represents an enormous resource in terms of urban green and public space for recreational, social, cultural, and educational purposes. It is also a site for establishing new collective spaces, including the pioneer fields used, for example, for the Allmende-Kontor, Rübezahlgarten, and Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez community gardens, located in the southeast of the field adjacent to the Neukölln neighborhood (Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2 The Allmende-Kontor, a community garden on the Oderstrasse “pioneer field”. Photo by Meike Schalk.

136

Meike Schalk

Since 1994, various expert-driven planning activities have sought to frame the conditions for a future master plan for Tempelhof. The 1994 survey emphasized saving the field for adjacent residential areas that lack green space and recreational opportunities. The survey suggested the urban feature of a ring of development built on the margins of the field, defi ning the open field in the middle. A year later, a workshop invited international delegates to devise concepts to expand on the survey results. Agreement prevailed that the development process should be kept open for reflection for a long time, and the central parkland was seen as the main feature of any future development. Subsequently, in 1998, the invitation-only workshop “Zukunftswerkstatt Tempelhof 2020” (Future Search Tempelhof 2020) formulated the basis for a master plan and the actual land-use plan proposal (SSU, 2007b). The design uses the idea of a “Wiesenmeer” (a meadow sea) that retains traces, such as the runways, of the former airport use and emphasizes the field’s exceptional and breathtaking spaciousness. The ring of development, however, was not questioned and became further differentiated into public, business, recreational, and residential zones. 2 Before a series of open competitions and commissioned studies was conducted, the fi rst step was taken to open the planning process to a wider public. This happened soon after the appointment of Regula Lüscher as the new Senate Director for Construction, with an online dialogue in two stages, in 2007, which asked: “What does Berlin need in this location?” (SSU, 2009). Although each stage of the dialogue lasted only four weeks, the fi rst stage resulted in 900 ideas, suggestions, and proposals. The second, moderated phase, in which ideas could be published, commented on, and evaluated on the web, yielded 400 proposals and thousands of comments. A public discussion of the results held at a citizens’ assembly in November 2007 attracted 400 participants.3 Proposals ranged from the pragmatic to the utopian. Noncommercial sport activities featured prominently in the web dialogue, as did therapeutic spaces and playgrounds for all ages. Educational and leisure spaces for youth were particularly requested. A democracy center and museological uses were suggested, while commercial proposals, such as a Las Vegas-style casino– hotel complex and a science park, attracted little support (SSU, 2008). The “tamed” online dialogue produced scarcely any provocative ideas, and only one of the 400 fi nal proposals was selected and taken further by the administration.4 However, at the fi rst open competition, held in 2009 for the Columbiadamm area in the northeast of Tempelhofer Feld, a proposal for an artificial mountain over 1,000 meters high, covering the entire field, spurred the public imagination and fuelled discussion. This bold scheme drawn up by Mila, a team of the architect Jakob Tigges, made it only to the fi rst stage of the competition, but has received substantial media attention ever since (Mila/Tigges, n.d.). The proposal consisted mainly of stunning and seductive imagery with which the team criticized what it saw as the Senate’s lack of vision. The strict competition guidelines did not invite

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

137

imaginative proposals for the future of a truly remarkable space and thus arguably did not live up to the actual challenge of generating an adequate plan for Tempelhof. New suggestions have been made in newspaper articles and on the Internet ever since, such as the proposal to give each of the 3,400,000 Berliners one square meter (approximately equaling the size of the field minus the airport building) to plan. To do anything at all with their land, people would have to negotiate and join forces in a radically democratic process; a football field, for example, would require the cooperation of 7,500 people. Megaprojects would hardly stand a chance in such a grassroots planning process. Instead, various ideas would coexist and politicians would have to share their decision-making powers with more than three million other actors (Asmuth, 2009). In its radical egalitarian claim, which sought to involve all Berliners, this was a truly utopian proposal. The deadline of the fi rst stage of a second open landscape planning competition, addressing the landscape of the entire Tempelhof park area, coincided with the opening of the field in May 2010. The competition winners were fi nally decided in 2011 and the six semifi nalist schemes were publicly exhibited, presented, and discussed on site (SSU, 2011b). The winning proposal by GROSS.MAX Landscape Architects and Sutherland Hussey Architects from Edinburgh forms the basis on which the Senate administration has been planning for Tempelhof ever since. Citizen initiatives have questioned the Senate’s forms of public involvement in a planning project of this dimension. The most important actor is 100% Tempelhofer Feld (100% ThF), a citizens’ initiative that demands that the field be protected from any building plans and privatization, as these would destroy the open field’s unique social and ecological qualities. This initiative further demands an inclusive and transparent participation process involving citizens, interest groups, and associations in developing the concept of a protected landscape area. The notable qualities of the area are listed as follows: the former airfield is a historical site of National Socialist crime and of the 1948–1949 airlift; it is an important recreational space large enough to be used for fairly unusual activities in a city, such as kite flying and land sailing; it is an important habitat for numerous birds, butterflies, bees, and wasps, some of them endangered, with a specific flora; it is a “meadow sea” that cools the air of the densely built adjacent districts; and above all, it is a huge playground with space for everyone. Arguments against building also cite the immense development costs for the city, which is already burdened with debt, as well as the threat of rising rents and gentrification in the poor neighborhoods adjacent to the field. Consequently, 100% ThF demands that 100% of the field remain accessible to citizens, to fi ll with content and noncommercial use on their own initiative. However, 100% ThF’s strongest argument is that Berliners have already voted for the open field “with their feet”: since its opening, people have embraced it more than any planner could have anticipated. At the time of writing, 100% ThF

138

Meike Schalk

is preparing a referendum that will legally determine the future of the field, and could bypass the Senate’s planning efforts (100% Thf, n.d.).5 To sum up, conventional planning and competition procedures have been implemented parallel to informal participative efforts, which have led to considerable conflict. This became obvious in the latest attempt at planning participation, in which Tempelhof Projekt GmbH and Grün Berlin GmbH invited citizens, on behalf of the Senate administration, to three open dialogues in summer 2012 to develop additional park concepts in moderated work groups. The themes, which were predetermined, included “free time and play,” “sport,” “rest and recreation,” “environmental education,” and “urban gardening”; the areas designated for building were excluded from the discussion. In protest, a self-initiated workshop, “Das Grosse Ganze” (the whole picture), formed and was joined by most of those involved in the conflict concerning building on the field. In the last of the three official “open” dialogues, the public took over the moderation, changing all the themes according to their concerns, making them: “gentrification/social exclusion,” “climate and species protection,” “the planning process,” and “network building and finances.” What the Senate should learn from this is that citizen involvement should start early on, in the phase in which the principal questions of a plan, which will guide the course of action, are being formulated.

3. EXPLORING PIONEER FIELDS In addition to the efforts of the informal participation process, the open online dialogue, citizen polls, questionnaires, focus group and open group dialogues, field monitoring, and open public presentations and discussions, Tempelhof has become a site for more hands-on participation through the use of designated pioneer fields, administered by the development agency Tempelhof Projekt GmbH for the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development. Instead of joint planning in a dialogue, people can participate in city-making by doing, through applying for a site on a pioneer field. In this paradoxical system that attempts to unite top–down planning and bottom–up use, the planning authorities want to provide scope for more “spontaneous” temporary self-generated projects (SSU, 2010; SSU, 2011c). The pioneer fields are kept noncommercial and reserved for the public good. Today, there are three pioneer fields with various uses themed in relation to the character of their adjacent neighborhoods (Figure 8.3).6 In theory everyone—groups, associations, and individuals—can apply for a pioneer field for a period of three years (Tempelhofer Freiheit, n.d.a). In practice, it is not that easy to become a pioneer, as a jury chooses proposals in accordance with their practicability and compatibility with the themed areas.7 The pioneer fields are seen as a new, though typical, Berlin format derived from the numerous self-initiated projects for the interim use of Berlin’s urban voids left after the fall of the Wall (SSU, 2007a). The concept formulation

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

139

Figure 8.3 Map of Tempelhofer Freiheit showing the “pioneer fields.” Courtesy of Pionierfelder auf der Tempelhofer Freiheit, ©Tempelhof Projekt GmbH, Minigram.

is traceable to a study commissioned by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development parallel to the online dialogue in 2007. At that time, the architects, studio UC, in collaboration with mbup and raumlabor, suggested the gradual development of Tempelhofer Feld through pioneer use and a dynamic master plan.8 The studio UC/mbup/raumlabor project, which more or less forms the basis of the current accessibility of Tempelhofer Feld, proposes stipulating pioneer practices and cultural initiatives as generators of urban planning activity and tools for site development. The project does not reject conventional planning instruments, but instead envisions synchronization with formal planning levels, such as the advancement of guiding principles and the format of competitions, administered by the city planning office. It suggests a dynamic master plan that can carry out this synchronization— city planning in constant process. The argument is that, through these two overlapping dimensions, urban development will be understood not only as an accumulation of built mass, but, above all, as the successive densification of activities, programs, and networks, which could, but need not, manifest itself in buildings (Figure 8.4).

140

Meike Schalk

Figure 8.4 The Dynamic Masterplan. The Dynamic Masterplan was commissioned by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development and conceived by raumlabor in cooperation with Studio UC Klaus Overmeyer, and Michael Braum & Partner. Courtesy of raumlabor-berlin.

The architects of the pioneer concept claim that the pioneer fields serve an important function by filling Tempelhofer Feld’s associative emptiness with new images through temporary uses, thereby influencing its future. The pioneer process is seen as a form of public development of ideas, a “learning urbanism” in which ideas do not have to undergo exhaustive permitting processes but can be put in action and tested immediately. Furthermore, by acting on the field, even those otherwise excluded from planning processes can participate in inventing Tempelhofer Feld’s future (raumlabor, 2007). The crucial question, however, is whether classical planning processes can be synchronized easily with a dynamic plan based on temporary pioneering use. Although the proposal for a master plan that came out of the landscape architecture competition of 2010–2011 attempts to consider the wishes and suggestions emerging from the participatory process, it will eventually replace current pioneer activities. Most pioneers, although aware that their contracts last only three years, do desire permanent occupation. Their fields are located on the master plan’s future building sites, so they will have to relocate or disappear as soon as the final plans are made and the plots are sold, which highlights the confl ict that emerges when

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

141

a temporal understanding of planning-by-doing meets more conventional instruments. Both concepts are problematic in this context, both the static master plan, which is not easily adaptable to actual requirements, as well as the dynamic master plan, whose main quality is its flexibility and adaptability to all circumstances. In the latter case, the plan’s very flexibility means that it could lose its critical capacity (Levitas, 2011), clear goal, and vision (Harvey, 2000). However, if the dynamic master plan becomes a practical tool that goes beyond being a pragmatic instrument for temporarily resolving conflicts, it has the potential to give the struggle an arena, where not only spaces but also new rules and procedures in planning could be negotiated in a novel manner. Several actors of the 100% ThF citizen initiative are eyeing the pioneer fields skeptically. Besides their engagement in saving the field from building, their ultimate goal is to achieve transparent planning processes with citizen involvement based on legal rights, applying to green planning as well. All informal participation efforts so far organized and implemented by the authorities are regarded by 100% ThF as “decorative” elements of urban planning, attempts by the administration merely to legitimate its actions and keep critical troublemakers occupied (the pioneer fields, in particular, accomplish the latter). For most 100% ThF activists, the pioneer fields are not what they appear to be, i.e., novel opportunities for citizens to engage in shaping their environment, but rather “Trojan horses” that, they argue, will achieve quite the opposite: They will strategically accelerate the gentrification process in which the pioneers, who through work make their areas attractive, are coopted and exploited as pathfi nders preparing the ground for the big investors, who will eventually push them aside. In this perverted vision, the pioneer fields are not seen as an instrument of empowerment, as intended by the architects, but rather as a self-infl icted process of the destruction of existing neighborhoods (Meyer-Renschhausen, 2012). Despite fundamental criticism, a group within 100% ThF has initiated and manages a pioneer field itself, the Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez community garden. The garden offers an open field structure to neighbors as a space for self-organized, creative action and as a forum for information and support. In this way, it aims in particular for the “critical constructive monitoring of the development of Tempelhofer Freiheit” (Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez, 2011; Tempelhofer Freiheit, n.d.b). In terms of tactics, this pioneer use also serves as a Trojan horse, assuring the citizen initiative a certain presence in the field, from which it can reach out and promote its agenda, giving visibility to the constant struggle for rights to the field. Pioneer fields in their current form as instruments of participatory planning are contested due to their short lifespan. However, they could gain significance as a land use concept, in which pioneers represent an alternative type of “developer” if they become actively involved in the planning and decision-making for the future of the area. The architect Ines-Ulrike Rudolph, employed as project leader by Tempelhof Projekt GmbH to take

142

Meike Schalk

care of the pioneer fields, states that, at a time when lifelong work relationships have become the exception for most people, spaces for self-initiatives are becoming more central. She emphasizes that the citizenry represents an important constant in urban planning, while political and personal constellations and contents change with legislative periods. Consequently, Rudolph (2012) pleads for patience, “allowing time” (p. 1) for developments to unfold, so that civic networks can form around sites in a liminal state, to ensure that these sites will not be just for interim use, but will become locations where cultural, social, and economic initiatives grow (Meyer-Renschhausen, 2012). With “pioneers” and the spaces assigned to them, i.e., the “pioneer fields,” the administration wants to actively integrate into the planning process what it has recognized as an existing “Berlin tradition” that had previously escaped its control. In this, it claims to be consciously transforming activist tactics into professionally steered strategies of interim use as constitutive of its development strategy (SSU, 2010; 2011c). Despite the language of power in this statement, which gives the institution the guiding role in planning process transformation, Rudolph sees potential in the pioneer field concept: The fields constitute a force that, while it cannot change planning overnight, serves as a consciously or unconsciously inbuilt element of interference that can open previously non-negotiable processes.

4. LEARNING FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BUILDING EXHIBITION The Tempelhofer Feld case prompted discussion of holding a third IBA in Berlin in 2020. The idea arose in 2007, triggered by the new possibilities created by the decision to close Tempelhof Airport. It was proposed by the Senate Building Director, Regula Lüscher, who appointed a Prae-IBA team consisting of an interdisciplinary group of seven experts and commissioned them to prepare a concept. The composition of the panel was younger and more gender balanced than that of the usually predominantly male IBA curatorial board. The panel included, besides architects and urban designers, a social scientist and gender consultant, a human geographer and urban planner with a focus on alternative economies, a curator and cultural entrepreneur, and a philosopher and researcher on climate change. Despite the good intentions, the Senate failed to invite activists, citizen initiatives, or other actors on Berlin’s political grassroots scene into the circle of experts constituting the Prae-IBA team. Although the idea of making Tempelhofer Feld the main site of another IBA was quickly given up, the plan to hold IBA 2020, which would focus on current Berlin issues, such as rising rents and the dangers of gentrification, and thus the context of the Tempelhofer Feld planning process, was taken on.9 It was pursued for two more years, but then cancelled suddenly in June

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

143

2013 making reference to Berlin’s precarious financial situation. However, a reason to discuss the IBA in relation to Tempelhof is the debate on the legacy of the previous Berlin IBA Alt (old IBA) of 1987 with its explicit devotion to participative planning processes, which had also influenced the preparations for the IBA 2020.10 IBA 1987 has been revisited and become an inspiration for the planned IBA 2020 in several publications and exhibitions (Below et al., 2009; Bodenschatz, 2010; Department for Built Heritage Conservation, 2012). IBA Alt had instigated a shift away from large-scale surface redevelopment with prior tabula rasa clearance towards what would become known under the term “Behutsame Stadterneuerung” (gentle urban renewal), focusing on the careful alteration of the existing city fabric in collaboration with inhabitants and users. In this, IBA Alt of 1987 marked a paradigm shift, which it might not have triggered, but that it enabled and exposed—with all the attendant confl ict—to international debate. IBA Alt 1987 became an important example of how authorities had managed to build new alliances with a protest movement and change its entire procedure for urban renewal. This IBA, which focused on Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, connected here to ongoing activities in the neighborhood11 where citizens’ and squatters’ initiatives had arisen to resist the Berlin Senate’s demolition politics and to protest the destruction of their neighborhood and the housing shortage of the time. In the name of gentle urban renewal, the IBA attempted to integrate the protest movement by giving local inhabitants priority in the development and implementation of renewal measures. In all this, the IBA was not the initiator, but a catalyst and incubator, as well as the label under which some projects were implemented (Pfotenhauer, 2009, p. 106). During the planning and building phase of IBA Alt 1987, the famous Twelve Basic Principles for Gentle Urban Renewal—a catalogue of utopian demands—were developed during numerous citizen sessions and issued in 1983. The Twelve Principles included postulates such as: all decisions on renewals must be made jointly with inhabitants; technical and social planning should go hand in hand; the right to participate in all decisions on renewals must be regulated; and new forms of organizing institutions should be formed. These radical Twelve Principles were formally recognized by the political body of the district of Kreuzberg and the Berlin parliament in 1983 and guided urban renewal in Kreuzberg in the following years with great success. However, with the fall of the Wall and the subsequent shift in priorities, the Principles never gained traction outside of Kreuzberg.12 In conclusion, the Twelve Principles of Gentle Urban Renewal differed decisively from conventional planning practice in that they did not predetermine a fi nal result according to a fi xed plan, but defi ned a participative procedure from a long-term perspective according to which a broad spectrum of concrete steps and processes was to be developed (Schilling, 2002, pp. 195–196). In contrast to planning from a distance, the Twelve Principles made the experience of those involved into the crucial basis of decision-

144 Meike Schalk making (Hämer, 1987, p. 195). Current institutional and legal standards of city renewal, environmental protection laws, and earlier rent ceilings are all based on the efforts of activists and citizens together with IBA Alt 1987. This planning experience contributed to planning processes that led not simply to the restoration of part of the city, but to governing it differently (Schilling, 2002, p. 212). Planning and building were anchored as social processes that had to refer to citizen experience and be based on participation in society and the city (Frey, 2009, p. 79). Participatory structures were not preformed and performed by the Berlin Senate; instead, it was the civic actors who defi ned the conditions for collaboration in the fi rst place. Connected to the social focus of IBA Alt 1987, the Prae-IBA team’s slogan was “City capital! Capital city, space city, instant city” (Stadt Kapital! Hauptstadt, Raumstadt, Sofortstadt), in which “city capital” does not refer to monetary capital but to social capital and the potentials, resources, and talents of Berlin in the form of its active and creative inhabitants, accumulating a trove of urban knowledge, knowhow, skills, and competencies.13 It was said that all these conditions and identities should create a framework for developing new planning procedures, instruments, and fi nancial models that would link planning from above with spontaneous city-making from below. The authors of the IBA Berlin 2020 concept claim that sustainability emerged only when the bigger picture of common good was considered instead of shortsighted return calculations (Bader et al., 2011). However, the Prae-IBA team’s concept paper contains few concrete proposals in David Harvey’s sense of a dialectical utopia that requires either/ or decisions: Everything is still open and possible, and various concepts of ownership and planning processes coexist. Most productively, in the sense of full commitment and closure (Levitas, 2011), are the proposals that work at the policy and structural level to address the entire city. These are also the proposals that can be best imagined in action, for example, the demand that, everywhere in Berlin, the existing stock of large, empty buildings should be opened for reuse by self-initiatives and other microactivities, giving them space to develop. It is envisioned that a mediating program such as the IBA would encourage new building laws and regulations, as well as establish new cooperative and low-budget funding models and bodies in partnership with communal and cooperative housing associations, nonprofit organizations, and small-scale enterprises.

5. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION At this point, the future of Tempelhofer Freiheit is uncertain. What is in place is a loose coalition of various concerned groups of activists, pioneers, architects, planners, administrators, and politicians with a diverse agenda, open to a broader discourse on planning issues in Berlin and elsewhere. This chapter has sought to separate and expose some of the numerous layers in

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

145

the transformation of Tempelhofer Feld: the planning strategies, the invention of tactics of resistance, and the emergence of new subjectivities, in short, the drawing of various trajectories of utopian desires acting on the field in order to discuss the alteration of participatory planning practices. The chapter considers what a discussion of utopia can add to a planning discourse. David Harvey’s notion of a dialectical, spatial, and temporal utopianism, open to new potentials and to the need to make development decisions, and Ruth Levitas’s utopianism as a method for thinking about alternative futures both allow for shifting perspectives, where the participatory process becomes the goal instead of a means to an end—such as developing urban areas without resistance. Their utopianisms are valuable for understanding the connection between political and personal aspirations, larger conceptual claims such as inclusive participatory planning, and actual critical practices on Tempelhofer Feld, here and now, for example, the citizen initiative 100% ThF and the pioneering activities AllmendeKontor and Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez. Although we have even more instruments for participation today than in the 1980s, such as Internet referenda and fora, citizen involvement processes steered from above have been proven to fail, for both citizens and authorities. By relating the planning process of Tempelhofer Freiheit to IBA Alt 1987, I wish to highlight the necessity of new alliances between citizen initiatives, pioneers, interest groups, architects, planners, and politicians in the interest of bringing about transformation. The protest movement of the 1980s, together with the IBA, which was understood as a mediating agency between citizens and the Berlin Senate, constitute important learning precedents. For a short time, these forces evoked a new orientation of city development politics and planning culture. The realization of the city renewal program and changes in institutional and legal standards were the result of a broad collaboration of diverse actors assuming various roles. Forms of resistance have changed too. Different strategic approaches to winning “the right to the city” and to “reclaim[ing] the commons” can be distinguished in which various soft strategies of cooperating, networking, and dialogue are employed (Allmende-Kontor, 2010). In addition, more confrontational strategies can also be employed, strategies using the full range of Berlin’s legal possibilities for resistance (e.g., 100% ThF’s effort to bring about a referendum), as well as various tactical or subversive approaches in which an organizational structure is “misused,” such as the temporary format of the pioneer fields as a permanent demonstration against all planning on Tempelhofer Feld (Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez, 2011). All these approaches have been important for expanding citizen agency in Berlin. The pioneer concept enabled a unique process of appropriation on the Tempelhofer Feld and amplified the possibilities for activism. It has produced a new group of stakeholders, who receive significant media attention. To make the Tempelhof experience more than just an interesting passing experiment, and to go further in altering planning practices in the interest

146

Meike Schalk

of developing radically democratic spaces, different questions need to be asked. We need to move away from a focus on predetermined results to exploring participatory processes: Urban planning needs to learn from good practice precedents and from citizens’ actual experiences and must courageously open itself to forming more equal and unconventional alliances with old and new stakeholders. As pointed out by both the project architect and pioneers, in a future of precarious and part-time work, self-managed spaces for cultivation, nonmarket exchange, and cooperation will become more important. This means that the city needs to learn to “unplan” spaces where planning politics is not driven by market forces but by the desire to collaborate with its citizens in producing spaces. Currently, Tempelhofer Feld offers both the experience of an actual open space and a plane on which to project its future. Utopia could shift from the construction of blueprints to an exploratory project whose purpose is to embody alternative values sketched in an alternative way of life, a mental space for imagining altering approaches, and a discursive space for debating new ways of participatory planning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For valuable interviews and inspiring conversations, I express many thanks: to Markus Bader, raumlabor, and to the experts on the Prae-IBA team, i.e., Sonja Beeck, Pamela Dorsch, Martin Heller, and Thilo Lang; to Joachim Günther, project leader for IBA Berlin 2020 at the Senate Department for Urban Development; to Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, coinitiator of Allmende-Kontor; to Ines-Ulrike Rudolph, architect and project leader of Tempelhof Projekt GmbH; and to 100% Tempelhofer Feld, especially Michael Schneidewind. NOTES 1. According to “1,6 Millionen Besucher auf Tempelhofer Feld” (2012), 1,600,000 people visited Tempelhofer Feld during 2011; 36% of these visitors lived in directly neighboring areas, 37% lived in nearby areas, 16% came from elsewhere in Berlin, and 11% were tourists from elsewhere in Germany and abroad. 2. Wiesenmeer was proposed by the landscape architects Dieter Kienast and Günther Voigt together with the architect Bernd Albers. 3. A further invitation to participate was issued via an omnibus survey in June 2009 involving a representative sample of 6,200 respondents, or 5% of the inhabitants of the adjacent districts, 1,500 of whom answered questions about the kind of park they wanted in the field. The results were subsequently presented in an exhibit held in a hangar of the former airport complex. 4. The selected proposal was the Vogelfreiheit project, a skateboard sculpture/ park made of recycled granite slabs saved from the outdoor areas of the former Palace of the Republic.

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

147

5. The initiative 100% Tempelhofer Feld (100% ThF, n.d.) has been active since September 2011 and emerged partly out of other initiatives, such as Tempelhof für Alle (http://tfa.blogsport.de). It is closely connected to groups pursuing similar goals, such as Stadtteilinitiative Schillerkeiz and Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez. 6. The sites and themes are Tempelhofer Damm (education and environmentally friendly technologies), Columbiadamm (sport), and Oderstrasse (culture and education). 7. There have been a few exceptions to this process, such as a Segway rental facility, in which case a small newcomer business was chosen over a more established enterprise. 8. Studio UC was one of several authors contributing to Urban Pioneers; for the dynamic master plan, see raumlabor (2007). 9. The IBA, an established exhibition format in Germany, targets and exemplifies specific city and regional planning tasks. It is seen as an experimental forum not only for innovative building but, in the case of Berlin, also as the generator of planning culture change and even successful institutional transformation. The IBA can work both inside and outside conventional urban planning arrangements and across administrative departments and responsibilities. 10. The IBA 1987 in Berlin was divided into “old IBA,” focusing on the renewal of the old city fabric, and “new IBA,” focusing on new building. 11. At the time, communal housing companies received subsidies to demolish inner-city quarters and to build new settlements at the edge of the city. One goal of IBA Alt 1987 was to demonstrate that it was possible to refurbish existing city buildings that had fallen into disrepair at far lower cost to the government and without destroying existing neighborhoods. 12. Subsequent redevelopment efforts in the eastern districts of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg did not evolve from grassroots efforts. They primarily sought the rapid repair of derelict city fabric but disregarded the social networks that could have enabled this process in a socially sustainable manner, and thus contributed to the gentrification of the areas. 13. The Prae-IBA team worked between 2010 and the Berlin election in autumn 2011 through a series of public activities concerning Tempelhofer Feld; these included the IBA studio, a regular public discussion platform in a former airport hangar; IBA talks with invited expert guests and the public; and IBA walks. Around 20 public events were held, attracting 5,000 participants. These events were structured as open workshops, to achieve a transparent process for developing themes, through collaboration between citizens and experts, for an IBA in 2020 (Bader et al., 2011, p. 14).

REFERENCES Allmende-Kontor. (2010). Das Allmende-Kontor. Retrieved Retrieved 16 December 2012 from www.allmende-kontor.de. Asmuth, G. (2009, October 29). Ein Quadratmeter Tempelhof für jeden [One square meter Tempelhof for each]. Taz. Retrieved from http://www.taz.de/!43064/ Bader, M., Beeck, S., Carlow, V.M., Dorsch, P., Heller, M., Lang, T., & Reusswig, F. (2011). IBA Berlin 2020 Konzept [IBA Berlin 2020 concept]. Berlin, Germany: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung. Retrieved from http://www. stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/staedtebau/baukultur/iba/de/idee.shtml. Below, S., Henning, M., & Oevermann, H. (Eds.). (2009). Die Berliner Bauausstellungen: Wegweiser in die Zukunft [The Berlin building exhibition: Guide to the future]. Berlin, Germany: Regioverlag.

148

Meike Schalk

Bodenschatz, H. (2010). Learning from IBA. Berlin, Germany: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung. Department for Built Heritage Conservation. (2012). RE-VISION IBA ’87 (13 October–17 November 2012). [Exhibition]. Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany. 100% Tempelhofer Feld. (n.d.). [Organization website]. Retrieved Retrieved 20 November 2012 from http://thf100.de. 1,6 Millionen Besucher auf Tempelhofer Feld [1,6 Million visitors on Tempelhofer Feld]. (2012, July 16). Berliner Zeitung. Retrieved from http://www.berlinerzeitung.de/berlin/flughafen-tempelhof-1– 6-millionen-besucher-auf-tempelhofer-feld,10809148,16632936.html Frey, O. (2009). Von der “Kreuzberger Mischung” zur wissensbasierten Stadtgesellschaft [From Kreuzberg mixture to knowledge-based city society]. In S. Below, M. Henning, & H. Oevermann (Eds.), Die Berliner Bauausstellungen: Wegweiser in die Zukunft [The Berlin building exhibition: Guide to the future] (pp. 77–88). Berlin, Germany: Regioverlag. Hämer, H.-W. (1987). Behutsame Stadterneuerung in Kreuzberg [Gentle urban renewal in Kreuzberg]. In Nitsche, R. (Ed.), Internationale Bauaustellung Berlin 1987. Projektübersicht [International building exhibition Berlin 1987] (pp. 194–197). Berlin, Germany: Bauausstellung Berlin GmbH. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Hoff mann-Axthelm, D. (2011). 20 Jahre Planung [20 years of planning]. Bauwelt, 36, 34–45. hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Levitas, R. (2011). The imaginary constitution of society: Utopia as method. In T. Moylan & R. Baccolini (Eds.), Utopia method vision: The use of social dreaming (3rd ed.; pp. 47–68). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG. L.I.S.T. Stadtentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (2012). Handbuch zur Partizipation [Handbook of participation] (2nd ed.). Berlin, Germany: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umelt. Retrieved from http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/soziale_stadt/partizipation/de/handbuch.shtml. Meyer-Renschhausen, E. (2012, September). Das Zurückfordern der Allmenden [Reclaiming the commons]. Contraste, 336, 6–10. Mila/Tigges, J. (n.d.). The Berg. Retrieved 20 November 2012 from http://www. the-berg.de. Pfotenhauer, E. (2009) Partizipation und Raumbildung: Markus Bader und Erhard Pfotenhauer im Gespräch mit Sally Below, Moritz Henning, und Heike Oevermann [Participation and space production: Markus Bader and Erhard Pfotenhauer in conversation with Sally Below, Moritz Henning, and Heike Oevermann]. In S. Below, M. Henning, & H. Oevermann (Eds.), Die Berliner Bauausstellungen: Wegweiser in die Zukunft [The Berlin building exhibition: Guide to the future] (pp. 103–116). Berlin, Germany: Regioverlag. Rudolph, I.-U. (2012). Upside down, inside out, and round and round: das Wriezener Freiraum Labor [Upside down, inside out, and round and round: the Wriezen Open Space Laboratory]. Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, 3/4, 1–4. raumlabor. (2007) Aktivierende Stadtentwicklung/Flughafen Tempelhof [Activating urban development/Tempelhof airport]. Retrieved from http://www.raumlabor.net/?p=84. Schilling, R. (2002). Behutsame Stadterneuerung [Gentle urban renewal]. In M. Sack (Ed.), Stadt im Kopf: Hardt-Waltherr Hämer [City in the head: HardtWaltherr Hämer] (pp. 179–216). Berlin, Germany: Jovis. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2007a). Urban Pioneers: Berlin: Stadtentwicklung durch Zwischennutzung [Urban pioneers:

Utopian Desires and Institutional Change

149

temporary use and urban development in Berlin]. Berlin, Germany: Jovis and Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2007b). Archiv: Tempelhof (Stand 2007–2008): Planungsvorlauf [Archive: Tempelhof (2007– 2008): Planning approach]. Retrieved from http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/staedtebau-projekte/tempelhof/de/planungsvorlauf/index.shtml. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2008) 21.11.07 Bürgerversammlung und Expertenmeinung zum Online-Dialog [Citizen assembly and expert opinion to the online-dialogue]. Retrieved from http://www.berlin.de/flughafen-tempelhof/discoursemachine.php?page=detail&id_item=9832. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2009) 09/07: Einladung Online-Dialog Tempelhofer Freiheit [Invitation online-dialogue Tempelhofer Freiheit]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhR8 67vRc8k&feature=endscreen&NR=1. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2010, September). Imagine Tempelhof: Towards the city of tomorrow. [flyer] Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2011a). IBA Forum—IBA meets IBA: City Capital! 18. Und 19. April 2011 in Berlin: Dokumentation. Retrieved from http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/staedtebau/ baukultur/iba/en/iba_forum2011/index.shtml. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2011b, April). Pressebox/Meldung: Wettbewerb zur Parklandschaft Tempelhof entschieden [Press/announcement: Competition for the park landscape Tempelhof decided]. Retrieved from http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/aktuell/pressebox/ archiv_volltext.shtml?arch_1104/nachricht4281.html. Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt Berlin (SSU). (2011c, June). Tempelhofer Freiheit: Planning the park landscape. Retrieved from http://www. stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/tempelhof/de/download/index.shtml. Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez. (2011, 19 April). Re: Es gilt ein weites Feld zu erobern [It is to capture a wide field] [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://schillerkiez. blogsport.de/2011/04/19/es-gilt-ein-weites-feld-zu-erobern. Tazlab. (2012, April 14). Das gute Leben–es gibt Alternativen [The good life– there are alternatives]. Conference held at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Tempelhofer Freiheit. (n.d.a). A lab for intermediate use. Retrieved 20 November 2012 from http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/en/get-involved. Tempelhofer Freiheit. (n.d.b). Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez [Schillerkiez community garden]. Retrieved Retrieved 20 November 2012 from http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/mitgestalten/pionierprojekte/stadtteilgarten-schillerkiez.

9

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived” Ylva Uggla

1. INTRODUCTION Although the concept of nature conservation is linked to modernity, that of the national park is loaded with landscape symbolism and romanticism, alluding to wilderness and pristine nature (Haila, 2012; Mendoza, 1998; Poirier & Ostergren, 2002). By these associations, national parks “are not the authentic places they claim to be, but rather abstractions that function as national icons” (Knudsen & Greer, 2008, p. 18). In this sense, national parks are heritage landscapes, marked by historical references imbued with cultural, political, and economic meanings (Graham, Ashworth, & Tunbridge, 2000, p. 3). Focusing on the National City Park in Stockholm, this chapter examines what happens when the national park concept is applied in the heart of a big city. How are the park as place and its identity discursively constructed? What meanings of the past, present, and future are conjured up in this construction? The National City Park in Stockholm, established in 1995, embodies an exceptional effort to protect cultural and natural heritage in a metropolitan area. In the early 1990s, a number of organizations drew attention to the fact that the area now within the Park was under threat of development and launched efforts to protect it. In 1994, based on these organizations’ activities and on motions in parliament, the government proposed designating Ulriksdal-Haga-Brunnsviken-Djurgården, an area of about 27 square kilometers in the municipalities of Solna, Stockholm, and Lidingö, the fi rst urban national park in the world. The proposal cites the area’s national cultural value, ecological value to the immediate urban area, and recreational value (Government Bill 1994/95 No. 3, p. 6ff ). The proposal further states that the area has long been valued for its beauty and refers to its great importance for tourism and recreation in the region, offering various opportunities for sports and nature experiences, preserving cultural history, and providing space for allotment gardens, museums, and an amusement park. The area also includes a variety of biotopes and rich biodiversity, including red-listed species. In view of the focus on preservation, the National City Park challenges both modernity and contemporary planning. First, while modernity alludes

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

151

Figure 9.1 The borders of the National City Park in Stockholm. Source: Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0.

to continuous change, technological innovation, mobility, and progress, preservation concerns the conservation of a place or condition as defined at a certain point in time. Second, in contemporary European planning, the reaction to urban sprawl has been a trend towards concentration, the goal being to achieve sustainability and promote urban qualities such as high density and diversity of activities (Salingaros, 2006; Tunström, 2007, 2009). This planning discourse implies a specific vision of what is desirable in urban nature: It is primarily nature with certain features, defined as safe, well-arranged areas that are meant to contribute to the city’s attractiveness and the citizens’ wellbeing, whereas areas of wild or unmanaged nature are associated with lack of order and of safety. Likewise, this discourse evinces a conflict between preservation of coherent green areas and urban development, and between biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing and safety, implying that certain kinds of nature have to give way to the development of the city (Tunström, 2009; Uggla, 2012). In the context of this discourse, the ideas of nature conservation and the preservation of coherent green areas in the city are outdated. The National City Park is a multifaceted area with a great number of stakeholders representing diverse interests. This broad range of stakeholder

152

Ylva Uggla

interests, ongoing population growth in Stockholm, and the emphasis on high density in contemporary urban planning have given rise to new conflicts concerning the use of the Park and its surroundings. Today the Park includes housing areas, transportation infrastructure, and establishments such as restaurants, theaters, museums, and a major university. Consequently, some stakeholder groups favor the ongoing development and expansion of activities and businesses in the area, some of which might compromise the preservation intentions underlying the regulatory framework of the Park. In addition, there is debate concerning new housing areas bordering on the National City Park. One such example is the sustainability-branded housing development Norra Djurgårdsstaden next to the Park, which cites proximity to the Park in its promotional material; opponents of the development fear it will intrude on and negatively affect the Park. The following analysis of the National City Park is based on the formal development program for the Park established by the Stockholm County Administrative Board in 2006. The Board is responsible for developing the values embodied in the National City Park, and the development program represents a platform defi ning the Park’s characteristics. The National City Park is by defi nition an urban phenomenon; at the same time, in delineating the Park, the development program clearly distinguishes it from the rest of the city, defi ning its uniqueness of place with reference to historical recollection, sites of pristine nature, and landscape symbolism. Before turning to the National City Park, Section 2 of this chapter outlines the concepts of heritage landscapes and utopian degeneration. In Section 3, the National City Park, as defi ned in the Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program, is presented under the following headings: “Demarcations Between the Park and the City,” “Linking the Past, Present, and Future,” and “The National City Park: A ‘Paradise Contrived.’” The fi nal section concludes that, although the natural and cultural values of the National City Park deserve protection, the representation of the Park in the Board’s development program entails spatial alterity and invokes value-laden dichotomies that might be detrimental to the development of the rest of the city, since the effort to protect the Park implies that the land outside this defi ned area is less valuable.

2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLACE, HERITAGE LANDSCAPES, AND UTOPIC DEGENERATION The construction of place encompasses both material production and symbolic order (Zukin, 1995). Places have particular geographical characteristics. For example, the boundaries of the National City Park are legally established in the Park’s regulatory framework. An important aspect of the construction of place, however, is how places are imbued with meaning. To become meaningful, places must be verbalized and narrated and various

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

153

means of communication contribute stories and images that advance the construction of place and foster understandings of what is fair, reasonable, and desirable (Lichrou, O’Malley, & Patterson, 2008; Sampson & Goodrich, 2009; Stokowski, 2002). Communication of place entails cultivating a sense of place, as well as naturalizing particular ways of being or living. In this process, symbolic or iconic representations of places or landscapes are conveyed. One kind of symbolic or iconic landscape is the heritage landscape, which is closely linked to the national imagination (Knudsen & Greer, 2008). Clare Palmer (2002, p. 26) describes such landscapes as “golden places,” spatially equivalent to golden ages, that naturalize certain structural orders. The pastoral and the wild are two archetypes of such golden places, the fi rst representing a nostalgic, preindustrial past, the second representing pristine nature (Knudsen & Greer, 2008, p. 22). The utopian aspect of such places can be seen in the myth or collective vision of a lost paradise. In Louis Marin’s (1984, p. 240ff.) terms, this kind of vision epitomizes utopic degeneration, meaning that ideology has been converted into myth, thereby losing the critical edge that characterizes many utopias. In discussing Marin’s concept of utopic degeneration, David Harvey (2000) asks whether any utopia can ever be realized without self-destruction. If not, “this profoundly affects how any utopianism of spatial form can function as a practical social force within political-economic life” (Harvey, 2000, p. 167). The circumstances under which actual places possess utopian features and the potential to become social forces for change is an empirical question (cf. Endres & Senda-Cock, 2011). However, when landscapes and cultural institutions become transformed into heritage preservation sites, these places tend to become images defused of critical potential.

3. THE NATIONAL CITY PARK IN STOCKHOLM The following analysis of the Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program for the National City Park demonstrates how the Park as place and its identity are constructed through the drawing of boundaries between the Park and the rest of the city, and through references to historical recollection, sites of pristine nature, and landscape symbolism, making the Park a “paradise contrived” (Corbett, 2006, p. 137).

3.1 Demarcations Between the Park and the City A notable feature of the National City Park is that it is located in and transects a big city. In the development program for the Park, the interface between Park and city is described as critical. The County Administrative Board stresses the need for more obvious Park boundaries and for a distinct Park identity. Given the extent of the National City Park and the fact that

154 Ylva Uggla it includes several well-known sites, including museums, royal castles, and green sites, the identity of the Park, per se, is not easily defi ned. One reason for the emphasis on park identity in the development program is the understanding that support from citizens and other stakeholders is crucial for the future preservation of the Park. This support, in turn, is understood to be related to knowledge and perceptions of the Park, depending on whether or not it is perceived as a coherent area with its own identity (County Administrative Board, 2006b, p. 5; see also Holm & Schantz, 2002). In the development program for the National City Park, the County Administrative Board suggests that the Park’s identity should be strengthened. Taken together, the use of the formal name “The National City Park” (Nationalstadsparken), which corresponds to the Park’s legal status, the creation of a logotype, and the consistent use of distinctive typeface, signage, and so forth, is intended to contribute to creating a uniform public image (County Administrative Board, 2006b, p. 5). Another way to strengthen the Park’s identity is to accentuate its entrances. This way of demarcating the Park is seen as important, not least in areas where the boundary between Park and city is least inherently obvious and must therefore be explicitly established and visualized. The existing entry markers are considered too subtle to indicate the entrances and draw attention to the National City Park as a distinct place (see Figure 9.2), and the development program suggests that these markers should be complemented with entrance signs to reinforce the sense of the Park and its boundaries.

Figure 9.2 Lily, by Karin Tyrefors (1998), is one of three monuments that constitute entries to the National City Park. Photo: Gustaf Uggla.

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

155

According to the vision for the National City Park as defi ned by the County Administrative Board, the Park should be characterized by accessibility, and both reaching the Park and staying in it should be convenient. In the development program, accessibility is related mainly to the positive connotations of recreation and physical exercise. The Board proposes various measures, such as improved public transport, better conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, and a coherent path system with improved signage, to enhance Park accessibility. Although accessibility is highly valued, the boundary between the National City Park and the city and the perceived qualitative difference between the two is manifest in the desire to protect the Park from external disturbance. For example, the Park development program states that in order to continue “the many hundred years of care for the park,” noise protection is needed to reduce external disturbance (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 10). In the development program, the County Administrative Board states that the Park has to be protected from disturbance originating from its urban surroundings to preserve its unique features and character. There are even areas within the Park where accessibility should be restricted, this being justified by the lack of “quiet and unspoiled” land in big cities (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 10). So that these areas can remain undisturbed, paths, roads, and signage facilitating their accessibility are to be limited. In this sense, the unspoiled land represents a place of its own kind within the Park. The issues of boundaries, identity, and spatial alterity are approached in the development program in a way that evinces an ambiguity in the representation of the National City Park. The Park is at once depicted as a place with a distinct character in need of protection and as a vaguely visualized place in need of demarcation from the surrounding city.

3.2 Linking the Past, Present, and Future In the Park development program, the identity of the National City Park and the meanings of the various places, buildings, and activities within it are defi ned with reference to natural, cultural, and historical values, which are often intertwined. The Park is depicted as hosting both valuable species and places of historical significance. In the development program, both the preservation and further development of the Park are legitimated by citing the historical account of the area. In this sense, the Park represents a cultural-historical and natural archive that links the past, present, and future. The Park development program draws strongly on the previous royal interests in and influence over the area that now constitutes the National City Park. The history of the area, with its transformation from agricultural landscape to royal hunting-ground, has contributed to the Park’s specific landscape, which combines open land and forest. This history and landscape make the Park a pastoral archetype of preindustrial idyll, illustrated,

156 Ylva Uggla

Figure 9.3 Fisherman’s cottage (Fiskarstugan) from the seventeenth century. The cottage is associated with King Karl XI and the place where the cottage is situated, Fiskartorpet, is mentioned in one of the famous poet Carl Michael Bellman’s songs from the eighteenth century. Photo: Gustaf Uggla.

for example, by the development program’s references to the fisherman’s cottage, which is associated with King Karl XI who lived in the seventeenth century and which is the oldest preserved building in the Game Park (Djurgården), now part of the National City Park (see Figure 9.3). The National City Park contains three royal palaces, two of which have adjoining parks representing different historical ideals (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 7ff ). Because of the historical use of the land, the Park now contains rare and threatened species, some linked to sites with old oak trees dating from the time of royal occupancy. The landscape of the Park serves an important function in maintaining biodiversity, both by providing green corridors and by hosting valuable species in certain locations (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 25). Beside the specific sites with deciduous trees mentioned above, the Park hosts a number of other valuable biotopes and interesting geological features. According to the Park development program, the Park embodies both cultural and natural heritage, representing ideals and ideas from various historical epochs. The National City Park is marked by its history. Scenery and places now within the Park have inspired famous painters and writers during past centuries, and the Park development program acknowledges the immaterial values of these landscapes and sites (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 8). The County Administrative Board emphasizes that it is vital

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

157

to preserve this landscape, as people should be able to visit and recognize places described or depicted in songs, literature, and painting. For example, the environs of the above mentioned fisherman’s cottage that are celebrated in a song by the famous eighteenth-century poet Carl Michael Bellman. In addition to the transformation from agricultural landscape to hunting park and the royal presence, urbanization has made its mark with the establishment of various institutions in the area. The County Administrative Board emphasizes the presence of academic institutions and museums and their ongoing existence and development within the National City Park. The Park development program describes these institutions as representing modern history, in which “monumental buildings characteristic of the period [i.e., the early twentieth century] are carefully integrated in the landscape,” and where “the modernistic main building [of Stockholm University] ‘Södra huset’ built 1968–1971 constitutes a landmark” (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 16; see Figure 9.4). This modernistic building obviously does not fit the framing of the Park as a pastoral or wild archetype. However, by drawing the past and present together, Södra huset serves as a landmark of modern history linked to the tradition of education in the area. In the development program, this part of the Park represents the shift from “pastoral nature” and fields to an area of extensive parkland integrated with typical institutions from various epochs (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 16). Another area representing modern history within the National City Park is the southern part of Djurgården. The Park development program describes this part of the Park as a well-established entertainment area. With its open-air museum, Skansen, the Gröna Lund amusement park, theaters, restaurants, and so on, the area has been a place of entertainment for more than a century. According to the County Administrative Board, the association with entertainment goes back to the time of King Gustav III, who lived in the eighteenth century, and his contemporary, the abovementioned poet Carl Michael Bellman, who described merry trips to Djurgården in his songs (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 12). Seen in this light, even the more urban and modern features of the Park can be understood and legitimated as parts of a long-lasting tradition and as representations of noted periods of history. Similarly, new projects within the National City Park, for example, the development of the Stockholm University area, are described as reinforcing the cultural-historical and natural archive that the Park represents (County Administrative Board, 2006a, p. 18). Framing the Park as such an archive entails understanding what constitutes suitable projects and activities within the Park. Doing so draws together the past, present, and future, the Park’s various elements, architectural styles, and activities, as well as the further development of particular establishments and activities, making sense of them as elements that together constitute a unique archive.

158 Ylva Uggla

Figure 9.4 Södra huset, one of the main buildings of Stockholm University, designed by the architect David Helldén, built 1969–1971. Photo: Gustaf Uggla.

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

159

3.3 The National City Park: A “Paradise Contrived” The National City Park as represented in its development program is ambiguous. The area embodies cultural, natural, and recreational values that are threatened by the Park’s urban surroundings. It is by virtue of its uniqueness, not least the cultural and natural heritage worthy of protection, that the Park has been established and gained legal status. At the same time, the Park is located in and transects a big city. The County Administrative Board emphasizes the need to strengthen the identity and boundaries of the Park, implying that its spatial alterity is far from inherent. The aim of the Park development program to foster accessibility and demarcation and the representation of the Park as a cultural-historical and natural archive entail spatially distinguishing the Park from the city. The Park is at once an urban phenomenon, representing valued sites and qualities in the city, and a delimited pastoral–wild area with specific characteristics and ways of functioning that separate it from its urban surroundings. By focusing on education and leisure activities in the National City Park, the County Administrative Board’s development program constructs the Park as an extraordinary place set apart from the everyday life of the city. According to the Park development program, most visitors, aside from university students, enter the Park for various leisure activities, for example, to visit museums, restaurants, cafés, and the amusement park. It is a place for recreation, natural and cultural experiences, walking, biking, swimming, sports, and picnics, and a place where one can also experience rare species, unspoiled nature, serenity, and silence. Although many people live and work within Park boundaries, the development program describes the Park as an extraordinary place where many everyday activities, such as commuting, shopping, and so on, are unseen. Furthermore, the close connection of cultural experience to certain institutions, such as museums and historical buildings, and to certain parts of the Park’s landscape recalling historical epochs, famous paintings, and literary works, underlines the understanding of the National City Park as a place of pastoral idyll. The development program’s representation of the National City Park draws together diverse places and activities into a single entity whose various parts, such as historical and modern buildings, the amusement park, concealed unspoiled places, rare species, and the university, are all understood as the components of a heritage landscape. The main principle of Park management is one of protection and preservation. The Park is to be protected from external disturbance, and development projects are to be severely restricted. People are meant to seek the park for leisure activities, i.e., various nature and cultural experiences detached from ordinary routines and free of stress. The Park stands in contrast to the city, offering a place where people can escape the urban rush. In this representation, the various parts of the National City Park become pastoral

160

Ylva Uggla

or wild archetypes that together make the Park as a whole into a “paradise contrived.”

4. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION The Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program for the National City Park can be seen as an effort to construct the Park as a noticeable and well-known place with its own identity. This endeavor is based partly on the construction of spatial alterity and qualitative differences between the Park and the surrounding city, partly on the preexisting strong attractiveness of certain sites in the area, and partly on historical recollection. First, the construction of the Park as a coherent place with its own identity draws strongly on demarcations between Park and city, stressing the qualitative difference between the two and the need to protecting Park values against intrusion. Second, the Park development program repeatedly emphasizes certain sites and establishments whose significance is based on historic recollection or references to pristine nature. Although these sites and establishments differ considerably from each other, the development program, by representing the Park as a heritage landscape, lends these dissimilar elements raison d’être in the park. In addition, the preservation of more modern elements within the Park is legitimized by historical recollection. The strong focus on the cultural-historical and natural values of the Park constructs it as a harmonious whole with certain characteristics and values worthy of protection. However, as mentioned above, the National City Park is a multifaceted area. This means not only that various actors represent various interests in the Park, but also that the Park includes various activities and possibilities that do not necessarily fit its discursive construction as a heritage landscape. The Park includes areas with their own identities that are used for diverse activities, implying that it is more heterogeneous than implied in the Stockholm County Administrative Board’s representation. For example, the Gärdet green area bordering on the southern part of Djurgården is well known for having hosted progressive music festivals in the 1970s, representing young people’s political engagement. Today, about 40 years later, these festivals are being followed up with events announced on Facebook, signaling that the site is something more than simply a recreational area. The National City Park as envisaged in the Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program presents a marked contrast to contemporary society and the urban context. As an expression of the Board’s strong focus on preserving both cultural and natural heritage, the Park highlights the excessive urban development occurring in its environs. The controversies that have arisen regarding development projects within or bordering on the Park partly concern the direction of urban development. Those who want to protect the Park area from exploitation and

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

161

encroachment emphasize the value of preserving green areas in the city, for example, for recreational and environmental purposes. In contrast, those who advocate development projects, such as the further development of the Albano area near the university, and new or denser housing areas bordering on the Park, emphasize the values of a dense and coherent city, which is also a dominant ideal in contemporary planning discourse. These controversies reveal the confl icts over land use and planning ideals that are central to the broader planning discourse. However, it is important to note that simply preserving certain areas does not necessarily constitute an “environmental fi x” ensuring a green urban future: Such a pattern of preservation could equally well be used to legitimate and even reinforce patterns of environmental exploitation and socioecological harm elsewhere (Kaika, 2005, p. 21). The process preceding the establishment of the National City Park included mobilizing a number of actors, often with plentiful resources, that together created a strong network of engaged citizens, environmental organizations and other interest groups, and politicians. Initially, one of the main issues concerned local opposition to part of a large traffic infrastructure project. Network members with interests in various areas now within the Park eventually rallied around a common definition of the area to be protected and thereby succeeded in stopping that part of the traffic project that encroached on their interests. Likewise, protests against housing projects in the area resulted in the relocation of these projects (Glemdahl, 2008). The environmental consequences of this traffic infrastructure project for other parts of the city—where roads would cut through a landscape of environmental and recreational value in less wealthy areas—did not attract the same attention (Bradley et al., 2008). Another critical aspect of the potential of the National City Park to exemplify alternatives to current patterns of urban development is the fact that many of the activities in the Park are commercial. As pointed out by Julia Corbett (2006, p. 11), in modern society, free time is “yet another consumption opportunity and recreation just another market” (cf. Zukin, 1995). In this sense, instead of offering a refuge—as the Park is represented in the development program—the Park instead offers the consumption of leisure activities and nature experiences, implying the commodification of both the natural and cultural heritage. For example, the National City Park with its cultural-historical and natural heritage and sites of “pristine nature” is frequently cited when marketing Stockholm as a tourist destination (Uggla & Olausson, 2013). This commodification implies new consumption opportunities related to nature and cultural experiences, as well as the symbolic use of nature, landscapes, history, and cultural institutions in place promotion (Corbett, 2006). The analysis presented here concerns the discursive construction of the National City Park. Invocations of history are important in the Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program for the Park, as they

162

Ylva Uggla

legitimize the current order and future development of the area. These historical references largely concern the royal legacy and the cultural institutions in the area. To obtain critical insights, the historian “must avoid allowing his or her work to lapse into antiquarianism, ‘the museal’” (Roberts, 1982, p. 220), which can only be done by the proper economic and political contextualization of cultural artifacts. However, both heritage landscapes and cultural institutions often suffer from the “cultivation of nostalgia” (Harvey, 2000, p. 168). Drawing on this approach, the Park, as envisaged in the Board’s development program, is a heritage landscape that mainly represents a collection of “empty time-containers” in “a seemingly random flood of information” (Roberts, 1982, p. 206). The discursive construction of the National City Park as a heritage landscape, or paradise contrived, makes the Park a mythological and harmless place rather than a multifaceted spatial construct replete with ambiguities and tensions— which one might expect in the middle of a growing city. In the phase preceding the establishment of the National City Park, a number of actors coordinated their interests. Exploiting the geographical characteristics of the area now included within the Park, and by emphasizing the area as a “green belt” transecting the city, the shared concept of an “Eco Park” was created (Glemdahl, 2008). By subsuming partly diverging interests, this concept united diverse actors, making them allies with a common cause and a unified frame of reference (cf. Gieryn, 1999). The subsequent endeavor to delimit and discursively construct the National City Park as a coherent area with particular characteristics implied that the diversity of the Park area and the potential of the Park, or of the places within its eventual boundaries, to be something more, or something other, than a beautiful, tidy place for recreation and amusement was stifled. Stockholm County Administrative Board’s development program discursively constructed the Park as a heritage landscape, highlighting certain features of the area, while concealing others. This is not to say that the green areas, threatened species, cultural-historical institutions, and memorable sites within Park boundaries do not deserve protection. However, in this construction, the National City Park, as well as certain sites within it, is imbued with particular meanings that in turn legitimate certain development choices while delegitimating others. In this version of the discourse, the endeavor to protect the Park by emphasizing its unique features entails spatial alterity and invokes valueladen dichotomies—between city and Park, urban and natural—that might be detrimental to the development of the rest of the city. In the effort to protect sites now within the National City Park, various actors rallied around a geographically defi ned area. This effort largely concerned proving the uniqueness of the area, by emphasizing its extraordinary features with reference to cultural–historical, natural, and recreational values. The successful protection of the National City Park therefore implies that the areas outside this defi ned area are now less valuable in these respects.

The Urban Park as “Paradise Contrived”

163

REFERENCES Bradley, K., Gunnarsson-Östling, U., & Isaksson, I. (2008). Exploring environmental justice in Sweden: How to improve planning for environmental sustainability and social equity in an “eco-friendly” context. Projection–MIT Journal of Planning, 8, 68–81. Corbett, J.B. (2006). Communicating nature: How we create and understand environmental messages. Washington, DC: Island Press. County Administrative Board (2006a). Framtidens Nationalstadspark. Handlingsprogram del I: Vision och förutsättingar [The future national city park. Development program part I: vision and conditions]. Stockholm, Sweden: County Administrative Board. Retrieved from http://www.lansstyrelsen.se/stockholm/ Sv/samhallsplanering-och-kulturmiljo/planfragor/riksintressen/nationalstadspark/Pages/default.aspx Stockholm County Administrative Board (2006b). Framtidens Nationalstadspark. Handlingsprogram del II: Åtgärder och utveckling [The future national city park. Development program part II: measures and development]. Stockholm, Sweden: County Administrative Board. Retrieved from http://www.lansstyrelsen.se/stockholm/Sv/samhallsplanering-och-kulturmiljo/planfragor/riksintressen/nationalstadspark/Pages/default.aspx Endres, D., & Senda-Cock, S. (2011). Location matters: The rhetoric of place in protest. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 97, 257–282. Gieryn, T. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Glemdahl, M. (2008). Gubben på kullen: Om den smärtsamma skillnaden mellan politiska intentioner och praktiska resultat. Jönköping, Sweden: Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University. Government Bill 1994/95 No. 3. Nationalstadsparken Ulriksdal-Haga-BrunnsvikenDjurgården [The national city park Ulriksdal-Haga-Brunnsviken-Djurgården]. Graham, B., Ashworth, G.J., & Tunbridge, J.E. (2000). A geography of heritage: Power, culture, and economy. London, UK: Arnold. Haila, Y. (2012). Genealogy of nature conservation: A political perspective. Nature Conservation, 1, 27–52. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Holm, L., & Schantz, P. (2002). Nationalstadsparken: Ett experiment i hållbar utveckling. Stockholm, Sweden: Formas. Kaika, M. (2005). City of fl ows: Modernity, nature, and the city. New York, NY: Routledge. Knudsen, D.C., & Greer, C.E. (2008). Heritage tourism, heritage landscapes, and wilderness preservation: The case of National Park Thy. Journal of Heritage of Tourism, 3, 18–35. Lichrou, M., O’Malley, L., & Patterson, M. (2008). Place-product or place narrative(s)? Perspectives in the marketing of tourism destinations. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 16, 27–39. Marin, L. (1984). Utopics: Spatial play. London, UK: Macmillan. Mendoza, J.G. (1998). The persistence of romantic ideas and the origins of natural park policy in Spain. Finisterra, 65, 51–63. Palmer, C. (2002). Christianity, Englishness, and the southern English countryside: A study of the work of H.J. Massingham. Social & Cultural Geography, 3, 25–38. Poirier, R., & Ostergren, D. (2002). Evicting people from nature: Indigenous land rights and national parks. Natural Resources Journal, 42, 331–351. Roberts, J. (1982). Walter Benjamin. London, UK: Macmillan.

164 Ylva Uggla Salingaros, N. (2006). Compact city replaces sprawl. In A. Graafland & L.J. Kavanuagh (Eds.), Crossover: Architecture, urbanism, technology (pp. 100– 115). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: 010 Publishers. Sampson, K., & Goodrich, C. (2009). Making place: Identity construction and community formation through “sense of place” in Westland, New Zealand. Society and Natural Resources, 22, 901–915. Stokowski, P.A. (2002). Languages of place and discourses of power: Constructing new senses of place. Journal of Leisure Research, 34, 368–382. Tunström, M. (2007). The vital city: Constructions and meanings in the contemporary Swedish planning discourse. Town Planning Review, 78, 681–698. Tunström, M. (2009). På spaning efter den goda staden: Om konstruktioner och problem i svensk stadsbyggnadsdiskussion. (Doctoral dissertation). Örebro Studies in Human Geography No. 4. Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden. Uggla, Y. (2012). Construction of “nature” in urban planning: A case study of Stockholm Town Planning Review, 83, 69–85. Uggla, Y., & Olausson, U. (2013). The enrolment of nature in tourist information: Framing urban nature as “the other.” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 7, 97–112. Zukin, S. (1995). The cultures of cities. Oxford: Blackwell.

10 Globalism, Particularism, and the Greening of Neoliberal Energy Landscapes Tom Mels

1. INTRODUCTION In many respects, wind power development can be said to be a question of “neither-nor” and “both-and,” because it has a dual nature and cannot be categorized within the traditionally narrow fields usually dealt with in physical planning. Is wind power a threat to the natural and cultural landscape and to many people’s wellbeing and peace of mind? Is it irreconcilable with living environments and a nuisance to other businesses, such as the tourist industry? Does wind power represent ugliness in the landscape and a peril to biological diversity? Or can it be a characteristic image of our times and a genuine expression of the ecological sustainability culture supported by most of us—measured in both symbolic value and megawatt hours? Is wind power a significant part of a long-term, sustainable energy system? Is it a key component of the effort to reverse global warming? (Gotlands Kommun, 2010, p. 120). Considering that this passage originates from a municipal plan, such questions about the existential position of wind power in modern life attain almost philosophical proportions. Wind power touches the realms of various bureaucracies and confronts us with issues of health, aesthetic pleasure, business, symbolic currency, cultural capital, and scientific measurement. It takes us from a wind turbine on the current, local scale of Gotland, to the swirl of forces surrounding that turbine and embedding it in a world of socioecological processes. Daunting issues indeed, constantly challenging simple answers by invoking the global scale of sustainability and the future of humanity, and by contrasting the avowedly universal (e.g., global climate change) to the avowedly particular (e.g., the local experience of a landscape). Yet with many of the questions regarding the dual nature of wind power—such as the particularity of a specific wind park and the universality of a global sustainability culture—the trick is not only to withstand

166 Tom Mels the simple choice they suggest between particularity and universality, but also to understand their acutely political nature. I would argue that the whole array of questions could be rephrased in dialectical terms, relocating our center of attention to “the specific institutions of power that translate between particularity and universality” (Harvey, 2000, p. 242). This is because a focus on what Harvey calls “translation” can draw attention to how certain particularities and specific kinds of universals can attain a privileged position over others. Harvey’s use of the term “translation” to describe how this mediation ensues through various material and discursive power regimes is deliberate. In his Spaces of Hope we encounter techniques and systems of translation “across and between qualitatively different but related areas of social and ecological life” (Harvey, 2000, p. 233). If we reread my introductory quotation as a practical example of a translation conundrum, we are entering the realm of politics and hence encounter a horde of translators in unequal power positions, including planners, politicians, citizens, researchers, and entrepreneurs. As I will clarify shortly, not just any mode of translation and not just any translator will do. In Harvey’s account, the favored political figure of the “insurgent architect with a lust for transformative action” (Harvey, 2000, p. 244) will make very specific demands of, for example, the current plea for translation and dialogue in planning (cf. Healey, 1997; Hillier & Healey, 2008). This will require a particular, progressive variety of what Harvey calls militant particularism, one that avoids the trap of localism or an anesthetized condition of postpolitical “agreement” (cf. Mouffe 2005; Rancière, 1999, 2006, 2007, 2010). Notwithstanding such appeals to complexity and progressive relational thinking, it is exactly the partiality of simple answers that may be said to be the prime movers of this chapter. The pages that follow explore how the current expansion of wind power as a source of renewable energy and a material-symbolic harbinger of green futures is caught up in a tension between two discursive regimes. While corporate ideology trades on a discourse of global nature and environmental havoc, the anti-wind power movement tends to bring out conservative notions of place and nature. This paper argues that the environmental discursive regimes of both of these modes of translation and “mediating institutions” can be comprehended as powerful ideological vehicles designed to preserve the neoliberal and reactionary roots nourishing specific images of the future. The chapter is organized as follows. I start by briefly introducing the dialectical notion of militant particularism, suggesting that it offers a politically progressive approach to environmental issues in general and to the geography of energy production and wind power in particular. As I will try to demonstrate, militant particularism brings out a useful tension between universalism of the globalist kind, on the one hand, and particularism of the localist kind, on the other hand. It requires not a narrow focus on lived lives, but a widening of the horizon of local struggles to achieve more universal goals. I then move on to argue that this widened horizon is vital to an

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

167

understanding of various discursive regimes of wind power. In two subsequent sections, I explore empirical evidence from Sweden in order to think through two contrasting and decidedly nondialectical discursive regimes. In the fi nal section, I claim that the reactionary and neoliberal leanings of these ideologies constitute a substantial challenge to current efforts to design a more progressive planning system, including to those who refuse to believe in the fi nal resolution of political struggle and conflict.

2. WIND POWER, LANDSCAPE, AND MILITANT PARTICULARISM In formulating his geographical view of political practice, David Harvey adopted Raymond Williams’s term “militant particularism” to develop an argument about how a wide range of place-centered struggles, oppositional practices, and ideologies can become constitutive of a far more encompassing, emancipatory political venture—a vital element of the struggle for socialism. Although the term attained special importance in the context of a mounting environmental debate and academic inquiries into the politics of nature, militant particularism also encapsulates a more fundamental ontological vantage point. The key move, claims Harvey, is one in which conceptual worlds and abstractions attached to place combine with “abstractions capable of confronting processes not accessible to direct local experience” (Harvey, 1995, p. 83). Harvey promotes a form of militant particularism that “seizes upon the qualities of place, reanimates the local bond between the environmental and the social, reactivates collective memories, and seeks to bend the social processes constructing spacetime of a radically different universal purpose” (Harvey, 2009, p. 179). For theoretical practice too, the trick is to connect the “militant particularism of lived lives” with “a struggle to achieve sufficient critical distance and detachment to formulate global ambitions” (Harvey, 1996, p. 44). Obviously, that Harvey’s habitual reference to universality is the subject of an immense academic controversy under so-called conditions of postmodernity remains as telling as it is predictable. Yet it is more important for my purposes here to emphasize that his rendering of a historical space– place dialectic ultimately requires a particular act of abstraction: “The battle between different levels of abstraction, between distinctively understood particularities of places and the necessary abstractions required to take those understandings into a wider realm, the fight to transform militant particularism into something more substantial on the world stage of capitalism”—all of these maneuvers foreground the progressive promises of place and community, of situated struggles, as bulwarks against capital’s global ambitions (Harvey, 1995, p. 85). This promise of place as a site of resistance does not come without a warning. On one side of the coin, place-bound memory and identity formation easily transmogrify into all sorts of exclusionary localisms, regionalisms,

168

Tom Mels

and nationalisms (cf. Mohan & Stokke, 2000). Referring to “the fount of so much anticosmopolitan thinking,” this would entail getting stuck in what Harvey calls “the Heideggerian moment” (Harvey, 2009, p. 182). The latter turns what might be a tactical, territorial strategy of reclaiming the local scale, into an essentialist position (cf. Escobar, 2001). The other side of the coin is the abandonment of boundaries and the utter neglect of any politics of difference. Perhaps the most familiar are those ideological interpretations of globalization known as globalism. According to globalism, following a universalism reminiscent of Kantian ethics, nothing but the world scale makes much sense. It circumscribes a transhistorical and transcultural mode of thinking—a cosmopolitanism that would typically “regard the prospect of pluralizing and particularizing its propositions as somehow fatal to its global reach” (Harvey, 2009, p. 97). Hence the tensions between the repressive universalism of what seems to be an emergent global capitalist culture, and the particularities of counterhegemonic discourses and oppositional practices. The place–space dialectic is also crucial in understanding wind power landscapes, understood as subjects of environmental thinking. For all their differences in ownership, planning, physical materiality, and symbolic meaning, these landscapes are not merely local and place specific. They also transcend the local as part of a world stage of energy production. Depending on their role in the mediation between universality and particularity, they could theoretically be located as particulars within the abstract capitalist space, or be used to construct a militant particularism of sorts. In any case, let us leave theoretical speculation about this apparent emancipatory potential behind and take a closer empirical look at some of the orchestrating powers. As I will argue, both organized resistance to wind power in the landscape and the wind power business itself tends to invoke various levels of geographical abstraction and politicized gestures, but certainly not in step with those of a more progressive militant particularism. Quite the opposite is the case: My case studies suggest that resistance in the wind power landscape easily resorts to what I will call a reactionary particularism, with landscape becoming the reified expression of a wistful, defensive localism. From its perspective, the wind power business studied here tends to follow a deceitful globalist environmental rhetoric, treating local resistance as a brake on the noble fight against global warming. In an equally reified tactic, this provides a convenient green mask for the reproduction of existing social power relationships, for it presupposes the acceptance of universal theories of market freedoms, private property, and market-led technological innovation. From this perspective, local struggles against wind power remain nothing but aberrations, a petty side effect of the divine aspiration to secure accumulation on an international, even global scale of corporate interest. Both reactionary particularism and globalism thereby lead to the reinforcement of capitalism and its destructive energy base.

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

169

3. REACTIONARY PARTICULARISM: THE DISCURSIVE REGIME OF FSL The most important lobbying group opposing wind power in Sweden is the Society for the Protection of the Swedish Landscape, or Föreningen Svenskt Landskapsskydd (FSL) in Swedish. The organization declares that it supports situated struggles against wind power and, in accordance with this, has more than 40 regional groups going under such names as “Protect the landscape of Gotland,” “Windbreak Tjust,” “Save the Halland coast,” “Quality of life in Offerdal,” “Headwind woodlands,” “Protect the visions of Vånga,” and “Wind justice in Holaveden.” While there is an important diversity among all these local groups and those involved in the wider network opposing wind power, they also share a collective aim. The FSL’s statutes declare that its aim is “to actively work against developments that impinge on people’s environments or the special character of landscapes and our Swedish cultural heritage.” This phrase offers that familiar combination of expansiveness, vagueness, and downto-earth flavor typical of the homogenizing propensity of populism. Like so many populisms, its real targets are far more specific than the reference to a general struggle against the exploitation of landscape would suggest. From the FSL website emerges the specter of a proliferating wind power threat, characterized as a form of exploitation that transforms “Sweden’s beautiful landscapes and nature” into “an industrial landscape with miserable living environments for those affected.” The FSL also regards itself as “the only nationwide Swedish organization supporting those inhabitants and natural and cultural regions that are threatened” (FSL, 2011). Exactly what the FSL has in mind with the use of recurrent keywords such as “threat” and by raising the prospect of idyllic scenes transformed into “industrial landscapes” remains slightly obscure because it remains socially and geographically undifferentiated. It does, however, appear more tangibly in the FSL’s mobilization of visual tactics. These tactics surely add little to the well-established genre of apocalyptic fear infusing the climate debate (cf. Swyngedouw, 2010). The audience is introduced to a well-worn story-line in which the wind turbines are the villain, more or less explicitly presuming that business as usual should prevail. The fear expressed through such representational practices obviously speaks to a context of emotion and risk, as Rachel Pain has recently contended. More specifically, in the hands of the wind power lobby, fear is simultaneously “deployed and experienced as a signifier, discourse, or political tool” (Pain, 2009, p. 473). As Pain keenly observes, this urges for a perceptive geographical analysis that acknowledges the necessity of “moving between scales, and keeping a critical eye on their construction” (Pain, 2009, p. 473). In the name of their struggle, the FSL covers everything from the local to the national level of Sweden and the global wind industry, all along claiming to be the sole representative of its individual members,

170 Tom Mels independent of state or corporate interests. A particularistic focus on concrete wind turbines in concrete places is presented as constitutive of the broader scale of a generalized struggle, independent of government or corporate support. Perhaps this avowed independence is meant to construct a varnish of reliability, wisdom, or at least freedom from any kind of thought control beyond ordinary people’s “common sense.” Implicit in this argument is the easy notion that any state or corporately sponsored research automatically becomes a Faustian bargain with no space for genuine rationality. Yet, their proud declaration of independence should not blind us from seeing FSL’s particular political allegiances. The FSL is aligned with a highly controversial environmental ideology that fits comfortably with particular political and corporate interests and supported by well-known public figures. One of its spokespeople, Jonny Fagerström, is active in the so-called Stockholm Initiative, an organization that presents itself as climate skeptics consisting almost exclusively of male, senior, and retired academics. Fagerström administers its website, christened The Climate Scam, which constitutes the largest Swedish blog on environmental and climate issues (Fagerström, 2009; Fagerström & Radetzki, 2010; Nordin & Fagerström, 2009). The activities of particularism are certainly not limited to a local scale of media attention. On the contrary, particularism has cultivated strong connections to nationally and internationally recognized scientists, writers, and artists and operates on the level of national media. In recent years, particularist opinion has been covered in important regional and national newspapers, and through nationwide demonstrations. Much of this activity expresses concerns about the economical irrationality of wind power as compared with other energy solutions, such as nuclear power, and an ongoing questioning of the sources of global climate change. Through the FSL, the Stockholm initiative and The Climate Scam, a focus on resistance to concrete wind power projects has become a constitutive part of a general struggle against wind power. In doing so, the anti-wind power movement has sought a way to cross the divide between place-embedded, local experiences and social relationships to a much more general, systematic movement working on a national and international spatial scale. The particularities of the local landscape thus reappear frequently as a tool for making more universal claims. One example of this is an extensively debated letter to the editor by Lars Jonsson and Jan Troell, published in the national newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Troell is one of Sweden’s best-known directors and the winner of prestigious national and international film awards. Painter and ornithologist Lars Jonsson is the celebrated author of one of the standard field guides to the birds of Europe and a frequent participant in mediatized scientific explorations. Jonsson is also a member of the Stockholm Initiative committee and has teamed up with local ornithologists to oppose wind power development on the local scale.

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

171

In their letter, Jonsson and Troell speak of wind power as a threat to health and wellbeing, backed up by political power and biased research. The state responds to local resistance to wind power with accusations of “total ignorance,” although, or so the resistors claim, such resistance is motivated by biologically derived and hence universal mechanisms of environmental perception and valuation: To read and experience a landscape, we must rest our view on a spot, the so-called vanishing point, that allows our brain to estimate distance and draw perspective, or to orient ourselves in space. In open landscapes, these points are often distant, such as the top of a mountain, a cove, or a faraway shrub. A wind turbine with its rotating wings always attracts our gaze and we cannot establish the vanishing point, in other words, we cannot read the visual values of the landscape. The landscape thereby loses its value as a landscape. This is a biological function of our brain. We could conduct the thought experiment of looking at a landscape without ever resting our eye on a particular point: very soon a palpable stress arises that forces us to shield ourselves from the scenery. (Jonsson & Troell, 2010) This passage is reminiscent of Jay Appleton’s version of the spectator as rendered in The Experience of Landscape (1975). In his treatment of conventional ways of perceiving and representing landscape, Appleton presents the highly problematic figure of a “universal and ‘natural’” spectator, emanating from the foundational ecology of a habitat theory (Mitchell, 1994, p. 16). In a similar vein, the landscape theory that presents itself in Jonsson and Troell’s letter is one in which the transformation of a local scene into a universalism of sorts is accomplished through a process of naturalization. To break through convention, the cultural construction of landscape is forgotten and replaced by a now seemingly naturally given, bodily rooted mode of perception. The eye of the spectator establishing the vanishing point constitutes the naturalized relationship between body and landscape, health and place, biology and technology. From such a reified environmental vantage point, the rotating movement of turbines cannot be other than against nature. Obviously, there are crucial differences between the particularism of these wind-power skeptics, on the one hand, and the militant particularism imagined in Raymond Williams’s rendition of working-class struggle. The particularism of the skeptics also contrasts in important ways with what Harvey has in mind in his discussion of the environmental justice movement’s ability to link local struggles to wider, more expansive political imaginaries. Most importantly, the anti-wind lobby’s reified focus on one technology remains completely devoid of the kind of progressive politics that characterizes both Harvey’s and Williams’s oeuvre. On the contrary, the skeptics practice a particularism that does little or nothing to challenge business-as-usual

172 Tom Mels neoliberalism. Apart from its anti-wind energy rhetoric, it fosters nothing but compliance. Although the movement has shifted its anti-wind power struggle from a particularistic “not in my backyard” contention to a universal “not in anyone’s backyard” ideology, by implicitly and explicitly supporting nuclear energy and the oil industry, its trajectory is blatantly reactionary. It fails to critically scrutinize the production, circulation, and consumption of energy as a means of production, a project designed as one of the socioenvironmental challenges to neoliberalism as we know it. Hence, what strikes me most about this case is not so much its troublefree references to local community values, its melancholic invocation of nostalgic landscape imagery, the antiquated biological essentialism in their description of how people experience landscape, or their upbeat tales of the virtues of nuclear power, but its crucial failure to address the ongoing energy crisis. By devoting virtually all its energy to questioning the economic rationality of a particular technology, combined with local health, aesthetic, and acoustic arguments, the ideological and material apparatus that brings forth energy as a whole force of production within capitalism remains out of reach. There is nothing but silence about energy production as a source of social elite power carrying within it all the inequalities between privileged and underprivileged and environmental injustice characterizing uneven development on a global scale. Quite to the contrary of what is claimed, their particularism is one that can easily reinforce rather than challenge what James and Nancy Duncan (2004) in their perceptive study of elite class power called “landscapes of privilege.” Instead of “militant particularism” we have a “reactionary particularism” stuck in an essentially reified image of the local landscape values and hence happily in tune with the processes by which capitalism plays off places against one another through its command over space.

4. GLOBALISM: VATTENFALL’S GREEN UTOPIAN RHETORIC State-owned Vattenfall is one of Europe’s largest electricity producers and the largest producer of heat. It is Sweden’s largest wind power operator and the second largest operator of offshore wind power in Europe. Its selfreported efforts to reduce environmental impact consist of a combination of technology and market solutions geared to emission reduction, resource efficiency, low-emitting technologies, responsible land use, carbon funds, and biodiversity protection. The corporation’s 2009 publication One Tonne Future: A Guide to the Low-Carbon Century offers some insights into Vattenfall’s favored image of the future (Vattenfall, 2009). Its corporate utopia is called the “onetonne society” based on the premise that “to combat global warming we need to cut annual emission of greenhouse gases to one tonne of carbon dioxide per person in 2109. Today the global average is close to seven

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

173

tonnes” (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 2). The book wants “to consider how life in the one-tonne society could be lived in practice, what steps humanity will have to take to get there, and how these can be facilitated” (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 2). To illustrate what they have in mind, Vattenfall, Volvo Cars, and other partners launched the One Tonne Life project to create a climate-smart

Figure 10.1 The One Tonne Life household: upper captions (L to R), “energy from the sun,” “surplus electricity is reused,” and “low-carbon power”; lower captions (L to R), “electricity in the tank,” “energy consultation,” and “watching consumption.” Source: One Tonne Life photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/49698805@ N06/5366508511/sizes/o/in/photostream/.

174

Tom Mels

household without giving up Scandinavian standards of comfort (Vattenfall, 2011b). High technology powered by Vattenfall helped bring this middle-class family utopia into being (Figure 10.1). The One Tonne Life project saw the Lindell family in Sweden attempt to reduce their CO2 footprint from seven to one tonne per person per year. Many of the measures taken were related to energy efficiency: a highefficiency home, a plug-in hybrid electric car, and advice from Vattenfall experts helped the Lindell family reduce its emissions by 60% without compromising comfort or quality of life. The project generated a great deal of media attention (Vattenfall, 2012, p. 25). A one-tonne society at large can only be achieved with the help of an outspoken globalist ideological mixture of regulating law and market incentives: “A global framework will be needed to coordinate policies and capture the maximum potential at minimum costs. Should policies and coordination not emerge soon enough, the picture changes. Investments in plants, vehicles and buildings are long-lived, so that missed potential can result in a ‘lock-in’ of business-as-usual emissions” (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 3). This is surely a globalist ambition, a revolutionary yet reactionary gesture betting all its money on the creatively destructive tendencies inherent to the capitalist system itself: From a 100-year perspective, we shall have to cut total emissions by 75 percent while the absolute size of the global economy grows by a factor of seven or more. The global economy must therefore improve its carbon productivity dramatically by 2109 . . . This is a true carbon revolution, which will depend on rapid technological change, the development of large new markets, and balanced policy that encourages both without excessive disruption of trade and development more broadly. (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 2) More than anything, questions about global economic and systemic change seem to fluently translate into individual responsibility and the ostensibly natural pace of paradigm shifts in society. Its embrace of “all energy sources” and the conviction that “the tools lie at our feet,” manifest a blithe yet techno-expansive worldview. On a more academic level, too, with a Popperian reference to “the open society” and straightforward praise of the environmental determinist Jared Diamond, it shares several of the characteristics David Harvey criticizes in contemporary neoliberal environmentalism (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 3; cf. Harvey, 2009, pp. 202–247). Corporate investment in, for example, wind energy and its unavoidable refashioning of entire landscapes seems primarily impelled by a fetish belief in technological innovation and markets as the universal answers to complex environmental problems. This is a fetish belief because it instantiates an untenable determinism in which solutions are always already within reach of engineers and markets. It is no coincidence that, after describing a

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

175

host of new technologies, Vattenfall claims that it has imagined “nothing less than another industrial revolution” (Vattenfall, 2009, Chapter 6). Seen in relation to Vattenfall’s global hunger for lignite, natural gas, and uranium, and the rare earth metals that are indispensable for wind turbines, the contours of a far more complex political geography emerge. Such complexities would reveal how environmental havoc is inscribed in the system rather than being an incidental externality. Indeed, in contrast to its highflown rhetoric of environmental concern, Vattenfall had the dubious honor of earning the 2009 Climate Greenwash Award for “lobbying to continue business as usual,” by promoting market-based solutions and technologies such as carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, and burning coal with biomass (Climate Greenwash Awards, 2009). As for the local landscape impact of wind power, Vattenfall’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2010 repeatedly refers to the need for “trust and acceptance,” “local support,” and a “close dialogue and consultation with local authorities, local residents, the general public and other stakeholders” (Vattenfall, 2011a, pp. 31–32). From the report we learn that one of Vattenfall’s core values is cooperation, meaning that “we trust each other and openly work together to achieve our objectives and reach our vision. We want to live in an era of cooperation—getting to know each other better, thinking, acting and sharing knowledge while learning from each other and exchanging experiences across countries, divisions and functional borders. In the same way, we work together with our external stakeholders” (Vattenfall, 2011a, p. 62). With this PR rhetoric, Vattenfall is arguably presenting itself as the harbinger of a new “Age of Aquarius,” were it not that its harmonious selfpresentation is constantly interrupted by references to corporate economic power. As the company claims, a smooth planning process without delays is necessary because “for an investor like Vattenfall, which does not use bank loans but fi nances investments with its own equity and bond issues, such delays present a major risk” (Vattenfall, 2011a, p. 32). A section on “Community” tells us that “securing the future” is about “economic value creation”: “Improved profitability and greater value creation are fundamental prerequisites for continued growth and for Vattenfall’s ability to be among the leaders in developing environmentally sustainable energy production” (Vattenfall, 2011a, p. 68). Apparently, Vattenfall’s secure future is one in which communities do not stand in the way of continued capital accumulation, and dialogue is laudable as long as it does not thwart the company’s fundamental power position and continued growth. Problematic situations may in a sense be acknowledged by the chief executive officer who admits: “Today society does not have the level of trust in the energy industry and Vattenfall that is necessary for a long-term, successful partnership. In my future vision, we have restored this trust and are a reliable player and partner in the build-up of a sustainable and energy-efficient society” (Vattenfall, 2012, p. 5).

176 Tom Mels It is therefore important to understand companies like Vattenfall, their discourses and their built environments (e.g., wind parks, mines, and nuclear plants), as centers of social power. Through its various spatial fi xes and discourses, Vattenfall regulates and facilitates a particular social spatial order. Companies like Vattenfall have, as Harvey eloquently puts it, a fluid ability “to translate among themselves using the basic languages of money, commodity, and property” (Harvey, 2000, p. 245). It is this triumphant practice of translation from the particular (the one-tonne life of the Lindell family) to the universal (the utopian one-tonne society constructed by Vattenfall) that constitutes a repetitive pattern of business as usual. As the geographer Erik Swyngedouw has convincingly argued, business as usual of this sort, combined with the surprisingly simplistic rhetoric of “a new era of cooperation,” reveals the contours of a postpoliticization process “structured around the perceived inevitability of capitalism and a market economy as the basic organizational structure of the social and economic order, for which there is no alternative” (Swyngedouw, 2010, p. 215). By extension, it is only through an incessant refusal to accept such corporate reifications and postpolitical invocations of dialogue that we can start to interfere with the way wind power development has become ingrained in the politics of current practices of capital accumulation on a global scale (González & Healey, 2005). While there is much that is laudable to say about the ideals of dialogue, consensus, and communication, they also remain compatible with the neoliberal status quo, as long as they simply presume the disappearance of the adversarial dimension of social relationships. Reverting to a magical vanishing act in the face of real differences, dissent, and struggle equals entering the mist-enveloped region of ideology. The latter is also precisely the space where the post-political thrives. Under the existing neoliberal configuration of power, the adversarial model of what Chantal Mouffe (2005, pp. 19–21) calls a “tamed” relationship of antagonism already demands considerable belief in the power of counterhegemonic practice. At least this holds the promise of producing a crack in the façade of the current discourse, with a bit of luck allowing a militant particularism of sorts to get in.

5. CONCLUSION Analyzing two specific cases, this chapter explored the tension between the struggles for universality and for particularity involved in wind power development. At fi rst sight, the wind power industry and the lobby against its expansion seem to have completely divergent ways of understanding wind power in the landscape. On the one hand, wind power developers tend to promulgate what might be called “globalist” arguments of climate change and global responsibility in its promotion of wind power. To explore this further, I have argued that Vattenfall mobilizes various kinds of scientific

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

177

evidence to construct a technologically minded, market-biased discourse of energy production, climate, and landscape in Sweden. From Vattenfall’s point of view, wind power technology and its landscapes embody the scientific proof of an emergent aesthetic of sustainability. As long as this techno-scientific path within capitalism as usual is followed, or so the argument goes, there is little to worry about. Yet, such an ideological stance does precious little to prevent us from concluding that wind power and its aesthetic remains a fundamental part of how companies like Vattenfall mobilize science, labor power, technology, and rhetoric to secure a spatial fi x, expand market shares, and accumulate capital. These same companies are frequently heavily involved in the global extraction and consumption of nonrenewable resources. Hence, this aesthetic instantiates a classic form of reification in that it obscures how certain, although not all, parts of the current expansion of wind energy are part and parcel of broader tactics in the uneven reproduction of capitalism’s environmental badlands. On the other side of the debate, we often fi nd overtly hostile judgments against wind power, arguments that emphasize place-specific notions of nature and local landscape quality in which wind power is framed as a lethal threat to what are seen as established aesthetic values. The anti-wind power lobby organization examined here practices a form of particularistic activism, albeit a far cry from the kind of activism that Raymond Williams or David Harvey had in mind with their “militant particularism.” Instead of a globalist aesthetic of sustainability, the anti-wind campaigners invoke the landscape as a visual retreat, producing a powerful but simultaneously selective and highly conservative spatial aesthetic of anti-modernity. While this landscape ideology may work on the local scale as a maneuver against what is perceived as the increasingly abstract social and economic relationships of globalization, it simultaneously reproduces an ideology of secluded and privatized neoliberal landscapes and ways of life. Thus both sides communicate very different messages about nature, landscape, and the future role of wind power. At the same time, globalism and particularism also effortlessly—well, at least rhetorically—jump scale from the local to the global. In the globalist argument, landscape becomes redundant because it is transmogrified into universal science, global neoliberalism, and worldwide climate change. Following the particularistic argument, however, landscape is again reduced, but instead to a fundamentally local issue. Adopting and adapting to the neoliberal present, both acts of translation remain at some distance from a more environmentally just landscape as promulgated through more progressive and radically global senses of place.

REFERENCES Appleton, J. (1975). The experience of landscape. New York, NY: John Wiley.

178 Tom Mels Climate Greenwash Awards. (2009). Climate greenwash winner revealed. Retrieved from http://www.climategreenwash.org/climate-greenwash-winner-revealed. Climate Scam, The. (n.d.) The Climate Scam: Stockholmsinitiativets blog [Web log]. Retrieved from http://www.theclimatescam.se. Duncan, J.S. & Duncan, N. (2004). Landscapes of privilege: Aesthetics and affl uence in an American suburb. New York, NY: Routledge. Escobar, A. (2001). Culture sits in places: Reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization. Political Geography, 20, 139–174. Fagerström, J. (2009, 10 November). Svensk landsbygd säljs ut i klimatets namn [The Swedish countryside is sold out for climate] [Letter to the editor]. Svenska Dagbladet. Fagerström, J., & Radetzki, M. (2010, 24 August). Vindkraft en tvivelaktig affär [Wind power is a questionable deal] [Letter to the editor]. Svenska Dagbladet. Föreningen Svenskt Landskapsskydd (FSL). (2011). Stadgar [statutes]. Retrieved 11 August 2011 from http://www.landskapsskydd.se/artikel/stadgar. González, S., & Healey, P. (2005). A sociological institutionalist approach to the study of innovation in governance capacity. Urban Studies, 42, 2055–2069. Gotlands Kommun (2010). Bygg Gotland: Översiktsplan för Gotlands kommun 2010–2025 [Build Gotland: Comprehensive plan for Gotland municipality 2010–2025]. Visby, Sweden: Gotlands kommun. Harvey, D. (1995). Militant particularism and global ambition: The conceptual politics of place, space, and environment in the work of Raymond Williams. Social Text, 42, 69–98. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, & the geography of difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Harvey, D. (2009). Cosmopolitanism and the geographies of freedom. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative Planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Hillier, J., & Healey, P. (Eds.). (2008). Contemporary movements in planning theory. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Jonsson, L., & Troell, J. (2010, 3 December). Skandal att myndigheterna struntar i människors oro [Scandalous ignorance of people’s worries by authorities] [Letter to the editor]. Dagens Nyheter. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Imperial landscape. In W.J.T. Mitchell (Ed.), Landscape and power (pp. 5–34). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mohan, G., & Stokke, K. (2000). Participatory development and empowerment: The danger of localism. Third World Quarterly, 21, 247–268. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London, UK: Routledge. Nordin, I., & Fagerström, J. (2009, 19 November). Beror trosvissheten på okunskap? [Is this conviction emanating from ignorance?] [Letter to the editor]. Svenska Dagbladet. Pain, R. (2009). Globalized fear? Towards an emotional geopolitics. Progress in Human Geography, 33, 466–486. Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, J. (2006). Hatred of democracy. New York, NY: Verso. Rancière, J. (2007). On the shores of politics. New York, NY: Verso. Rancière, J. (2010). Chronicles of consensual times. London, UK: Continuum. Swyngedouw, E. (2010). Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change. Theory Culture Society, 27, 2–3. Vattenfall. (2009). One tonne future: A guide to the low-carbon century. Stockholm, Sweden: Vattenfall.

Globalism, Particularism, and Greening

179

Vattenfall. (2011a). Corporate social responsibility report 2010. Stockholm, Sweden: Vattenfall. Vattenfall (2011b). One tonne life: Slutrapport. Stockholm, Sweden: Vattenfall. Vattenfall. (2012). Towards sustainable energy: Corporate social responsibility report 2011. Stockholm, Sweden: Vattenfall.

This page intentionally left blank

Part III

Changing Practices

This page intentionally left blank

11 Towards a Peer Economy How Open Source and Peer-to-Peer Architecture, Hardware, and Consumption Are Transforming the Economy Karin Bradley

1. INTRODUCTION Since the advent of mass-consumerist society enabling many, but far from all, to cheaply consume more than they need of clothes, toys, electronics, furniture, vehicles, etc., critics have decried the social inequities and natural resource depletion that this involves. In the late 1990s, exploitative sweatshop production in the rapidly globalizing economy was criticized and efforts were made to create global agreements that could safeguard social and environmental standards (Klein, 2000; Korten, 1995). With increased awareness of climate change and peak oil, as well as insights into the diffi culties of reaching globally binding agreements, contemporary European and American socioenvironmental movements are pushing for less as well as localized consumption (Hopkins, 2011). For instance, forums like Adbusters, which initiated the global Occupy Movement, are campaigning against corporate control and mass consumption (see Figure 11.1). Other groups are striving to share, swap, and redesign items in order to move away from the take– make–dispose society. Parallel to this critique of mass consumption and global corporate exploitation of human and natural resources, other struggles are being fought over the control of digital resources. The open source movement is home to a plethora of activism—political hacking, campaigns for personal integrity on the Internet, construction of free information platforms for the public such as Wikipedia, the open source operating system Linux, and other free collaborative information-sharing platforms. The green consumption critique and the open source movement differ in several respects, often taking place in different fora, being driven by different people and relying on different theoreticians. In this chapter I argue, however, that these two movements share a critique of corporate rule, proprietary technology, and capitalist economic dynamics and also share a vision of another, more participatory, fairer, and more resource-conscious economy. Although open source philosophy is not generally framed as green or motivated by ecological rationales, I will demonstrate how open

184

Karin Bradley

Figure 11.1 Poster critiquing consumerist society. Courtesy of Adbusters Media Foundation.

source philosophy has much in common with the work of eco-theorists such as Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2010) and Murray Bookchin (1971, 2007), who advocate decentralized self-governing beyond the state and the capitalist market. Based on law professor Yochai Benkler’s (2006) analysis of digital open source production, more specifically, in the form of “commons-based peer

Towards a Peer Economy

185

production,” and on his assertion that such production is spreading to the physical world (p. 468), I will use examples illustrating that this is indeed happening. Previous research has analyzed how open source philosophy is practiced in hardware production (Hippel, 2005; Karvinen & Karvinen, 2011; Söderberg & Daoud, 2012) and biological research (Tocchetti, 2012). The contribution of this chapter lies in its analysis of how open source philosophy plays out in such diverse fields as architecture, hardware production, and consumer goods sharing. The chosen examples, which explicitly invoke an open source or peer-to-peer philosophy, are the architectural group Collectif Exyzt, the hardware platforms fab lab and Open Source Ecology, and the sharing platforms RelayRides and Streetbank. In analyzing these examples I attempt to understand their broader goals: How are the practices motivated? What visions of society, utopian desires, or will to change are expressed? The material is drawn from programs, manifestos, websites, videos, and published interviews in which initiators or key participants describe the projects, including how they work and why they were initiated. In the concluding section, I discuss the common and divergent goals of these practices and speculate as to their societal change potential and the problems and critiques they may encounter. I suggest that we are witnessing the coming-together of hackers, pirates, green consumers, corporate critics, and ordinary citizens in peer-to-peer practices that can incrementally transform the economy. However this coming-together is not occurring primarily in formal organizations or through political programs, but through making and everyday practices that can potentially change the economy from below. The chapter is structured into a theoretical section with notes on open source culture, peer production, and the governing of physical resource commons, followed by a section presenting practical examples of peer-to-peer practices from the fields of architecture, hardware production, and consumer goods. Finally I present the analysis, coupled with a concluding discussion structured around three main issues, i.e., the rationales of peer-to-peer practices, the support structures needed for them to work, and reflections on the significance and potentials of peer economies in a broader societal context.

2. OPEN SOURCE, PEER PRODUCTION, AND GOVERNING THE COMMONS

2.1 Open Source Culture The invention of computers and later the Internet ushered in struggles over what resources and information should be free and accessible and what resources should be licensed and subject to property rights. Technological development and specifically the Internet have enabled the replication and spread of digital content—text, images, software, and music—at nearly zero

186

Karin Bradley

marginal cost (Shirky, 2008). Although the production of the originals may have entailed high costs, replicating them is very cheap. Such goods can be described as nonrival goods as they can be endlessly copied and spread. This creates a potential to democratize access to such nonrival resources, if the costs of producing the original can be distributed somehow, though not necessarily in a proprietary form. In the open source movement it is argued that information and nonrival goods should be available for anyone to use and redistribute (DiBona, Ockman, & Stone, 1999). There is not only the potential for copying and sharing but also for digital collaboration to develop new resources. In free open source computer programs, the codes are transparent, enabling not only the initiator of a computer program to use and develop it but also others to develop, modify, and use it. One of the best-known open source programs is GNU Linux, initiated by Richard Stallman and later Linus Thorvalds and then collaboratively developed and freely used by people all over the world. Other open source products are websites such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia and Wikimedia for images. Key proponents and theorists in the open source movement are Eric Raymond (2001) and Richard Stallman (2010), who have described what may be called the “hacker ethics” of information sharing, openness, decentralization, and resource pooling to solve common problems, small or large (Himanen, 2001; Levy, 2010). As a central aim of the movement is to democratize access to information and the means of knowledge production, it critiques the corporate control of knowledge and of tools for innovation. By the slogan “information wants to be free,” open source or free software proponents do not mean free in the sense of no-cost but free in the sense of freedom, i.e., openness, transparency, and few or no restrictions in allowing people to modify, contribute to, and develop the software (Lessig, 2006). What is here called the open source movement includes various strands and positions. Common to all these strands is that their proponents advocate some form of intellectual property rights in order to protect producers and their works, though not the current strict “all rights reserved” copyrights, patents, and licensing.1 Alternative forms have been developed through the General Public License and Creative Commons License by which creators can register works that anyone can then legally copy, build on, and share for noncommercial purposes (Bollier, 2008). 2

2.2 Peer Production Benkler (2006) has argued that open source digital production that returns its innovations to a common pool can be understood in terms of commonsbased peer production. He describes peer production or peer economies as a) based on contributions rather than equivalent exchange, b) motivated by a desire to meet needs or work together, rather than to profit, c) conducted in peer-to-peer networks, i.e., without the middle layer of state or large corporations, and d) based on an ethic of sharing and common ownership rather than

Towards a Peer Economy

187

private ownership. Furthermore, the peer economy rationale entails working together to meet needs and desires directly rather than earning money that is then used to meet needs. Peer-to-peer theorist Christian Siefkes (2007) claims that “peer production cuts out the middle layer—the need to sell so you can buy. This change goes very deep, since in capitalism the apparently harmless middle layer (the need to make money) takes over and becomes the primary goal of production, shifting the original goal (fulfilling people’s needs and desires) into the background” (pp. 77–78). Benkler (2006) clarifies that there are proprietary forms of open source and peer production in which corporations use open source and collaborative processes to develop products that then become subject to corporate ownership. However, the term commonsbased peer production indicates that the outcomes of peer processes are common pool resources, open to either the public or a delimited group of users. According to Benkler (2006), commons-based peer production in the digital realm is the harbinger of a larger societal shift away from twentieth-century industrial and proprietary forms of production, i.e., beyond capitalism, socialism, and their blends, towards collaborative and commons-based forms of production. In conventional economics, access to natural resources is assumed to be unlimited and environmental externalities are unaccounted for; hence, surplus is regarded as created through the extraction of resources and exploitation of human labor. Peer economy theorist Michael Bauwens (2006) argues that in a peer-to-peer economy the assumption is different: “the limits of natural resources are recognized, and the abundance of immaterial resources becomes the core operating principle.” Digital commons-based peer production can therefore be understood as an open source practice that articulates a desire for postcapitalist forms of ownership, ethics, and collaboration. Benkler argues (2006, p. 468) that peer production based on open access to information and tools for innovation together with low-cost technology—now operating primarily on nonrival digital goods such as text, music, and film—is potentially applicable also to rival goods such as clothes, food, equipment, and other basic utilities. More recently, Walljasper (2010) has mapped commons-based peer production of food, energy, and transportation. It should be noted, however, that commons-based peer production in the physical realm is not new. Indeed, peer production has historically been practiced and is still practiced in many societies around the world, in terms of collaboratively producing and managing common resources by a village or group of people. However, what is here called commons-based peer production represents a reinvention and reframing of traditional collaborative practices in a contemporary late capitalist context.

2.3 Governing of Physical Resource Commons There are innumerable historical examples of societies organizing around and governing local common resources such as forests, fishing waters, arable

188

Karin Bradley

land, livestock, and other sources of subsistence. It is well known, however, that common resources tend to become depleted: Woodlands are deforested, seas overfished, and lands overgrazed. This “tragedy of the commons” was theorized by Hardin (1968), who outlined two responses to the problem: privatization or state control of the resources. Ostrom (1990) turned the question around and asked what characterizes societies that have managed to sustain their common resources. From her worldwide case studies she concluded that it was neither private nor state control, but rather local, selforganized forms of governing, or small units nested in multiple layers, that preserved these resources. Drawing on these case studies, she outlined a set of institutional design principles that fosters the long-enduring governing of commons. These include clearly defi ned resources and users, rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are congruent with local conditions, collective and local decision-making processes and recognition of the self-determined units by higher-level authorities, some form of monitoring to maintain trust and reciprocity, and simple systems for conflict resolution (Ostrom, 1990, 2010). Social and ecological anarchists such as Bookchin (1971, 2007) argue along similar lines, advocating societal organizations based on decentralized democratic municipalities or communities that are fairly self-reliant in terms of natural resource use, nested in or part of a communal federation. Bookchin (1995) was careful to point out that social anarchism differs from the more mainstream individualist anarchism or what he called “lifestyle anarchism”—something from which he dissociated himself. In 1971, Bookchin published the essay “Post-Scarcity Anarchism,” in which he predicted that technological development would make abundant many resources previously seen as scarce—if only technological development could be democratized and self-managed rather than controlled by corporations or centralized states. Today, 40 years later, exactly these questions are being debated: access to and control over digital nonrival goods and the potential of using digital technologies and open source practices to enable the abundance of rival goods. As we will see later in this text, the production of open source hardware could be seen as postscarcity anarchism in practice. Another branch of anarchism is that of postanarchism, in which anarchist thought is coupled with poststructuralist perspectives of power and hegemony (Bey, 1991; Newman, 2011; Rousselle & Evren, 2011). From a postanarchist perspective, neoliberal capitalist power dynamics are omnipresent and hegemonic; to resist and develop alternatives to this hegemony, one must fi nd spaces and moments in which societal relationships can be challenged and rethought. Postanarchist writer Hakim Bey (1991) used the concept of “temporary autonomous zones” (TAZs) to describe experimental zones that exist only temporarily but that can enable people to imagine other societies and experiment with alternative social practices. Bey argues that as soon as these zones become fi xed and permanent, they tend to be subsumed under state or capitalist control. TAZs can be interpreted

Towards a Peer Economy

189

as a form of transgressive utopianism (Sargisson, 2000) aiming to expand notions of “the possible” but without making blueprints of ideal worlds. Reclaim the Streets actions of the 1990s, temporary and participatory spatial events, pop-up spaces, and activism such as the UK Climate Camp can be seen as contemporary forms of TAZs (Hatherlay, 2009). Postanarchist conceptions of space such as TAZ can also be seen in contemporary peerto-peer architecture. These branches of theory on the governing of natural resource commons, digital commons, and societal organization differ in their focus, scope, and radicality; they nevertheless share the advocacy of decentralized self-organized forms of governing beyond both state control and the private market, where access to resources is based on contributions or other forms of noncapitalist exchange. Ostrom (1990) points out the need for clear rules, control mechanisms, and simple systems for conflict resolution when governing natural resources to ensure their endurance. Similarly, peer-to-peer theorists such as David Bollier (2008) and Benkler (2006) highlight the necessity of having clear rules for how open source products can be used and for what purposes, whereas Bey (1991) advocates temporary pockets of anarchy to free the imagination, though this does not preclude the emergence of stringent rules in TAZs.

3. THREE CASES OF PEER-TO-PEER PRACTICES

3.1 Peer-to-Peer Architecture In architecture and urbanism there is currently marked interest in spatial interventions and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics. At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, the US pavilion was entitled “Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good.” Through an open call, the curators gathered 124 “self-initiated urban improvements” such as guerilla bike lanes, DIY roundabouts, mobile chicken coops, and apps for crowd-sourced city planning. These urban interventions have been initiated by citizen groups, activists, artists, architects, designers, planners, etc. In what may be called “DIY urbanism,” the production of space is a task not only for the educated architect or urban planner but something that is done collectively. In the “Spatial Agency” project, a research team gathered, documented, and analyzed architectural practices, many of which operate in this spirit, aiming to empower and involve citizens and nonarchitects through spatial transformations, though not through the traditional architectural role of designing buildings and artifacts (Awan, Schneider, & Till, 2011). 3 One such architectural practice is the Paris-based Collectif Exyzt. This collective, founded by architects, has come to encompass carpenters as well as a graphic designer, DJ, cook, electrician, plumber, writer, and artist. Exyzt was initially formed around the idea to build and live together.4 In

190 Karin Bradley contrast to mainstream architecture, Exyzt designs, builds, and inhabits their temporary structures collectively with local users. They have become known for their playful structures including open swimming pools, saunas, cultivation, and eating spaces. In their fi rst common project, L’Architecture du Rab (2003), they appropriated an abandoned plot in Paris, erected a temporary structure using scaffolding, in which they cooked, worked, and slept for five weeks, interacting with the locals and creating an experimental social space (Harboe, 2012, pp. 136–139). They compiled a manual illustrating how nonprofessional others could conduct similar spatial appropriations elsewhere, enabling the model to be spread, copied, and used by others. L’Architecture du Rab is a self-initiated, self-funded, and self-organized space. In another project, the Dalston Mill in East London, Exyzt, together with other groups and users, constructed an urban windmill, bread oven, barn, and garden beds, and planted wheat that could be harvested and ground into flour for bread and pizzas. Local people appropriated this former derelict space, constructed benches from leftover timber and built shelves for a bookswap library. The site came to be used by the local community, and cake decorating, bread baking, and African drumming workshops were organized (Wainwright, 2009). Nicholas Henninger, one of Exyzt’s founders, describes the Dalston Mill as an intervention in which underutilized “public space is appropriated by someone in order to give it back to the people.”5 Since its start in 2003, Exyzt has cocreated similar temporary structures in Warsaw, Rotterdam, Paris, Madrid, Karosta (Latvia), and Sao Paulo. Exyzt describes its approach in terms of “open source architecture” or “architectural piracy.”6 Characteristically, Exyzt erects structures that are simple to build, executing the work together with local inhabitants so that the locals can appropriate the space. In this way, it operates according to an open source logic: initiating a scheme, then opening it up for others to cocreate, use, develop, and copy. In its graphics and language Exyzt refers to piracy.7 Nicholas Henninger, of Exyzt, describes how the collective has been inspired by Hakim Bey’s notion of temporary autonomous zones (Harboe, 2012, p. 146). Exyzt’s temporary structures serve as such zones for experimentation and the creation of new social relationships, making the “impossible” seem real. If the structures were permanent they would risk becoming controlled, losing this experimental and autonomous function (Harboe, 2012, p. 146). Although Exyzt is inspired by hacker culture, piracy, and practices verging on illegality, its work lies within the bounds of legality. Exyzt obtains permits for its spatial interventions, which are hence not to be understood as illegal squats (Harboe, 2012, p. 146). The Exyzt manifesto states: BE UTOPIAN. We want to build new worlds where fiction is reality and games are new rules for democracy. . . . Architecture can expand into a multidisciplinary game where everyone brings his own tools

Towards a Peer Economy

191

Figure 11.2 The Dalston Mill by Exyzt and partners in Hackney, London. Courtesy of Collectif Exyzt.

and knowledge to contribute to a collective piece. . . . We produce an open source architecture that offer [sic] an access to basic public amenities and a place for exchange: A physical framework for a direct and immediate emulation between people and space. We wish to incite anyone to re-appropriate and get involved with his own social and physical environment.8 Exyzt explains that it wants to create “non-institutional places where to imagine and test collectively new social behaviours.”9 In this way, it is enacting instant microtopias while encouraging the imagination of possible

192 Karin Bradley alternative futures. Exyzt’s manifesto and projects articulate aspirations for a future with more self-organization, direct exchange, skills sharing, collaboration, and participation in making the world. The collective has described its work as “futuristic low-tech,” suggesting that this DIY, lowtech, open source mode of operation is the way of the future.10

3.2 Peer-to-Peer Hardware Production In the open source movement, the emphasis has been on open software; however, in the last few years there has also been a considerable interest in creating open source hardware (Hippel, 2005; Karvinen & Karvinen, 2011; Söderberg & Daoud, 2012). Work is ongoing to develop open source hardware such as cars and 3D printers.11 The DIY production of hardware for non-profit purposes is sometimes described as “the maker movement” (Dougherty, 2012). In a special issue of the MIT Press journal Innovations on the theme “Making in America,” Stangler and Maxwell (2012, p. 5) argue that one can discern the “emergence of a do-it-yourself producer society,” stating that it is being facilitated by the spread of digital technologies, 3D printers and laser-cutting machines (p. 9). Around the world, so-called fab labs (short for fabrication laboratories) or makerspaces are appearing—places where tools for digital fabrication are made available to laypeople, who can come and cheaply construct 3D models and products. A fab lab typically includes 3D printers, CNC laser-cutting machines, and an electronics workspace, enabling forms of production at a small scale that have previously been possible only for larger corporations. The fab lab concept is based on an open source philosophy, public open access, and a will to democratize access to technologies and manufacturing. Conditions for using the fab lab label have been set by its originators, safeguarding its open, nonproprietary, and collaborative spirit,12 and any fab lab must uphold the fab charter.13 All fab labs share a set of tools and processes so that “all labs can share knowledge, designs, and collaborate across international borders.”14 Fab labs have been set up in several places around the world, some of them connected to universities, others set up by citizen groups.15 Similar facilities are referred to, for example, as makerspaces, hackerspaces, or hacklabs. Hackerspaces are often associated with computer hacking, while makerspaces may include both computing and digital fabrication as well as low-tech crafting and repairing, such as woodworking, sewing, or knitting. Makerspaces may be run as nonprofit organizations, as parts of community centers, schools, or libraries, or in the form of loose networks and sometimes temporary “pop-up” makerspaces organized via social media.16 Another example of open source hardware is Open Source Ecology. This is a project in which engineers, designers, farmers, and other supporters are creating a Global Village Construction Set, an open source platform

Towards a Peer Economy

193

for creating “the 50 industrial machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.”17 These are modular machines, such as a multipurpose tractor, wind turbine, bread oven, earth brick-pressing machine, pelletizer, cement mixer, and hammer mill, that are easy to construct and repair and are created using local materials in order to enable basic material self-sufficiency.18 The idea is that this platform, combined with what is called the “Civilization Starter Kit,” would enable a small group of individuals to maintain or create a village (Stangler & Maxwell, 2012). The initiator of Open Source Ecology is the Polish-American Marcin Jakubowski, who turned to farming after earning a PhD in fusion physics. Jakubowski found it frustrating having to buy expensive machines that were easily broken, difficult to repair, and hence controlled by the corporations that make them.19 He decided to build an easy-to-fix tractor and placed the open source drawings on a wiki. The wiki and later a TED talk20 came to attract likeminded people, who started to contribute, creating what would later become the Open Source Ecology project (Thomson & Jakubowski, 2012). Through a crowd-funding scheme, resources for prototyping and development have been gathered from donors small and large. The intention of Open Source Ecology and its open source tool kit is to channel power over the means of production from the hands of global corporations to nonprofit collectives and laypeople around the world (Thomson & Jakubowski, 2012). In this way people, as long as they can connect to the Internet, have something like a free “franchise” that they can use to build a localized economy. Open Source Ecology uses a Creative Commons License that enables people to copy, spread, and develop its designs, though not for commercial purposes (Thomson & Jakubowski, 2012, p. 62). On the so-called Factor e Farm in Missouri, enthusiasts come to stay, construct and test prototypes, and contribute to the project in various ways. Thomson and Jakubowski (2012, p. 53) have described the idea with Open Source Ecology as follows: Much as Wikipedia sought to democratize knowledge and the open source software movement sought to democratize computing, Open Source Ecology seeks to democratize human wellbeing and the industrial tools that help to create it. The wider goal is to indeed change the world and contribute to an “Open Source Economy,” an economy that reduces the artificial material scarcity created by corporations and self-interested institutions (Thomson & Jakubowski, 2012, p. 62). The idea is to collaboratively develop and share knowledge of how abundant natural resources such as sunlight, rocks, soil, plants, and water can be converted into resources for comfortable and sustainable living. The idea is to bypass profit-driven corporations that patent and control, and hence create artificial scarcity of, resources and technologies that are in fact abundant. According to Jakubowski:

194

Karin Bradley Open Source Ecology is really about creating the next economy—the Open Source Economy. What does that mean? It is an economy that optimizes not only production—which the present economy is really good at—but distribution, which is not so great. And how do you do that? That is by opening, or giving away so-called trade secrets for free or develop open source products for just about anything that we use. So imagine a scenario where now, instead of corporations all competing, re-inventing the wheel and so forth in competitive ways, what if everybody would join together to make the best of products, the most robust products that are open source and that anyone has access to producing them. And therefore we can run an economy in a collaborative way as opposed to competitive wasteful ways. 21

As of early 2013, twelve of the fi fty proposed machines had been designed and prototyped. 22 According to Thomson and Jakubowski (2012, p. 54), these machines are eight times cheaper than those produced by industrial brands. The strategy is to openly document each step; therefore the Open Source Ecology website has plenty of short videos showing what has been achieved so far, as well as ideas, drawings, and descriptions available for people to follow, spread, and contribute to. Open Source Ecology groups have been formed in various cities in the United States and Europe, 23 and the fi rst large-scale replication of Open Source Ecology equipment is being conducted on a sugar plantation in Guatemala (Thomson & Jakubowski,

Figure 11.3 The Open Source Ecology platform. Courtesy of Open Source Ecology and Isaiah Saxon.

Towards a Peer Economy

195

2012, p. 70). Thomson and Jakubowski (2012) see themselves not as part of an isolated utopian community but as part of a global open source and maker movement, or “garage manufacturing revolution,” transforming the economy: Much as the garage hackers fueled the computing boom, the garage manufacturing revolution is beginning to enable manufacture of tools that was once the domain of a few corporations accessible to everyday people. This is exactly the kind of creative destruction that economist Joseph Schumpeter would have been proud of. (p. 65)

3.3 Peer-to-Peer Consumption of Goods Recent years have seen the growth of so-called collaborative consumption, in which consumers share, swap, rent, or reuse goods on a peer-to-peer basis. In the book What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live, Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers (2011) describe examples of schemes enabling citizens to share or swap resources they do not need all the time, such as tools, sewing machines, gardens, spaces, vehicles, and clothes. One such example is RelayRides, a car-sharing network that connects car owners with car borrowers. 24 In this scheme, car sharing operates on a citizen-to-citizen (peer-to-peer) basis; this differs from most commercial car pools or car rental systems, in which a company owns and maintains the cars and then lends them to various users. The founder of RelayRides, Bostonian Shelby Clark, has explained how the idea came from similar car-sharing services, but with the proviso that this service should be “for the community, by the community,” building on the rationales of social cohesion, proximity, lower user cost compared with mainstream car rentals, and more efficient use of existing resources (Kutz, 2010). RelayRides operates in the form of a for-profit company and is an example of commercial peer production. 25 An example of a nonprofit peer-to-peer sharing scheme is Streetbank, a website that enables local sharing of goods such as gardening equipment, drills, baby gear, extra chairs, and DVDs or of services such as bicycle repairs, dog walking, or Photoshop lessons. 26 Streetbank was started by a group of people in the UK interested in lending rather than buying and in exploring how the Internet could facilitate sharing in often anonymous urban neighborhoods. 27 Through Streetbank, people can register as users anywhere in the world; users list what they can lend or give away, what skills they can share, and what they would like to obtain from others, making sharing convenient and straightforward for those interested, without fear of disturbing neighbors not interested in sharing. The service is free for anyone to use and no economic transactions are conducted. Figure 11.4 depicts the rationale of Streetbank in economic, social, and environmental terms. The initiators describe the aim of Streetbank as follows:

196

Karin Bradley The aim is to get people involved in their community, to foster altruism, a generosity of spirit and volunteerism. It is to help local needs to be met by local solutions, reducing poverty by building community. It makes sense environmentally. It helps people to reuse things, and for things that are under-used to be used more, and that all helps to reduce consumption. It also makes sense economically. If there are 100 houses on your road and each of them uses a ladder maybe once a year to clean the guttering, they probably don’t all need their own ladder. One ladder shared between everyone should be enough. 28

Sharing schemes can be organized in various ways—as nonprofit organizations, Facebook groups, or companies—some open to everyone and others requiring membership and/or certain contributions. In these schemes, citizens create common-pool resources, rather than acting as mere consumers

Figure 11.4 Illustration of the Streetbank concept. Courtesy of Streetbank.

Towards a Peer Economy

197

of corporate goods. It should be noted that sharing goods and services is an old phenomenon continuously practiced in poorer regions of the world. Botsman and Rogers (2011) argue, however, that new digital technology and social media have enabled the reinvention of sharing: originally being practiced mostly among acquaintances, sharing is now practiced among strangers. A recent study of the sharing economy (Latitude, 2010, p. 2) claims that “online connectivity facilitates offl ine sharing.” In this way, the daily practices of sharing digital information on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Wikipedia might facilitate the step to swapping and sharing of offline goods as well (Botsman, 2012).

4. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: PEER ECONOMIES

4.1 Agendas of Peer-to-Peer Practices How can the above examples of peer-to-peer architecture, hardware, and consumer goods sharing be understood? What visions of society and agendas for change do they express? In the case of Exyzt, the explicit inspiration is piracy, hacking, and the postanarchist notion of creating temporary autonomous zones—pockets of autonomy from state and commercial control where it is possible to experiment and create social relationships outside neoliberal capitalist rule. The practices of Exyzt can be understood as a reaction against mainstream commercial and top–down architecture, commissioned by public agencies or private actors. The Exyzt collective expresses a desire to turn architecture into a more collaborative affair, in which nonarchitects also participate and the “architects” or initiators are also inhabitants or users. Exyzt thus expresses a striving for less hierarchical relationships, and its manifesto refers to “open source architecture” connected to the open source philosophy of collaborative work and resource sharing. The Exyzt manifesto encourages utopian experimentation and articulates a desire for a future based on more self-organization, direct exchange, skill sharing, and coproduction in making the world. These notions stand in stark contrast to the commissioned commercial “starchitecture.” In the case of the hardware project Open Source Ecology, one sees traces of Ostrom’s (1990) and Bookchin’s (1971, 2007) plea for self-governing and decentralized control over natural resources and decision making. Jakubowski’s driving forces for initiating the project are articulated in both ecological terms, i.e., moving away from fossil fuel dependency and the overuse of natural resources, and social justice terms, i.e., to “democratize human wellbeing and the industrial tools that help to create it” (Thomson & Jakubowski, 2012, p. 53). Current corporate rule is explicitly criticized when Jakubowski explains that the intention is to redirect power over the means of hardware production from the hands of global corporations to nonprofit collectives and laypeople around the world.29 Bookchin’s forty-

198

Karin Bradley

year-old prediction that technology would create an abundance of resources previously regarded as scarce, for example, electricity or industrial products, may come true through open source hardware projects. Through OSE, Thomson and Jakubowski (2012, p. 62) want to share knowledge of how abundant natural resources—such as sunlight, rocks, soil, plants, and water—can be converted into sustainable housing, farming equipment, electricity generation, and other means for comfortable self-sufficient living. In this way, they want to annihilate the artificial scarcity created by profitdriven companies. Open Source Ecology can therefore be interpreted as postscarcity anarchism in the making. This project displays clear elements of utopianism in its desire to enable self-sufficient communities around the world. Its focus is not on the governing, social life, or design of these communities, but rather on the technologies to enable them. In the examples of the peer-to-peer sharing platforms Streetbank and RelayRides, the rationales are clearly explained in ecological, social, and economic terms: Through sharing one consumes fewer resources, interacts more with the local community, and saves money. Streetbank can be described as a practical example of Benkler’s (2006) term “commons-based peer production” in that it is based on contributions rather than equivalent exchange, is motivated by a desire to meet needs or by the joy of collaborating rather than by profit, and is conducted through a peer-to-peer network, based on an ethic of sharing. Through Streetbank a user can borrow a ladder without reciprocal exchange. This differs from RelayRides, which operates as a company in which the user pays the middleman, i.e., Relay Rides, which then pays the lender. This model is based on reciprocal monetary exchange, making RelayRides peer-to-peer sharing but not commons-based. Compared with Exyzt and Open Source Ecology, the cited peer-to-peer sharing platforms are less visionary and utopian; instead, they serve as practical tools for making existing lifestyles slightly greener and more social. The initiators of Exyzt, OSE, Streetbank, and Relay Rides all had certain ideological motives for starting their projects. The people taking part in these collaborative projects may well have different motivations, however. People may spend time at the Exyzt Dalston Mill because it is a nice place to eat pizza and socialize but without upholding postanarchist ideals. Users might rent a car through RelayRides because they cannot afford one, or go to a makerspace or participate in open source hardware production because they are interested in electronics, not necessarily in overthrowing capitalist modes of production. Nevertheless, these collaborative practices have the potential to involve diverse groups of people into a more or less conscious political making rather than just political theorizing or debating.

4.1 Support Structures for Peer Economies The spread of peer-to-peer production and sharing raises questions concerning the support structures and institutional frameworks needed for

Towards a Peer Economy

199

them to function. Ostrom (1990) developed institutional design principles for governing natural resource commons to ensure that they would endure for the long term. Although self-organization is a key notion, we still need rules and institutions that guarantee that users and contributors can cooperate fairly and that violations of the rules will be sanctioned. In traditional small-community settings with high degrees of trust and social control, sharing and bartering have often been practiced. However, as urban living coupled with increased anonymity has become more widespread, often in tandem with increased material wealth, monetary relationships and individual consumption have come to replace sharing and bartering. This can be seen as emancipation from the dependence on the social control of the local community, but also as implying a loss of community, social bonds, and togetherness. Contemporary digital technologies, however, facilitate peer-to-peer sharing between strangers. Through sharing platforms such as RelayRides, one can easily locate a nearby available car and not have to go next door and risk disturbing a neighbor. For many, the most convenient way to access the performance of a product, i.e., a ride in a car or a hole made with a drill, is through owning the product. However, for certain products, such as cars in inner cities, owning has become such an inconvenience that it is simpler to be part of a car sharing network. In the case of peer-to-peer sharing, it is important that lenders and users be trustworthy and that items be returned timely and properly. Transparent and reliable information systems about the participant’s reputation are therefore important. As Botsman (2012) argues, for a person to benefit from peer-to-peer sharing, he or she needs to have a documented trust rate. In the case of RelayRides, where cars are being shared and money exchanged, it is important to have reliable payment systems as well as insurance covering shared cars (Kutz, 2010). Open source production also needs rules, in order for collaborative processes to function, as well as legal institutions that can guarantee that the common pool resources—or peer properties—are not appropriated by private interests. As Bauwens has pointed out, “traditional forms of property are exclusionary (‘if it is mine, it is not yours’), peer property forms are inclusionary” and access is not necessarily defi ned in terms of ownership.30 The Creative Commons License is an example of a legal support of “peer property,” as it enables noncommercial actors to access, spread, and build on existing creative work. However, the defi nition and protection of various forms of “peer property,” not only creative work, is a field that needs development.

4.2 Towards Peer Economies? In this fi nal section I will reflect on the potential for societal change that peer-to-peer practices might entail. How significant is the peer economy

200 Karin Bradley today? What are its prospects for development and expansion? What problems does it contain or could encounter? It is difficult to assess the significance or influence of the peer-to-peer economy. Its significance is perhaps not best measured in monetary terms but rather through measures such as user gain. One study, however, estimates that the open source economy constitutes one sixth of the US gross domestic product (Bauwens, Mendoza, & Iacomella, 2012, p. 16). In April 2013, NBC reported that the sharing economy in the United States has a turnover of USD 26 billion per year.31 This includes nonprofit as well as forprofit sharing services such as RelayRides, though including the value of nonmonetary sharing or bartering via platforms such as Streetbank would add to the total. Irrespective of their total value, peer-to-peer sharing practices appear to be growing in the Euroamerican world.32 Gibson-Graham (2006) argues that the capitalist economy measured in GDP is only the tip of the iceberg of an economy that in fact largely consists of noncapitalist relationships such as bartering, gifting, swapping, and other forms of reciprocal and nonreciprocal work and exchange. This informal economy indeed also exists in “advanced” capitalist nations and is a precondition for the capitalist economy to work. A criticism of peer production is that it is easily subsumed into corporate capitalist modes of production (Dahlander, 2007; Söderberg, 2011). Many corporations have noted the creativity of collaborative open source or peerto-peer forms of production and have incorporated such modes of operation into their innovation processes (Dahlander & Magnusson, 2008). Another criticism is that peer-to-peer practices may create grey sectors in which taxes are avoided and work is not formally recognized or subject to official regulation. Moreover, critical questions can be raised about the dependency relationships within and across peer communities and about who might be included in and excluded from peer economy networks. One may also ask whether it is possible, or even desirable, for the peer economy to extend to sectors that need large investments, use advanced equipment, and are dependent on high standards of control. Temporary architectural constructions such as Exyzt’s scaffolding structures may be peer produced, but perhaps not buildings that are to last for centuries, such as bridges, hospitals, or larger infrastructure components. Peer-to-peer sharing appears to have grown in countries and groups of people hit by the post-2008 recession, 33 as have the maker culture and makerspaces (Harris & Garenflo, 2012; Lahart, 2009). In the book Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation in the Age of Crisis, Harris and Gorenflo (2012) have gathered stories from the twenty-something generation in cities like Detroit and Amsterdam about their strategies for coping with a stagnating economy and resource depletion. In their narratives one can trace the contours of a DIY culture with collaborative consumption and sharing as central themes. If the DIY maker movement and peerto-peer practices grow in situations of economic decline, they might have

Towards a Peer Economy

201

considerable potential impact. In addition, the fact that sharing practices are being reinvented through the use of contemporary technologies and new concepts makes them attractive and helps them function as symbols of belief in a different and better future. The DIY maker movement and peer-to-peer practices have the potential to gather diverse groups of people, driven by ecological or social justice concerns or basic economic pragmatism. This means that there might be a coming-together of hackers, pirates, green consumers, corporate critics, jobless, and people on tight budgets. Hence, perhaps the emerging peer economies and spread of DIY production can be seen as early signs of a new logic, beyond profit-driven capitalism, that could gradually steer the economy in a fairer and more resource-conscious direction. NOTES 1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source, retrieved 5 March 2013. 2. See the Wikipedia entry, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_ Public_License, retrieved 25 April 2013, and the site for the Creative Commons License: www.creativecommons.org, retrieved 25 April 2013. 3. See also www.spatialagency.net, a database of groups, projects, and keywords, for an expanded notion of architectural practice; retrieved 20 February 2013. 4. http://www.spatialagency.net/database/exyzt, retrieved 20 February 2013. 5. “The Art of Farming at the Dalston Mill,” Hackney Citizen, 10 July 2009. http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2009/07/10/the-art-of-farming-at-the-dalstonmill, retrieved 20 February 2013. 6. See the Exyzt manifesto, at www.exyzt.org/be-utopian, retrieved 20 February 2013. 7. See the extended version of the Exyzt manifesto presented in a slideshow at http://www.exyzt.org/be-utopian, p. 6, retrieved 25 April 2013. 8. See the Exyzt manifesto, at http://www.exyzt.org/be-utopian, retrieved 20 February 2013. 9. See the Exyzt manifesto slideshow, at http://www.exyzt.org/be-utopian/, p. 4, retrieved 25 April 2013. 10. Lecture by Exyzt entitled “Futuristic Low-Tech” at the Stockholm Museum of Architecture, 3 May 2011. 11. See the OScar project, at http://www.theoscarproject.org, and the website of the RepRap project creating open source 3D printers, at http://reprap.org/ wiki/Main_Page, retrieved 26 April 2013. 12. See http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/ConditionsForFabLabLabel, retrieved 25 February 2013. 13. http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/charter/, retrieved 25 February 2013. 14. http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/ConditionsForFabLabLabel, retrieved 25 February 2013. 15. See list of fab labs, at http://wiki.fablab.is/wiki/Portal:Labs, retrieved 25 February 2013. 16. See, for example, the “The Library as Incubator Project,” where libraries are describing how they experiment with opening up makerspaces in libraries: http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/?p=4594, retrieved 27 February 2013.

202

Karin Bradley

17. See http://opensourceecology.org/about.php, retrieved 27 February 2013. 18. See the full description of the machines at http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs. php, retrieved 27 February 2013. 19. http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html, retrieved 27 February 2013. 20. http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html, retrieved 27 February 2013. 21. Marcin Jakubowski in the video Open Source Philosophy, at http://vimeo. com/58165438, retrieved 27 February 2013. 22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Ecology, retrieved 5 March 2013. 23. See OSE Europe http://oseeurope.org, retrieved 5 March 2013. 24. https://relayrides.com, retrieved 22 April 2013. 25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RelayRides#cite_note-NYT0910–10, retrieved 23 April 2013. 26. www.streetbank.com, retrieved 16 April 2013. 27. www.streetbank.com, retrieved 16 April 2013. 28. The Streetbank website FAQ, at http://www.streetbank.com/faq, retrieved 16 April 2013. 29. TED talk by Marcin Jakubowski, http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_ jakubowski.html, retrieved 27 February 2013. 30. The P2P Foundation website, http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Property, retrieved 18 May 2013. 31. NBC’s Today Show, “Person-to-Person Sharing Explodes,” posted 5 April 2013 at http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/04/05/todayshow-person-to-person-sharing-explodes, retrieved 18 April 2013. 32. In 2011, TIME Magazine identified collaborative consumption as one of the “10 ideas that will change the world”; see also references in footnote 34. 33. See Fresnada (2013) and the Collaborative Consumption site entry “Collaborative Consumption Grows Despite Crisis in Spain,” at http://www. collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/04/07/invesments-in-collaborativeconsumption-in-spain-q1–2013, retrieved 18 May 2013.

REFERENCES Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2011). Spatial agency: Other ways of doing architecture. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Bauwens, M. (2006) Peer production, peer governance, peer property. Re-public. Retrieved from http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=87. Bauwens, M., Mendoza, N., & Iacomella, F. (2012). Synthetic overview of the collaborative economy. P2P Foundation. Retrieved from http://p2p.coop/fi les/ reports/collaborative-economy-2012.pdf. Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bey, H. (1991). T.A.Z.: The temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism. New York, NY: Autonomedia. Bollier, D. (2008). Viral spiral: How commoners built a digital republic of their own. New York, NY: New Press. Bookchin, M. (1971). Post-scarcity anarchism (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Ramparts Press. Bookchin, M. (1995). Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism: An unbridgeable chasm. Edinburgh, UK: AK Press.

Towards a Peer Economy

203

Bookchin, M. (2007). Social ecology and communalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Botsman, R. (2012). Welcome to the new reputation economy. WIRED Magazine, 9(September). Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/ archive/2012/09/features/welcome-to-the-new-reputation-economy Botsman, R., & Rogers, R. (2011). What’s mine is yours: How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live. London, UK: Collins. Dahlander, L. (2007). Penguin in a new suit: A tale of how de novo entrants emerged to harness free and open source software communities. Industrial and Corporate Change, 16, 913–943. Dahlander, L., & Magnusson, M. (2008). How do fi rms make use of open source communities? Long Range Planning, 41, 629–649. Dougherty, D. (2012). The maker movement. Innovations, 7(3), 11–14. DiBona, C., Ockman, S., & Stone, M. (Eds.). (1999). Open sources: Voices from the open source revolution. London, UK: O’Reilly. Fresnada, C. (2013). El ‘boom’ del consumo colaborativo. El Mundo, January 12. Retrieved from http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/01/11/ economia/1357918514.html Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Harboe, L. (2012). Social concerns in contemporary architecture: Three European practices and their works. (Doctoral dissertation). AHO—The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway. Hatherlay, O. (2009). Climate camp. ICON Magazine, 077(November). Retrieved from http://www.iconeye.com/read-previous-issues/icon-077-|-november-2009/ climate-camp Hardin, G, (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248. Harris, M., & Gorenflo, N. (Eds.). (2012). Share or die: Voices of the get lost generation in the age of crisis. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Himanen, P. (2001). The hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks. Hippel, E.V. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hopkins, R. (2011). The transition companion: Making your community more resilient in uncertain times. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Karvinen, T., & Karvinen, K. (2011). Make: Six embedded projects with open source hardware and software. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Klein, N. (2000). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. London, UK: Flamingo. Korten, D.C. (1995). When corporations rule the world. London, UK: Earthscan. Kutz, E. (2010). RelayRides, out to be the community-powered Zipcar, hits the ground with pilot rental program. Xconomy, posted 6/22/10. Retrieved from http://www.xconomy.com /boston /2010/06/22/relayrides-out-to-be-thecommunity-powered-zipcar-hits-the-ground-with-pilot-rental-program Lahart, J. (2009). Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis. Wall Street Journal, 13 November 2009, retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB125798004542744219.html Latitude. (2010). The New Sharing Economy. Retrieved from http://latdsurvey.net/ pdf/Sharing.pdf Lessig, L. (2006). Free, as in beer. WIRED Magazine, 14.09(September). Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/posts.html?pg=6 Levy, S. (2010). Hackers. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Newman S (2011). Postanarchism and space: Revolutionary fantasies and autonomous zones. Planning Theory, 10, 344–365. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

204

Karin Bradley

Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: Polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100, 641–672. Raymond, E. (2001). The cathedral and the bazaar: Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary (Rev. ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Rousselle, D., & Evren, S. (Eds.). (2011). Post-anarchism: A reader. London, UK: Pluto. Sargisson, L. (2000). Utopian bodies and the politics of transgression. London, UK: Routledge. Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Siefkes, C. (2007). From exchange to contributions: Generalizing peer production into the physical world. Berlin, Germany: Edition C. Siefkes. Stallman, R.M. (2010). Free software, free society: Selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, MA: SoHo Books. Stangler, D., & Maxwell, K. (2012). DIY producer society. Innovations, 7(3), 3–10. Söderberg, J. (2011). Free software to open hardware: Critical theory on the frontiers of hacking. (Doctoral dissertation). Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg, Sweden. Söderberg, J., & Daoud, A. (2012). Atoms want to be free too! Expanding the critique of intellectual property to physical goods. Triple C: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation, 10, 56–65. Thomson, C.C., & Jakubowski, M. (2012). Toward an open source civilization. Innovations, 7(3), 53–70. Tocchetti, S. (2012). DIYbiologists as “makers” of personal biologies: How MAKE Magazine and Maker Faires contribute in constituting biology as a personal technology. Journal of Peer Production, Issue 2. Retrieved from http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-papers/diybiologists-as-makers/ Wainwright, O. (2009). The smell of freshly baked bread. ICON Magazine, 076(October). Retrieved from http://www.iconeye.com/read-previous-issues/ icon-076-|-october-2009/the-smell-of-freshly-baked-bread Walljasper, J. (2010). All that we share: A fi eld guide to the commons. New York, NY: The New Press.

12 Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City Squatting and the Production of the Urban Commons in Berlin 1

Alexander Vasudevan 1. INTRODUCTION This chapter explores the historical development of the squatting movement in Berlin from the late 1960s to the present. It charts the everyday spatial practices and political imaginaries of squatters. It examines the composition and assembling of alternative collective spaces in the city of Berlin and takes in developments in both the former West and East Berlin. For squatters, the city of Berlin came to represent a site of both political protest and creative reappropriation. The central aim of this chapter is therefore to show how this squatting can plausibly be understood as one historically specific example of an alternative autonomous urbanism in which theoretical ideas about politics and place were transformed into methodologies for assembling “times and spaces for alternative living” (Pickerill & Chatterton, 2006, p. 743). In particular, I will focus on the role and significance of the German squatter movement (Hausbesetzerbewegung) from the 1960s onwards. Despite a growing body of literature on 1968 as a watershed moment in the evolution of new social movements in West Germany (Von Dirke, 1997; Rucht, 2001; Thomas, 2003), there is little empirical work on the role of the squatter movement within a broader matrix of protest and resistance (cf. Karapin, 2007; Koopmans, 1995). To what extent was the squatter movement in West and later a reunified Germany successful in articulating a creative reworking of the built form and urban space? In what ways were these counterclaims to the city expressed as a form of architectural activism? What “micropolitical” tactics were adopted by squatters in Berlin? In its detailed focus on the practices of squatters, the chapter should also raise questions about the revival of occupation-based forms of resistance in a new age of austerity. To what extent, it asks, can squatting articulate a renewed form of emancipatory urban politics and the possibility of forging new ways of thinking about and inhabiting the city? In what way might squatting connect up with recent struggles for the “right to the city” and new forms of urban commoning? In the following pages, I attempt to answer these framing questions by retracing the historical development of the squatter scene in Berlin. I will

206 Alexander Vasudevan argue that the very techniques and tactics mobilized by various elements of the extra-parliamenrary opposition or Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO) in the 1960s (from happenings and teach-ins to new forms of theater and agitprop) were crucial to the “dwelling perspective” (see Ingold, 2000) that would later come to characterize the spatial practices of squatters in both the former West and East Berlin. By focusing on the relationship between squatting and the built form, I would like to suggest that to squat was to make a spatial commitment to producing a new set of affective and autonomous geographies of attachment, dwelling, and expression. I am inspired here, in part, by the recent work of Lauren Berlant on the fashioning of “intimate” publics and the affective investments involved in practices of sociability and world-building that move beyond conventional formulations or bracketings of the “political” (Berlant, 2008; see also Gould, 2009). While the squatting movement attracted those who wished to protest the lack of affordable housing, rampant property speculation, and the negative effects of postwar urban redevelopment, it also offered an opportunity for many to quite literally build an alternative habitus where the very practice of squatting became the basis for producing a common spatial field, a field where principles and practices of cooperative living intersected with juggled political commitments, emotional attachments, and the mundane

Figure 12.1 Reimagining the Urban Commons? Graffiti in Berlin, Neukölln. Photograph by author.

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

207

materialisms of domesticity, occupation, and renovation. And yet, to remain alert, in this respect, to the micropractices of squatting is to not only dwell on the quotidian and the everyday but to conjoin these registers with wider debates about the practice of urban politics and the emancipatory possibilities of the built form. A thick description of the squatting scene in Berlin is thus itself an enquiry into new ways of thinking about and inhabiting the city. In the remainder of the chapter, I will discuss the historical development of the German squatting movement, drawing specific attention to the role that the built form has come to play in the everyday practices of squatting. The chapter will culminate with an examination of K77, a squat in the former East Berlin that has since become a legal experiment in “architectural activism” and through which wider questions surrounding housing autonomy and the reinvention of the “commons” in the contemporary city are examined.

2. THE ARCHITECTURE OF PROTEST: SPATIAL POLITICS AND THE WEST GERMAN CITY As recent geographical scholarship has shown, cities have perhaps become the key site for a variety of spatial struggles, many of which hinge on the politics of property, from state attempts at regulating homelessness and panhandling, to development-driven displacement, such as gentrification (Blomley, 2004; Harvey, 2012; Holm, 2006; Iveson, 2007; Mitchell, 2003; Smith, 1996; Staeheli & Mitchell, 2007). While such struggles over urban space have dramatized the interarticulation of neoliberal norms with an increasingly aggressive approach to urban regeneration, they also, as the urban geographer David Harvey (2008) has recently pointed out, remind us of the “intimate connection between the development of capitalism and urbanization” (p. 24). For Harvey, crises of capitalist accumulation are necessarily incomplete and recurring and ultimately essential for the geographical expansion of “profitable activity” (p. 25). This is, moreover, as Harvey makes clear, a relentlessly violent process driven by displacement and the “dispersed and distributed exploitation of living labour” (Gregory, 2006, p. 10). If the urbanization of capital has come to be dominated by what Harvey (2003) refers to as “accumulation by dispossession,” geographers have, in recent years, attempted to supplement Harvey’s work by both identifying and attending to those “moments of interruption in the circuits of capital that can further elucidate the tasks of resistance for political action and writing” (Gidwani, 2004, p. 527; see Jeffrey, McFarlane, & Vasudevan, 2012, and Vasudevan, Jeffrey, & McFarlane, 2008). The bulk of this chapter concentrates on the significance of squatting as one example of a wide range of practices that, over the past few decades, has prioritized the development of value-creating activities in the city that are not subsumable to or simple

208

Alexander Vasudevan

expressions of capital. The role and significance of the German squatting movement from the 1960s onwards may, thus, be profitably understood as a complex social formation through which the relentless logic of accumulation was actively contested and creatively interrupted. I will attempt to retrace the historical development of the German squatting movement as a series of “imaginative acts of social agency enacted through architecture.” I will do so by focusing on the rich set of “spatial practices” developed by squatters in Berlin over the past thirty years. I suggest that it is important to examine the squatting scene as a way of attending to the relationship between “architecture and agency.” In this way, I hope to not only reflect on the dynamic nature of the built environment but to the “processes through which the everyday ‘tactics’ of creating livable places are themselves tied to particular forms of empowerment” (Datta, 2008, pp. 232–233). If squatting relocates and embeds the material possibilities of contestatory experimentation and practical political change in new ways of performing architecture, it also offers, as I ultimately argue, important insights into the production of what Jenny Pickerill and Paul Chatterton (2006) have described as autonomous geographies—“those spaces where people desire to constitute non-capitalist, egalitarian, and solidaristic forms of political, social, and economic organization through a combination of resistance and creation” (p. 730).

3. SQUATTING THE CITY The recent historical geography of squatting in West Germany does not have its origins in Berlin but rather in Frankfurt where, on 19 September 1970, an abandoned Jugendstil apartment on the Eppsteiner Straße in the city’s Westend district was reoccupied. Houses on the nearby Liebigstraße and Corneliusstraße soon followed. It was ultimately, however, West Berlin that came to occupy a privileged position within the squatter scene. As Belinda Davis (2008) has recently noted, the broad spectrum of “New Left” activism in West Germany promoted a popular spatial imaginary of protest that situated activism squarely within West Berlin. For many young people, in particular, West Berlin acted as a kind of geographical correlate to a whole host of alternative political activities that shaped and were, in turn, shaped by the city’s physical and symbolic fabric (see Scheer & Espert, 1982; Scherer, 1984). “Activists,” writes Davis (2008), “‘made’ West Berlin; West Berlin in turn made the activists” (p. 247). The fi rst squat in Berlin began on 4 July 1971. On that day, over 300 students, activists, and youth workers occupied two floors of an abandoned factory at 13 Mariannenplatz in the district of Kreuzberg with a view to creating a center for disadvantaged and unemployed youth and “where we,” as a pamphlet published by the activists declared, “can determine for ourselves what we do in our spare time” (Kreuzberg Museum, Squatting File).2

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

209

Despite initial clashes with the police, municipal authorities eventually supported and legalized the initiative, which included plans for a metal and wood workshop, a studio, a clinic, and a theater space (“Besetzung für,” 1971; Schöne, 1971). This was followed by further agitations in December

Figure 12.2 The Georg von Rauch Haus, former squatted house in Berlin, Kreuzberg. Photograph by author.

210 Alexander Vasudevan 1971 after a teach-in at the Technical University to protest the shooting of the militant activist Georg von Rauch. Many of the activists involved in the creation of the Kreuzberg youth center a few months earlier now took the opportunity to squat in the nearby and abandoned Martha-Maria Haus. This was a former residence for nuns and part of the Bethanian Hospital complex at Mariannenplatz built between 1845 and 1847 and closed in 1970 (“Krawalle am,” 1971; “Tumulte in Kreuzberg,” 1971). Further police intervention (and I might add brutality) notwithstanding, negotiations with municipal authorities led to official approval and legal sanction. Contracts were drawn up and squatters moved into what was now called the Georg von Rauch Haus. The history behind the founding of the Georg von Rauch Haus has admittedly acquired something of a mythical status within the broader history of squatting in West Berlin and was celebrated at the time by the famous radical-left band Ton, Stein, Scherben in the cult hit Das RauchHaus Lied. Indeed, performances of various kinds were crucial to the repertoire of social practices and direct-action political tactics fi rst developed by student activists and other members of the APO and later adopted by participants in the squatting scene. As a number of theater and performance historians have recently argued, the emergence of an alternative public sphere in West Germany in the late 1960s relied, in no small part, on a new range of tactics whose provenance can be attributed to the performing arts themselves (Gilcher-Holtey, Kraus, & Schößler, 2006; Kraus, 2007). Happenings, teach-ins, and street theater were an integral part of a “new political pedagogy” and testified, as Dorothea Kraus (2007) has shown in an elegant new conspectus, to a performative milieu characterized by the blurring of boundaries between the traditional place of theatrical performance and public space. The making of new public geographies was, however, short-lived, and emergency laws banning public political demonstrations prompted a move by many activists toward the creation of less “exceptional” spaces (see Hannah, 2008). While early experiments in alternative forms of communal living coincided with the agitations of the late 1960s (e.g., by the notorious Kommune I), the “crackdown era” of the 1970s exacerbated a shift in the geography of activism and protest in West Germany. What some historians have described as a retreat from the public sphere constituted, in fact, a new preoccupation with Innerlichkeit (“innerness”) as activists looked “inside” and turned to the emotional geographies of everyday life as a means of achieving “broad movement visions” (Davis, 2008, p. 264). Intimate settings—cafés, pubs, alternative presses, bookstores, youth centers, and parties—offered an expanded countergeography through which alternative support networks were created, friendships made, and solidarities secured. The debate about what constituted a common “form of life” was not, however, limited or reducible to inward-looking collectives or militant forms of political extremism (Kraushaar, 1978). It was a key source of debate

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

211

and disagreement across all branches of the Left and contributed to the growth of more modest forms of activism such as the “citizens’ initiatives” (Bürgerinitiativen, i.e., BIs) that grew to prominence in the late 1970s and were to provide an organizational framework for the development of the Green and Peace movements in West Germany (Markovits & Gorski, 1993; Vasudevan, n.d.). Site occupation was an important tactic adopted by the BIs. It is thus perhaps not surprising that various forms of communal living (including squatted houses) were to remain key territories within the activist community, offering a space for nonhierarchical living and open political debate (Koopmans, 1995). While it would be misleading, in this respect, to suggest that the squatter movement in Berlin was untouched by disagreement, eviction, or violence, I want to underscore the degree to which squatting came to offer a specific environment for the adaptation, rehearsal, and domestication of existing modes of political action. The manipulation of the built environment played a crucial role here, though “architecture” was never simply the container or the context for the creation of “existential territories”—to borrow Félix Guattari’s (1996, p. 196) useful term. If anything, many if not most took as axiomatic the active materiality of a building—from its basic form to the sociomaterials that went into its making—as a necessary condition for experimenting with “new forms of collective living” (Kunst & KulturCentrum Kreuzberg, 1984, p. 13). The possibility of social change was therefore to be found less in traditional politics than in the kind of “molecular revolution” advocated by Félix Guattari (1977) among others.3 For Guattari—himself a talismanic figure of the new social movements of the 1970s—change required a new micropolitics that sought to redraw the boundaries between activism and the political. Indeed, the work of Guattari figured prominently in the evolution of the countercultural left in West Germany during the 1970s, especially as more orthodox forms of extraparliamentary opposition were challenged by the Spontis (“spontaneists”) and various other groupings that identified themselves with a vibrant, undogmatic Left and drew inspiration from other forms of political organization and practice. These new developments culminated in a three-day TUNIX (“do nothing”) congress of the oppositional left in Berlin in January 1978 that was organized by the Spontis and was attended by Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari, and Jean-Luc Godard among others (Von Dirke, 1997; Hoffmann-Axthelm, Kallscheuer, Knödler-Bunte, & Wartmann, 1978). At stake here was a determinate concern for generating “alternative modes of living that attempt to exist beyond existing social power relations and, in so doing, begin to redefine the city” (Brown, 2007, p. 2696). Activism, resistance, and subversion still hinged, in this way, on pressing context-bound imperatives. The squatting scene, which fi rst emerged in West Berlin in Kreuzberg in the early 1970s and flourished briefly after 1979, was a direct consequence of an endemic housing crisis that had its

212 Alexander Vasudevan origins in the vagaries of postwar reconstruction (Heyden & Schaber, 2008; Laurisch, 1981). To address enormous housing shortages in the immediate aftermath of the war, a host of major planning programs were rolled out by local municipal councils in West Berlin. These initiatives prioritized the building of large-scale housing estates on the outskirts of the city, offering cheap rents through direct state subsidy. The economic recession in the 1960s, however, quickly brought an end to the building of massive modernist satellite cities. High rent costs and expensive fi nancing prompted the transfer of capital back into inner-city districts. To lower the costs of construction, “public housing developments were transplanted into previously multipurpose Gründerzeit districts [such as Kreuzberg] ‘replacing’ those historic districts with monofunctional modern districts” (Heyden & Schaber, 2008, p. 138). Yet this process of wholesale destruction and displacement—what became known as Kahlschlag- oder Flächensanierung [clear-cut or area renovation]—was never designed to be especially cost effective and, if anything, only exacerbated an existing housing crisis through rampant speculation and local corruption. The abovementioned developments, coupled with the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, turned the district of Kreuzberg into a “depopulated cul-de-sac” (Sheridan, 2007, p. 101) characterized by falling housing prices, top–down planning initiatives, and a prodevelopment lobby preoccupied with “shifting margins of profitability and revalorization” (Blomley, 2004, p. 79). Semiderelict housing stock from the nineteenth century, abandoned factory spaces, and vacant tracts of land remained underdeveloped while low-income residents struggled to fi nd affordable housing. Effective resistance to this new model of urban “redesign” did not really take off until the late 1970s and found its most concrete expression in the so-called SO 36 district of Kreuzberg. As the activists who set in motion a new wave of squatting in Kreuzberg in the winter of 1979 made clear in a widely distributed flyer: In our district, hundreds of apartments are empty and falling apart. Cheap apartments are demolished because landlords no longer put them up for rent. This is against the law. On the 3rd and 4th of February, the citizen’s initiative S036 (after the local post code) wants to restore the lawful condition of rental accommodation. Starting at 10 o’clock we will occupy and restore one apartment in Luebbener Straße and another on Goerlitzter Straße. (Kreuzberg Museum, Squatting File) Without wishing to homogenize a variegated history of occupation, eviction, reoccupation, and further eviction, the period between 1979 and 1981 represented a high point for squatting in Kreuzberg and West Berlin more generally (Laurisch, 1981). Squatters in Berlin often confronted abandoned spaces that required significant renovation. They relied on DIY maintenance and repair and quickly adopted the motto Instands(be)setzung as a

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

213

slogan for the movement, the term itself a clever combination of the German words for maintenance (Instandsetzung) and squatting (Besetzung). By April 1980, various squatter groups had even decided to come together and form a Besetzerrat or squatter council to coordinate activities across what was still a loosely connected scene that brought together militant activists who favored political confrontation with other citizen action groups that supported more modest forms of mediation and negotiation (see Holm & Kuhn, 2011). The squatter council adopted a wide range of tactics from grassroots campaigning and mass public demonstrations to press conferences and “open house” performances. As much as such grassroots activism may have helped squatters to generate publicity and support for a new politics of housing, 1981 marked another turning point for the scene. The violent crackdown by the police on activists who were attempting to occupy a house at 48 Fraenkelufer on 12 December 1980 in Kreuzberg (what became known as the “Schlact am Fraenkelufer”) served as a catalyst for the scene and the wider autonomous movement (Grauwacke, 2008; Suttner, 2011). At its peak on 15 May 1981, 165 houses were occupied in West Berlin, although the occupants of only 77 had been successful in securing some form of contractual arrangement with local municipal authorities. A new hard-line policy was quickly rolled out by the Berlin Senate, the Berliner Linie der Vernunft (“Berlin policy of reason”). It proscribed and vigorously policed any further attempts to squat in West Berlin. As a result, squats unable to secure legal sanction were cleared out. Many “projects” that were able to guarantee long-term use of a building fell under the Behutsame Stadterneuerung (“Cautious/gentle urban renewal”) program later ratified by the Berlin House of Representatives in 1983. Under this program, house occupants could apply for public funds to repair and modernize their properties through what became known as the Bauliche Selbsthilfe (“Structural Self-help”) initiative (see Sonnewald & Raabe-Zimmerman, 1983).4 If legalization served to intensify the criminalization of hard-line activists and the marginalization of the squatting scene, it also, in the view of many, led to the institutionalization of squats (see Holm & Kuhn, 2011). The program was widely perceived as a form of “pacification” and recriminations quickly circulated within the movement, as up to 80 houses accepted an offer for funding even if it meant using public funds to support attempts at creating nonspeculative alternative spaces (Heyden & Schaber, 2008). Amidst widespread feelings of anger, failure, and loss, it is perhaps not surprising that, by the mid 1980s, the movement had splintered despite the consolidation of the autonomous scene in West Berlin (Grauwacke, 2008). The last squat without a legal contract, the iconic KuKuCk (Kunst & KulturCentrum Kreuzberg), was cleared in July 1984. Despite the brief flourishing of an open-air squat in a strip of “no man’s land” west of the Berlin Wall, it was only with the fall of the Wall that a second wave of squatting was able to revive the scene in districts of former East Berlin.

214 Alexander Vasudevan The hard lessons of the 1980s had been learned. Notwithstanding the massive protests surrounding the eviction of squatters from Mainzer Straße in November 1990, a more pragmatic form of negotiation was adopted by activists keen on reconciling the tensions between institutional political structures and practical forms of “self-rule.” Squatting now demanded a tradeoff between existing political institutions and new “insurgent” forms of urban citizenship, though it would be misleading to conflate realistic political ambitions with a sense of diminished commitment (see Holston, 2008). To turn to the unfulfi lled potential of the built environment was, in this context, recognition of the challenges facing activists who remained committed to new ways of thinking about and living in the city.

4. REBUILDING THE POLITICAL As I have argued in greater detail elsewhere, the many dilapidated and decaying Mietskasernen of postwar Berlin offered the potential for squatters to cultivate new forms of sociality and, in so doing, reconcile a ruinous artifact of urban modernity with alternative expressions of human collectivity (Vasudevan, n.d.). Reappropriation, as the former squatter and now architect Dougal Sheridan (2007) made clear, was itself shaped by the basic task of improving or repairing old buildings and relied on “a large degree of collective action and decision-making” (p. 117). Often the material circumstances of abandoned buildings meant that the rules of occupancy, DIY maintenance, and regeneration were fluid and that “the division and distribution of space and facilities [was] not . . . predetermined” (Sheridan, 2007, p. 117). Squatters responded to normative assumptions about living and the “home” by questioning their more basic spatialities. This took on a number of forms and embodied a broad range of spatial practices. At the most rudimentary level, architecture served as a guiding frame for the breakdown of the traditional public/private divide and the prioritization of various forms of communal space, though Sheridan’s own experience with the squat at Brunnenstrasse 6/7 in Prenzlauer Berg during the mid 1990s highlights the complex gradations of private and public space that were often made possible by the existing building structure. Here, the permeability of the building was increased and reengineered to suit the changing needs and wishes of the squatters. Walls were removed in order to increase the size of social spaces, while stairwells were created to produce a new geography of movement through the building, now connected and held together by an interspatial network of doors, passageways, courtyards, and vestibules (Sheridan, 2007, pp. 115, 117). These experiments with the built form became a key process for exploring anew micropolitics of alignment, interdependency, and connection (Simone, 2004, p. 12). In other instances, more trenchant forms of occupation were mobilized with a view to creating particular spheres of identification that would

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

215

encourage forms of interaction “that other deliberative spheres [would otherwise] constrain or censor” (Jackson, 2000, p. 17). In 1981, the former chocolate factory of the fi rm Greiser und Dobritz at Mariannenstraße 6 and Naunystraße 72 in Kreuzberg was squatted in by a group of women who “were looking for rooms where they could live undisturbed and meet freely with each other without the unwanted attention of men and without being restricted solely to their own private apartments” or the routinizing spatial demands of domesticity and social reproduction (Bosse & Zimmer, 1988, p. 10). The renovation and modernization of the “Schockofabrik” was undertaken by the occupants and focused on a process of participatory architecture and sustainable redevelopment. While former squatters reflected positively on the ways in which they were able to forge an emotional field of commitment and solidarity, they also drew attention to the negative consequences—the “grind”—of shared living. In the words of one former squatter: “life . . . was often difficult, external and internal ‘enemies’ had to be confronted. There were tears and some comrades and principles had to be left behind. The motto, ‘to live and work together’ led to a delicate balancing act between happiness and emotional breakdown which at times was rather sobering” (Regenbogenfabrik Block 109 e.V., 2006, p. 26). Another former squatter, “Ingrid,” who moved to West Berlin in the late 1980s to study, talked about the strong sense of loss that accompanied her choice to squat and abandon existing friendships and familial dependencies. 5 “Karen,” who came to the scene in 1990 as a punk from the former GDR, described how the intense affective atmosphere of a squatted house was often less a product of political activism than the everyday negotiation of shifting subjectivities. As many others highlighted, everyday life inside a house was suff used with outside politics, as sectarian political divisions were quickly mapped onto the performance of daily activities. Indeed for some, it was difficult to even imagine “sharing a bathroom and a kitchen with someone who didn’t think the same way . . . [as one] did” (quoted in Davis, 2008, p. 269). Far more commonly, however, these were spaces of cooperation and collective action where the “dream of self-determination” and the “symbiosis of living and working” were fulfi lled (Regenbogenfabrik Block 109 e.V., 2006, p. 5). This was always, to be sure, a precarious process punctuated by continuous deliberation, disagreement, and dissent. Yet, to reconfigure the built environment was to make common cause and amplify the creativity and durability of everyday living arrangements, behaviors, and performances. As Marx reminds us in the Grundrisse, “really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion” (Marx, 2005, p. 611). . In the remainder of this article, I will narrow my focus to and explore the case of K77, a former squat and now communal housing project where a host of tentative and sometimes experimental practices for composing autonomous urban socialities have been developed over the course of the last 15 years. While there

216 Alexander Vasudevan were and remain today a number of squatted houses in East Berlin that have gained more critical attention (e.g., Eimer, Köpi, and Tacheles), K77 exemplifies the particular role that architectural experimentation has come to play in the performance of alternative political practices.

5. SQUATTING AS “SOCIAL SCULPTURE”: THE CASE OF K77 The fall of the Berlin Wall set in motion a new wave of squatting in East Berlin. Between December 1989 and April 1990, more than 70 houses were occupied in districts such as Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. They were dominated, for the most part, by East German youths who had come out of the various alternative subcultures that had sprung up in the German Democratic Republic during the late 1980s. By July 1990, the center of the scene had shifted further to the district of Friedrichshain and now included a large number of “Western” activists (Holm & Kuhn, 2011). If the eventual police crackdown on squatters living on Mainzer Straße in November 1990 served to further radicalize a new generation of squatters, for a number of students studying at the Hochschule der Künste it seemed clear that new forms of practice were needed in the face of a revivified version of the Berliner Linie. Claims of a “transformed and renewed right to urban life” (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 158) did not simply depend on entrenched forms of militancy but would ultimately turn to less confrontational tactics and greater cooperation with local authorities. Housing autonomy was, in this context, less a desired state than a constant process of negotiation (see Turner, 1976). Recalling earlier links between activist practice and the performing arts, a group of students at the Hochschule adopted a new form of site-specific practice that, as one former squatter noted, served as a “catalyst for the occupation of abandoned buildings.” On 20 June 1992, a group of activists dressed as doctors and nurses occupied one of the oldest buildings in Prenzlauer Berg at number 77 Kastanienallee (Fahrun, 1992). The building had been empty for six years. Originally built in 1848, the three-story building sat on an unusual lot, 10 by 100 meters. The complex consisted of three houses separated by three interior courtyards. To squat here, as the group would later proclaim, was to respond to a “medical emergency” and save “the heart of the house, dress and heal its wounds, and fill it with life” (Stilkam 5 ½ e.V.,1994). Drawing explicit inspiration from the work of the German artist Joseph Beuys, the group that took over Kastanienallee 77 (hereafter K77) in 1992 deliberately recast the act of squatting as a form of “continuous performance” (unbefristeten Kunstaktion) or installation art. In the words of Beuys, K77 became a social sculpture, a location for “non-speculative, selfdefi ned, communal life, work, and culture” (Heyden, 2008, p. 35; Stilkam 5 ½ e.V.,1994). According to Beuys, his objects were to be understood as

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

217

“stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture . . . or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the . . . materials used by everyone”; to think of sculpture as constitutively social was to therefore draw attention to the different practices through which “we mold and shape the world in which we live” (quoted in Tisdall, 1974, p. 48). Beuys’s working methods became something of a credo or manifesto for the group of activists that had come to work and live in K77, and it is perhaps not surprising that over the course of the summer of 1992, a number of varied performances, exhibitions, and installations were created. “We made theater” (“wir haben Theater gemacht”) were the words of “Georg,” one former occupant, while another described the occupation as a theater piece (Theaterstück) that built on recent developments in performance art. As Georg pointed out, “there was no plan or set of rules governing the squat.” “Every space could be played with,” added a founding member of the house, “The possibilities were endless.” For many, these were possibilities that transformed the building into a Freiraum or “free space” that demanded creative experimentation (Asmuth, 2002). It was only with late summer rain and colder weather that the realities of living in a building that did not have a roof, proper windows, or water, gas, and electricity set in. Experimentalism quickly shaded into pragmatism. Without any fi nancial or legal support, producing a “social sculpture” depended upon the constructive use of found materials as well as improvisatory “improvements” to the building’s existing form. At the same time, to secure more permanent residency, the group worked hard to acquire legal status, which they attained in 1994. A 50-year lease was signed and a communal, “nonproperty oriented solution to ownership” was also resolved through the creation of a foundation through which profits were channeled into a number of sociopolitical projects, both in Berlin and the developing world (Heyden, 2008, p. 35). The foundation running K77 was also successful in securing public funds via the Structural Self-Help initiative. But this only covered 80% of the reconstructing costs. As a former inhabitant recalled, “the remainder was made up through our own contribution. We all toiled up to 50 hours a month over three long years on the building site” (Asmuth, 2002). The building was, in this way, painstakingly renovated. Sustainable planning principles were applied, recycled building materials used, and strict conservation laws closely followed (Heyden, n.d.). More than 100 people have lived in K77 over the years since its initial reoccupation. Today, approximately 25 adults and children still live together “in one flat” across six levels in three buildings. Seventy percent of the complex is now devoted to living arrangements (Figure 12.2). The other 30% includes a nonprofit cinema, a ceramics workshop, studio space, and a homeopathic clinic. The core of the project remains the negotiation and transgression of political, social, and cultural boundaries and the creation of what Mathias Heyden, one of the original occupants of K77, has described

218 Alexander Vasudevan

Figure 12.3 K77 in 2009. Photograph by author.

as an “architecture of self and co-determination [that] questions the right to the design and use of space” (n.d.). For Heyden, K77 remains something of an architectural laboratory for user participation and self-organization. Heyden’s own description of the project indeed highlights the role of the built form in creating new modes of dwelling that are themselves dependent upon the unpredictable evolution of spaces. According to Heyden (2008),

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

219

Every two years, the inhabitants [of K77] sort out who wants to live where and in which constellation, so that the usage and interpretation of available spaces is constantly renewed . . . In the process-oriented planning and building stage, a broad variety of forms of participation and self-organization came about: the new spaces were largely laidout through flexible and self-built wallboards. Wall partitions were accordingly fitted with omissions. Light openings, room connections, or breaks in the wall were designed so that they can be closed and reopened at any time. Overall, design decisions were left to individuals. (pp. 35–26) A number of former occupants singled out in turn the kitchen as the key “socio-spatial centre of the house.” The same floor also contains a communal dining room, a room for children to play in, and a “bathing landscape.” More general issues relating to the ongoing and collective redesign of K77 from floor layouts to infrastructural “improvements” are discussed and agreed on by all members of the house. Such attempts to foster a sense of collective property and economy coincide with a strong commitment to overcoming “particular conditionings of the individual and the self” (Heyden, 2008, pp. 36–37). To do so is to work towards the construction of a new habitus—to borrow Bourdieu’s now overused term (Bourdieu, 1977). In the particular case of K77, it is the very performance of architecture itself that has become, in this context, a key source of inspiration for a whole host of self-organized and collective everyday practices (Heyden, 2008). K77 can therefore be seen as the spatial manifestation of “a much broader understanding of self-empowered space” (Heyden, 2008, p. 37). It was also part of an informal network of squatted houses, all located in former districts of East Berlin and in which the development of shared cultural spaces was a common cause. The network included K77 and houses at Augustrasse 10 (“KuLe”), Kleine Hamburger Strasse 5, Lychenerstrasse 60, and Rosenthaler Strasse 68 (“Eimer”). If the history of these houses must inevitably be set alongside the recent and intensifying gentrification of neighborhoods such as Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg (see Bernt & Holm, 2009; Holm, 2006; Rada, 1997), it also carries with it a form of “architectural activism” that has come to offer a critical point of purchase on new strategies for participatory architecture, housing autonomy, and community design. For Matthias Heyden, the “emancipative social sculpture” of K77—and for that matter the tactics and practices of squatting more generally—represent only one example or possibility of how an embodied and practical understanding of the built environment is crucial to the design of potential spaces for future commons (Heyden, 2008, p. 37). Indeed, there are a number of projects, groups, and networks in Berlin that have begun to explore these issues across a range of sites from “guerilla” Turkish gardens (gecekondu) and sculpture parks to temporary event-based installations

220

Alexander Vasudevan

Figure 12.4 Wall of apartment in Berlin, Neukölln, doubling as rent information wall. Photograph by author.

and more systematic attempts at community design (Fezer & Heyden, 2004; Haydn & Temel, 2006; Neuwirth, 2006). It is with this growing field of practice in mind that I wish to offer a few concluding comments on the historical significance of the squatting scene in terms of ongoing claims regarding the building of autonomous forms of urban living.

6. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have retraced the historical development of the squatting scene in Berlin as a way of rethinking contemporary scholarship on the built environment as a point of departure for a renewed form of emancipatory urban politics. Central to this argument is the relationship between the articulation of an alternative “rights to the city” and the micropolitical appropriation of the built form. As David Harvey (2008) has recently reminded us, “the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization” (p. 23). This process of “reshaping” has taken on a number of forms in the Global North and South, and I have concentrated

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

221

my own attention on the recomposition of “affective” publics as an active architectural project. My main aim has been to understand the practice of squatting as one important example of commoning in the contemporary city (see Blomley, 2008). The idea of the commons (variously described as “the common,” “commonwealth,” and “commoning”) has recently undergone, in this context, a resurgence of interest as a normative ideal, a set of constituent practices, and as an emergent political ethos for the assembling of more just and equal worlds (see, e.g., Hardt & Negri, 2009; see also Jeffrey, McFarlane, & Vasudevan, 2012). One of the main motivations of this chapter has therefore been to explore how the commons might take geographical shape as an explicitly urban project, and how it relates to existing and emerging scholarly debates and activist practices that seek a more just city. The spatial performances of squatters represent, in particular, an attempt at the assembling of autonomous urban spaces—both precarious and durable—and the development of new possibilities for collective enunciation. The recent emergence of a new round of housing activism in Berlin that has come to challenge gentrification, forced evictions, and rising rents (the Stille Strasse Occupation, Kotti Protest Camp) testifies to the various ways in which occupation-based practices in Berlin have continued to offer conceptual tools and practical resources through which a more radical and socially just urbanism may be

Figure 12.5 Kotti & Co Protest Camp, Berlin, Kreuzberg in 2009. Photograph by author.

222

Alexander Vasudevan

produced (Holm & Kuhn, 2010). The forging of such new spaces of urban commoning demonstrates, if nothing else, how a particular configuration of architecture and performance can become a way of thinking, describing, and theorizing social change in a present tense; a present tense where we can still imagine the possibility of an “autonomous city” and where it was still possible to forge other different spaces. NOTES 1. A longer version of this text has previously been published as Vasudevan, A. (2011) “Dramaturgies of Dissent: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin 1968,” in Social and Cultural Geography 12(3), 283–303, published by Taylor & Francis Ltd. on 12 April 2011 and reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. The archive at the Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin has a series of box files that contain materials on the history of squatting in Kreuzberg included materials produced by squatters in the 1970s and 1980s (brochures, pamphlets, and posters). 3. For Guattari, “molecular revolution” describes a process of micropolitical transformation that operates below the level of perception and through which a body’s capacity to act and be acted upon is transformed. 4. This program was initiated in West Berlin in 1982 and offered public funds to legally registered nonprofit organizations and cooperatives to support DIY maintenance and repair. Until 2002, 80–85% of costs were subsidized for nonprofit builders. The remainder was to be obtained through proprietary capital and “Muskelhypothek” (muscle mortgage). The program was discontinued in 2002 (Heyden & Schaber, 2008, p. 142). 5. Research for this paper draws on an ongoing project which combines archival work and semi-structured interviews with dozens of former participants in the Berlin squatting scene. Interviews were conducted between February 2008 and August 2010. For the sake of consistency, I have altered the names of all interviewees.

REFERENCES Asmuth, G. (2002, 21 June). The Making of . . . K77. Die Tageszeitung. Berlant, L. (2008). The female complaint: The unfi nished business of sentimentality in American culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bernt, M., & Holm, A. (2009). Is it or is it not? The conceptualisation of gentrification and displacement and its political implications in the case of Prenzlauer Berg. City, 13, 312–324. Besetzung für eine Ausweitung des Jugendzentrums. (1971, 6 July). Der Tagesspiegel. Blomley, N. (2004). Unsettling the city: Urban land and the politics of property. New York, NY, and London, UK: Routledge. Blomley, N. (2008). Enclosure, common right, and the property of the poor. Social Legal Studies, 17, 311–331. Bosse, P., & Zimmer, V. (Eds.). (1988). Ökologische Maßnahmen in Frauenstadtteilzentrums Schokoladenfabrik. Berlin, Germany: Stern. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

223

Brown, G. (2007). Mutinous eruptions: Autonomous spaces of radical queer activism. Environment and Planning A, 29, 2685–2698. Datta, A. (2008). Architecture of low-income widow housing: “Spatial opportunities” in Madipur, West Dehli. Cultural Geographies, 15, 231–253. Davis, B. (2008). The city as theater of protest: West Berlin and West Germany. In G. Prakash & K.M. Krause (Eds.), The spaces of the modern city: Imaginaries, politics, and everyday life (pp. 247–274). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fahrun, J. (1992, 22 June). Hausbesetzung als Kunstaktion inszeniert. Berliner Morgenpost. Fezer, J., & Heyden, M. (Eds.). (2004). Hier entsteht: Strategien partizipative Architektur und räumlicher Aneignung. Berlin, Germany: b_books. Gidwani, V. (2004). Limits to capital: Questions of provenance and politics. Antipode, 36, 527–542. Gilcher-Holtey, I., Kraus, D., & Schößler, F. (Eds.). (2006). Politisches Theater nach 1968. Regie, Dramatik und Organisation. New York, NY: Campus Verlag. Gould, D. (2009). Moving politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s fight against AIDS. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Grauwacke, A.G. (2008). Autonomen in Bewegung: Aus den ersten 23 Jahren. Berlin, Germany: Assoziation A. Gregory, D. (2006). Introduction: Troubling geographies. In N. Castree & D. Gregory (Eds.), David Harvey: A critical reader (pp. 1–25). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Guattari, F. (1977). La révolution moléculaire. Fontenay-sous-Bois, France: Encres/Recherches. Guattari, F. (1996). Subjectivities: For better and for worse. In G. Genosko (Ed.), The Guattari reader (pp. 193–203). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Hannah, M. (2008). Spaces of exception and unexceptionabilty. In D. Cowen & E. Gilbert (Eds.), War, citizenship, territory (pp. 57–73). New York, NY: Routledge. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. Harvey, D. (2003). The New imperialism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, 53, 23–40. Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. London: Verso. Haydn, F., & Temel, R. (Eds.). (2006). Temporäre Räume: Konzepte zur Stadtnutzung. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser. Heyden, M. (2008). Evolving participatory design: A report from Berlin, reaching beyond, Field Journal, 2, 31–46 Heyden, M. (n.d.) Die Freiraumgestaltung der K 77. Unpublished manuscript. Heyden, M., & Schaber, I. (2008). Here is the rose, here is the dance! In S. Strasthaus & F. Wüst (Eds.), Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? West Berlin film in the ’80s (pp. 132–148). Berlin, Germany: b_Books. Hoff mann-Axthelm, D., Kallscheuer, O., Knödler-Bunte, E., & Wartmann, B. (Eds.). (1978). Zwei Kulturen: TUNIX, Mescalero und die Folgen. Berlin, Germany: Verlag Ästhetik und Kommunikation. Holm, A. (2006). Die Restrukturierung des Raumes: Stadterneuerung der 90er Jahre in Ostberlin. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag. Holm, A., & Kuhn, A. (2010). Häuserkampf und Stadterneuerung. Blättern für deutsche und internationale Politik, 3, 107–115. Holm, A., & Kuhn, A. (2011). Squatting and urban renewal: The interaction of squatter movements and strategies of urban restructuring in Berlin. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35, 644–658. Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

224

Alexander Vasudevan

Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. New York, NY: Routledge. Iveson, K. (2007). Publics and the city. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Jackson, S. (2000). Lines of activity: Performance, historiography, Hull-House domesticity. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Jeff rey, A., McFarlane, C., & A. Vasudevan, A. (2012). Rethinking enclosure: Space, subjectivity, and the commons. Antipode, 44, 1247–1267. Karapin, R. (2007). Protest politics in Germany: Movements on the left and right since the 1960s. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Koopmans, R. (1995). Democracy from below: New social movements and the political system in West Germany. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kraus, D. (2007). Theater-Protest: Zur Politisierung von Straße und Bühne in den 1960er Jahren. New York, NY: Campus Verlag. Kraushaar, W. (1978). Autonomie oder Getto? Kontroversen über die Alternativbewegung. Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Neue Kritik. Krawalle am Bethanien-Gelände. (1971, 9 December). Der Tagesspiegel. Kunst & KulturCentrum Kreuzberg. (1984). Dokumentation [Documentation]. Berlin, Germany: KuKuCK. Laurisch, B. (1981). Kein Abriß unter dieser Nummer. Berlin, Germany: Anabas Verlag. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Right to the city. In E. Kofman & E. Lebas (Eds. & Trans.), Writings on Cities (pp. 61–181). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Markovits, A., & Gorski, P. (1993). The German left: Red, green, and beyond. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Marx, K. (2005). Grundrisse (M. Nicolaus, Trans.). London, UK: Penguin. (Original work published 1939–1941) Mitchell, D. (2003). The right to the city: Social justice and the fight for public space. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Neuwirth, R. (2006). Shadow cities: A billion squatters, a new urban world. New York, NY: Routledge. Pickerill, J., & Chatterton, P. (2006). Notes towards autonomous geographies: Creation, resistance, and self-management as survival tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 30, 730–746. Rada, U. (1997). Hauptstadt der Verdrängung: Berliner Zukunft zwischen Kiez und Metropole. Berlin, Germany: Verlag Schwarze Risse. Regenbogenfabrik Block 109 e.V. (2006). Festschrift zum 25: Jubiläum der Regenbogenfabrik. Berlin, Germany: Kreuzberg Museum. Rucht, D. (Ed.). (2001). Protest in der Bundesrepublik: Strukturen und Entwicklungen. New York, NY: Campus Verlag. Scheer, J., & Espert, J. (1982). “Deutschland, Deutschland, alles ist vorbei”: Alternatives Leben oder Anarchie? Die neue Jugendrevolte am Beispiel der Berliner “Sene.” Munich, Germany: Bernard and Graefe. Scherer, K.-J. (1984). Berlin (West): Hauptstadt der szenen: Ein Portrait kultureller und anderer Revolten Anfang der achtziger Jahre. In M. Gailus (Ed.), Pöbelexzesse und Volkstumulte in Berlin: Zur Sozialgeschihte der Strasse 1830–1980 (pp. 197–222). Berlin, Germany: Verlag Europäische Perspektiven. Schöne, W. (1971, 5 July). Fabrikgebäude Besetzt. Berliner Zeitung. Sheridan, D. (2007). The space of subculture in the city: Getting specific about Berlin’s indeterminate territories. Field Journal, 1, 97–119. Simone, A. (2004). For the city yet to come: Changing African life in four cities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrifi cation and the revanchist city. New York, NY: Routledge.

Autonomous Urbanisms and the Right to the City

225

Sonnewald, B., & Raabe-Zimmerman, J. (1983). Die “Berliner Linie” und die Hausbesetzer-Szene. Berlin, Germany: Berlin Verlag. Suttner, B. (2011). “Beton Brennt”: Hausbesetzer und Selbstverwaltung im Berlin, Wien und Zürich der 80er. Münster, Germany: LIT Verlag. Staeheli, L., & Mitchell, D. (2007). The people’s property: Power, politics, and the public. New York, NY: Routledge. Stilkam 5 ½ e.V (1994). Konzept fur ein Haus zum gemeinsamen Wohnen und Arbeiten. Unpublished manuscript. Thomas, N. (2003). Protest movements in 1960s West Germany: A social history of dissent and democracy. Oxford, UK: Berg. Tisdall, C. (1974). Art into society—society into art: Seven German artists. London, UK: Institute of Contemporary Arts. Tumulte in Kreuzberg . (1971, 9 December), Berliner Zeitung. Turner, J.F.C. (1976). Housing by people: Towards autonomy in building environments. London, UK: Marion Boyars. Vasudevan, A. (n.d.). “The dream isn’t over”: Critical urbanism and the squatting movement in West Berlin, 1979–1984. Unpublished manuscript. Vasudevan, A., Jeff rey, A., & McFarlane, C. (2008). Spaces of enclosure. Geoforum, 39, 1641–1646. Von Dirke, S. (1997). “All power to the imagination!” The West German counterculture from the student movement to the Greens. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.

13 Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism and Cohousing Lucy Sargisson

1. INTRODUCTION The relationship between architecture and utopianism is rich and complex. Architecture shapes the spaces in which we experience life. It can manipulate our senses, frame our relationships, and guide our social interactions. Utopianism reflects our dreams and fears about the future and architecture is often driven by utopian desires for a better society. In this chapter I explore architecture that expresses a vision of a green future, architecture that seeks to shape inclusive social and political practices, value the natural environment, and practice the ideal of nonexploitative longevity. My discussion focuses on just two cases, both of which seek to produce communities that are environmentally, socially, and fi nancially sustainable. These are the New Urbanism and cohousing movements. I will suggest that they are both utopian but that they exhibit subtly different kinds of utopian impulse. As a political theorist, I am especially interested in exploring questions of power and authorship, influence, distribution of goods and resources, and decision making. I probe these concerns by asking, “Whose utopia is this?”

2. ARCHITECTURE AND UTOPIA Within the specialist field of utopian studies, the terms “utopia” and “utopianism” are employed in quite specific ways to identify a radical and distinctive way of approaching the social and political worlds. In the following discussion, I shall use the term “utopianism” to refer to a phenomenon that is said by some (Sargent, 2010) to be observable across all human societies and by others (Bloch, 1986) to be a core human impulse. At the core of utopianism lies a double strand of criticism and creativity, bound by a desire for a better future. Utopianism criticizes the present and creates pictures of better alternatives. It articulates the dreams and nightmares that we hold about the future (Sargent, 1994). Utopian thinkers look at the present, say “this is wrong,” and proceed to extrapolate from their analysis to imagine

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

227

alternatives. Utopianism, then, is born of discontent and articulates what Ruth Levitas (1990) calls the desire for a better way of being. Some architecture is explicitly utopian in all of these senses. Some architects are driven by a critical view of the world around them and try to realize a vision of a better society through their work. A classic example is Le Corbusier, who claimed that he lived in an “age of greed” and sought, through architectural practice, to shape something better: The architect, through the ordonnance of forms, realizes an order that is a pure creation of his mind; through forms, he affects our senses intensely, provoking plastic emotions; through the relationships that he creates, he stirs in us deep resonances, he gives us the measure of an order that we sense to be in accord with that of the world, he determines the diverse moments of our minds and our hearts; it is then that we experience beauty. (Le Corbusier, 1923, p. 224) Some architecture is expressly political, engaging in debates about social and ecological deprivation, social justice, and the impact of cross-cutting cleavages such as class, race, and religion. Examples include Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city movement” (Howard, 2009) and Frank Lloyd Wright’s “organic architecture.” New Urbanism and cohousing have been selected for discussion in this chapter because they are contemporary exemplars of socially engaged architecture that holds a vision of both a better human society and a greener future. Neither is as radical or extraordinary as the examples mentioned above. But both are popular and growing. Perhaps, then, they offer attainable utopias?

3. NEW URBANISM The literature and rhetoric of New Urbanism is, I suggest, classically utopian. New Urbanist design principles stem from criticisms of their authors’ present. The architects and planners associated with this movement share a negative appraisal of contemporary architecture and planning. They identify urban sprawl and inner city degradation as causal features in the decline of modern communities and offer practical design solutions, rooted in a vision of a “better” way of living. They believe that most suburban life generates a fragmented society and is socially unsustainable (Katz, 1994, p. ix). The New Urban alternative lies in carefully planned and integrated “human-scale” settlements: New Urbanism promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities. These

228

Lucy Sargisson contain housing, work places, shops, entertainment, schools, parks, and civic facilities essential to the daily lives of the residents, all within easy walking distance of each other. (NewUrbanism.org, 2011)

New Urbanism looks backward (as well as forward) for inspiration. Its protagonists describe this movement as “drawing on what works” and “combining tradition with the technology and needs of the today’s world” (see Calthorpe, 1994; Duany & Plater Zyberk, 1994). There is often an “old fashioned” feel to New Urban settlements because they advocate the use of vernacular style (because it suits the context). The architects describe the commission for the New Urbanist settlement of Seaside, Florida, as follows: The program for Seaside was originally conceived to approximate the scale and character of historic Southern towns. The Seaside plan proposes traditional American settlement patterns as an alternative to contemporary methods of real estate development. (Duany and PlaterZyberk & Company, 2008) I propose to develop this discussion through a brief consideration of two New Urbanist towns. These are Poundbury Village in Dorset (UK) and the abovementioned Seaside in Florida (United States). Poundbury is a town expansion scheme, designed to house 5,000 people in a compact, pedestrian-scaled “urban village” (BBC Dorset, 2007). Development began in the 1990s and is due for completion in 2025. The settlement contains homes, schools, shops and other commercial premises, public buildings, and light industries. Houses are clustered around shared courtyards (BBC Dorset, 2008). In Phase One of the development, materials were locally sourced (as far as possible) and local tradespeople were employed. Seaside is a village-scaled settlement of approximately 500 residential dwellings and 76 commercial units on 80 acres of land in northwest Florida. Seaside is a new town, built between 1982 and 2011. By American standards, it has narrower-than-usual streets and smaller-than-usual houses built close to the street-edge of the lot, both of which produce higher-than-usual density and pedestrian-scale living. Following the traditional vernacular style of the region, most homes are built from wood with large roofs overhanging external balconies. These settlements have been deigned to pattern life along a vision of a good and “green” society, which involves living in a high-specification building constructed of local materials by local crafts- and tradespeople. These buildings are located on sites designed to make it easy to walk to and from work or school, greeting neighbors along the way. The designers of Poundbury paid attention to the local economy and the site contains potential workplaces in the leisure, commerce, and light industry sectors. When I started asking the question “Whose utopia is this?” it quickly became clear that there were two key sets of people who own the vision

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

229

Figure 13.1 View from Poundbury. Artist: D. Larrassey.

of New Urbanism. The fi rst are the architects. New Urbanists believe that their approach to town design makes the world a better place. Residents are happier, businesses and developers profit, and “the sum of human happiness increases because of New Urbanism” (Andres Duany quoted at NewUrbanism.org, 2011). They also believe that their approach offers a solution to the mistakes of modernism: Humanity lives by trial and error, sometimes committing errors of monumental scale. Architectural and urbanist modernism belong—like communism—to a class of errors from which there is little or nothing to learn or gain. They are ideologies which literally blind even the most intelligent and sensitive people to unacceptable wastes, risks, and dangers. Modernism’s fundamental error, however, is to propose itself as a universal (i.e. unavoidable and necessary) phenomenon, legitimately replacing and excluding traditional solutions. Thank God there are, through the applications of New Urbanism in the last 20 years, enough positive experiences worldwide to see a massive return to commonsense solutions. (Krier, 2001) This statement is from the architect Leon Krier, who was involved in the design of both Seaside and Poundbury. New Urbanism does not have a single, universal, static blueprint for all situations, but it is nonetheless utopian. It stems from a comprehensive negative appraisal of the present: it offers a critique of modernist architecture (disastrous), urban sprawl (“bad for our health”; NewUrbanism.org, 2011), and high-rise living (“Completely

230 Lucy Sargisson infantile and idiotic ideas. Disaster projects. Something quite vile”; Krier, 2006). Moreover, New Urbanists believe that they can make the world a better place: New Urbanism is the most important planning movement this century, and is about creating a better future for us all. It is an international movement to reform the design of the built environment, and is about raising our quality of life and standard of living by creating better places to live. New Urbanism is the revival of our lost art of placemaking, and is essentially a re-ordering of the built environment into the form of complete cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods—the way communities have been built for centuries around the world. New Urbanism involves fi xing and infi lling cities, as well as the creation of compact new towns and villages. (NewUrbanism.org, 2011) New Urbanism works through a set of guiding principles that include environmental sustainability, pedestrian scale, good connectivity and smart transport systems, diverse mixed use (i.e., no zoning), mixed housing, high-

Figure 13.2 View from Seaside. Artist: D. Larrassey.

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

231

quality architecture and design for traditional neighborhood structures, high-density living, and high quality of life (CNU, 2011; NewUrbanism. org., 2011). It is clear that Seaside and Poundbury are both realized New Urbanist projects. They are, I suggest, exemplars of practical utopian projects, carefully designed to fit their locales and work harmoniously with the local styles and traditions. They are designed for the kind of high-density urban life depicted by New Urbanists; they are “walkable” settlements in which the workplace is within easy reach, as are shops, commerce, and leisure facilities. However, neither would exist without the will, influence, and resources of two patrons and I want to turn to them next. Seaside and Poundbury are both new-build developments, created on undeveloped land owned by single proprietors. Seaside was created on almost “empty” beach frontage owned by Robert Davis, and Poundbury was built on semirural land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall (Duchy of Cornwall 2006a,b). They may be New Urbanist utopias but they also reflect the will of two powerful men: Robert Davis and Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. Each of these men has exerted significant influence on the creation of these towns, and their visions are significant to our story. The idea of Seaside started with the holiday memories of Robert Davis. His family owned the land (an 80-acre area of beach and frontage in northwest Florida) and had used it a family holiday destination since 1946. Davis wanted to recreate the kind of place in which he had enjoyed happy family vacations as a child. The town website combines a nostalgic text with beautifully shot images of the photogenic village of Seaside. It evokes a town of happy (white), (nuclear) families playing and living by the beach: “Time was, families coming to the beach stayed in simple cottages . . . in beach towns where porch-sitting and strolling were activities at least as important as swimming and sunbathing” (Seaside, 2011). This is a vision of an ideal society that harks back to a golden age. It is deeply nostalgic for an idealized past, tinted with the golden haze of memory. It is a utopia of leisure, a dream of escape, and is modeled on selective and idealized memories. Poundbury’s origins also lie in the dreams of one man. Charles, Prince of Wales, fi rst in line for the British throne, has the self-declared mission in life “to do all he can to use his unique position to make a difference for the better in the United Kingdom and internationally” (Prince of Wales, 2011). The Prince is a well-known critic of modern architecture and, in an unusual move for the British monarchy, he participated in a television program, A Vision of Britain (Prince of Wales, 1988), that offered a critique of modern planning and architecture and a vision of an alternative way forward.1 Modern architecture is “wanton destruction,” ugly, mediocre and has “spawned deformed monsters which have come to haunt our towns and cities, our villages and countryside” (Prince of Wales, 1989, p. 7). In place of these monstrosities, he provided ten principles of good design. These include place (respecting what already exists: the land), hierarchy (building

232 Lucy Sargisson size reflects public significance), scale (an emphasis on human proportions), harmony (between and amongst buildings and place), and community (the idea that the users of buildings have something to say about their design) (Prince of Wales, 1989, pp. 76–97). 2

3.1 What Kind of Utopianism Is This? New Urbanism is a utopian movement: it clearly stems from dissatisfaction with the present and clearly believes that the world would be a better place if only New Urbanist principles were more widely applied. However, it is not grounded in a universalist, static, “once-and-for-all,” totalizing utopianism. It works through careful observation of context and offers different solutions for different contexts—a glance at the town websites of Poundbury and Seaside will illustrate this. These towns look distinctive. The utopianism that drives New Urbanism does not impose a single blueprint onto the world, nor does it treat the places as blank canvases. Rather it is flexible, adaptive, pragmatic, and seeks to maintain diversity. This all sounds very benign, but New Urbanism is not a grassroots movement. Rather, it is a form of paternalist utopianism, in which the vision of a better society flows from the landowners and architects and not from the residents. This is a form of utopianism in which the vision of one person (such as the Prince of Wales or Robert Davis) is imposed on a physical space and realized. In these cases, the dream is shaped by experts (architects) who engage in a form of practical utopianism, attempting to realize a (New Urbanist) vision of the good life in lived time and space. I now propose to consider a form of architecture in which the vision flows in a different direction, where residents play a large role in the design of their community. There are a number of different approaches in which this practice occurs. These include “community architecture” (Towers, 1995; Wates & Knevitt, 1987) and “consensus design” (Day & Parnell, 2002). The example I have chosen is cohousing.

4. COHOUSING Cohousing has its roots in Scandinavia and has spread to become a worldwide movement—in February 2011, for example, the Federation of Intentional Communities listed 463 existing communities in its international directory that identify with cohousing principles. 3 In 2011, individual communities existed on all continents, and national cohousing associations existed in Spain, France, Italy, Denmark,4 Sweden, Holland, North America (the United States and Canada), New Zealand, and Australia. Advocates of cohousing are utopian in a classical sense: They offer criticisms of the present and designs for a better future. They are critical of many aspects of modern daily life and other (conventional) forms

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

233

of housing, variously described as wasteful, (socially and environmentally) unsustainable, and alienating (Meltzer, 2005). My own research5 suggests high levels of cohesion when it comes to social criticism. Cohousing advocates say that there is something wrong with modern urban design, as it creates bad communities and unhappy people: Modern life means neighbours often don’t recognise each other and day-to-day collaboration is minimal. Research has shown that 65% of people have nobody with whom they can co-operate in their daily lives and 84% don’t have close relationships with their neighbours. One in three people live alone, rising to 44% of older women. When people are asked what concerns them most about the area they live, they highlight crime and antisocial behaviour, dirty streets, neglected open spaces, lighting and lack of facilities for young people. (UK Cohousing Network, 2008, p. 3) This statement depicts urban life as alienated, unneighborly, and making inefficient use of social resources and human potential. This is the social world that cohousing practitioners seek to improve. These broad sentiments are echoed in the public statements of the raison d’être of individual communities. Here are three examples: Over the past few decades many changes have taken place in our society. One of the results is that a growing number of people now fi nd that the available housing fails to meet their needs. Household sizes have dropped, housing costs are escalating, and a multitude of people— single, elderly, single parent and blended families—are trying to live in housing created for the traditional 1950s family. Families and couples, too, are fi nding themselves isolated, having to make appointments to visit friends, and taxi children about in heavy traffic. In addition the nature of work is changing, as is our concern for the environment. (Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood, 2007) [Cohousing] attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no one knows their neighbors, and there is no sense of community. (Sonora Cohousing, 2010.) Begun in Denmark, cohousing is a remarkable way to have fuller lives, a conscious effort to break the isolation that has become the hallmark of so many American neighbourhoods. (Puget Ridge Cohousing, n.d.) These extracts suggest a problem of social isolation—a situation in which neighbors are unfamiliar with each other and people have few close relationships in their immediate location. Other people who live in the district are strangers, regarded with mistrust and suspicion. Public spaces become

234

Lucy Sargisson

associated with violence and fear. There is little (or no) cooperation or civic responsibility and few opportunities for these to develop. There is, in short, no sense of collective belonging or “community.” Instead, there are atomized (fearful) individual residents. There is also high-profile antisocial behavior, neglected public spaces, and disaffected youth. This, they suggest, is both undesirable and unsustainable. In contrast, cohousing communities seek to offer viable alternatives and claim to “stand as innovative answers to today’s environmental and social problems” (Cohousing Association of the United States, n.d.) They offer a solution, a model for the organization of domestic life. All cohousing communities are different, but they tend to share certain features. The fi rst is a mixture of shared and private space. Cohousing communities typically contain some shared (and collectively owned) facilities, but homes are individually owned (i.e., not communal). This is often accompanied by a mixture of owner-occupied and rented homes. Private dwellings include single-household or shared living units—these may be houses, flats, or apartments—and examples of shared facilities include a community house, kitchen, laundry, library, swimming pool, workshops, and/or social spaces. Most purpose-built cohousing settlements collectively own an area of landscaped grounds. Homes are generally compact and these are relatively high-density settlements. A second feature of cohousing, and the most significant for our purposes, is the role played by residents in designing the community. Practitioners describe this as follows: • Participatory Process Residents participate in the planning and design of the development so that it directly responds to their needs. . . . • Complete Resident Management Residents take complete responsibility for on-going management, organizing cooperatively to meet their changing needs. • Non-Hierarchical Structure While there are leadership roles, responsibility for the decisions are [sic] shared by the community’s adults. (McCamant and Durrett Architects, 2012) Community members collaborate with the architects to design the physical layout of their community. They also design the rules that govern this space, which in turn shapes their own behavior in the community. Participation is an essential component of cohousing and all members share responsibility for the organization and management of their community. A third defi ning feature of cohousing is the emphasis on community. To live in a cohousing settlement involves something more than the purchase of a property or the acquisition of a lease. All cohousing groups have community agreements, rules, and/or codes of practice. These include things

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

235

like a commitment to work for the group for a given number of hours per month (e.g., cooking community meals, babysitting, shopping, or working on maintenance). All of these rules and commitments are designed to encourage community interaction and cohesion: Cohousing residents comprise an intentional community. They choose to live together and to share property and resources. They develop a rich social life that includes regular shared meals. They aspire to meaningful social relations and a “strong sense of community.” (Meltzer, 2005) The design of these communities is hugely consequential and shapes the cohousing experience. This includes factors such as the layout of roads, paths, and outdoor space (e.g., gardens, orchards, and play areas) and the location of parking areas, homes, community buildings, and other premises. It also includes the construction of the actual buildings (choosing materials such as wood, straw-bale, rammed earth, or brick), layout (i.e., number of stories, number of rooms per home, and directional orientation of rooms), and heating (e.g., passive solar, solar thermal panel, or ground-source heat pump). All of these factors have an impact: Residents have many opportunities to meet one another while they’re getting their mail at the common house, strolling on the pedestrian walkway on which the houses all front, playing outdoors with their kids or their dogs, or walking to their cars. Because the center of the community is a pedestrian area, kids have a safe place to play away from cars. (Shadow Lake Village, 2010) New-built settlements tend to share certain physical and architectural features and traits. First, homes are often clustered around common spaces, such as garden, orchard, or “village green.” This addresses issues of quality of life, allowing all residents the pleasure not only of owning open space but also of seeing this from their homes. It also addresses issues of antisocial behavior, coopting the logic of the panopticon and permitting casual surveillance of this space by all neighbors. Second, domestic units (i.e., houses and flats) tend to be small in cohousing settlements. This is deliberate. It is argued that because they share common facilities, households need less private space in cohousing than in other housing projects (McCamant and Durrett, 1988). Residents have rights of access and use to shared functional and leisure facilities (e.g., laundries and gardens) and do not need large homes. They are thus encouraged, by push and pull factors, to spend less time alone in their homes and more in semipublic spaces (e.g., community library, pool, or gym) (Williams, 2005a). Third, these are highly pedestrianized spaces. Most have a common parking area (close to the most public edge of the collectively owned space) and footpaths that lead residents past

236

Lucy Sargisson

each other’s homes, which are adjacent to wide walkways. People walk to and from the parking areas, meeting each other along the way. These are just three examples of physical design features that facilitate interaction within cohousing communities, manipulating human activity through the organization of space. These communities seems to have positive outcomes and the efficacy and impact of architectural design are their most studied aspects (see, e.g., Marcus & Dovey, 1991; Marcus & Sarkissan, 1986; Williams, 2005a,b). For members, the social aspect of the community is often more noteworthy than its architectural design, and this is perhaps one of the great successes of this form of architecture: It works so well that its users notice the outcomes of the physical design without remarking on the fact. Members often say that their way of life is an improvement on life before they joined the community: Cohousing provides personal privacy combined with the benefits of living in a community where people know and interact with their neighbours. It’s about living in a way that’s responsive to a world that has changed dramatically in the last fifty years—a world in which the home life has changed, women are integral in the labour force, resource limitations and environmental concerns are on the rise, and many people feel over extended. Cohousing offers hope in our often dissociated society. Through cohousing, we can build a better place to live, a place where we know our neighbours, a place where we can enjoy a rich sense of community and contribute to a more sustainable world. (Canadian Cohousing, 2004) When I asked “Whose utopia is this?” of cohousing, two groups emerged: the architects and the residents of cohousing communities. Architects have inspired and led the movement from its very beginnings. Individual architects wrote key texts that inspired and popularized the movement; examples include Jan Gudmand-Høyer (1968), author of the seminal article “The Missing Link between Utopia and the Dated One-Family House,” and Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, authors of Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (1988). Moreover, practicing architects have designed cohousing communities. For example, Durrett and McCamant’s fi rm The Cohousing Company has established what has become known as “the American model” in which a commercial company6 acts as facilitator for prospective cohousing groups: McCamant & Durrett Architects offers workshops for cohousing groups to help determine the feasibility of a site, establish design priorities, build group consensus, determine what the community needs in a common house, and overall plan for project success. (McCamant & Durrett, 2009)

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

237

In this model, the specialists guide the would-be residents through each step of the process. The experts share their knowledge with or sell it to potential users. Users play an important role, even in this process: Cohousing is deeply participatory at the levels of community inception, design, and management. Residents can be said, in this form of architectural utopianism, to “own” the utopia at a number of levels. Notably, the first generation of residents codesign the community with the architects. This can be a lengthy process, taking years as members work together on practical issues (e.g., raising the money for land purchase, selecting an architect, and locating a plot) and issues of principle and ethos (Why are we doing this? What do we seek to achieve? What are our core values?). This all involves considerable commitment form members. Multiple meetings, disagreements, conflicts, and negotiations are necessary, and most groups exist for years before the site is purchased and the project designed. In most groups, the processes that guide collective life (e.g., decision-making and allocation of work and responsibility) mirror their ethos. Values are thus reinforced through daily practice. Examples of this can be viewed in short videos from a new cohousing community in Lancaster, England (Lancaster Cohousing, 2012). These short films provide an indication of the high levels of detail that are involved in planning these projects. The relationship between means and ends is important in utopian experiments and affects their chances for success. No utopian experiment works perfectly for all participants all of the time, but cohousing does seem to work. Evaluative studies by researchers in urban planning, sociology, political science, and architecture all suggest that cohousing has a positive impact on its practitioners and facilitates “better communities.” For example, Lisa Poley and Max Stephenson (2007) have investigated civic engagement, social capital, and democratic capacity building in North American cohousing groups. Their study suggests that cohousing communities achieve at least some of their aims. Drawing on a large national benchmark survey of civic engagement,7 Poley and Stephenson concluded that members of cohousing groups substantially “exceeded the national average” in civic participation8 within and beyond their immediate community. The large survey was supplemented by fieldwork in three case studies and reported “increased social interaction and cohesion, increased feelings of trust toward neighbors and high levels of support and reciprocity at the level of neighborhood as a result of living in a cohousing development” (Poley and Stephenson, 2007, p. 16). A number of key features recur in interviews with and public statements from members about their lives in cohousing. These include an increased sense of wellbeing, happiness, or satisfaction with their quality of life, pleasure about their reduced impact on the environment, and celebration of an increased sense of community. The latter involves greater involvement in the lives of neighbors (with well-protected privacy), shared responsibility for decisions that affect the group, and collective autonomy:

238

Lucy Sargisson [Silver Sage] offers a real opportunity to be on a journey through the aging process into the third, fourth and fi nal stages of life with people who are aware of what’s happening to them, who are living intentionally, who are working to fi nd creative and new ways of caring for our bodies and our minds and our spirits and each other. (Silver Sage Cohousing, 2011) It brings more meaning to my life. I share leadership of this community with 25 other adults, and we learn from each other and our 12 children constantly. . . . It’s fun. . . . It conserves resources and preserves natural spaces. (Ragland, 2008) My home [at Songaia Community] is about 1,100 square feet, but I share a common house (about 4,000 square feet), a barn (about 6,000 square feet), a few other outbuildings, a huge organic garden, an orchard, a forest, and a meadow. We share five meals per week in our common house, which means neither my wife nor I spend our time cooking or cleaning as much as we did before moving into cohousing. Our homes are all clustered on about two acres of those 11 acres . . . this means that there is lots of open, green space—you know, the part of the earth that produces oxygen and allows non-human life . . . to thrive. (Ragland, 2008)

4.1 What Kind of Utopianism Is This? Cohousing communities embody a kind of egalitarian utopianism. They are designed to create certain social outcomes. The nature of these outcomes is derived from a critical perspective on contemporary living arrangements. Silver Sage Community evoked the phrase “to live one’s best life” and the members of these communities have taken steps to live in a context that is appropriate to their vision of a good life. They seek to live in a more neighborly fashion, in community (but not communally), to develop a nurturing local environment, and often to live in a more ecologically sustainable fashion. Members share a criticism of their wider societies, or at least one aspect of it, and have sought to imagine and create a better alternative. However, while to “live one’s best life” may be a utopian aspiration, it is not necessarily one that seeks widespread social change. Cohousing offers its members a better life within mainstream society. Many groups aspire to have an impact beyond the boundary of their own settlements. Cohousing does not necessarily challenge the roots of society, however, and most cohousing groups are not socially or politically radical (see Sargisson, 2012). It improves life for its members but does not necessarily form part of a wider agenda for social, political, ideological, or economic change. Cohousing focuses on one aspect of life, the household, and leaves wider politics alone.

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

239

5. CONCLUSIONS In this chapter I have considered two architectural approaches that aim for a greener future. Both exemplify a trend towards flexible modeling that is attentive to place and also to the needs and desires of its users (Edwards, 2001). New Urbanism and cohousing architects offer flexible “models” consisting of sets of principles and guiding values rather than a single “onesize-fits-all” universal blueprint. Dennis Hardy, a significant figure within the fields of urban and utopian studies,9 lived at Poundbury for a time. He rejects the idea that it could be replicated in other English towns but suggests that it offers transferable lessons nonetheless: “As a possible model for others, not for replication but as a source of principles, the experience of Poundbury suggests a number of important elements that may be essential if a scheme is going to go beyond convention: inspirational leadership, planning at all levels, attention to detail, good stewardship and freedom to experiment” (Hardy, 2006, p. 162). Cohousing is similarly flexible, as it is not an invariable template but is guided by a set of principles. One of its core features is a commitment to resident participation. This extends to community design, which includes the design of physical space with the intention of maximizing social interaction (and privacy), and also the design of rules that apply to that space. The fi rst generation of members has an enormous commitment to the community, working together for years to form the idea and every aspect of its realization. Subsequent generations of members participate in revising the community’s internal codes and rules and in the day-to-day management of the community. This makes cohousing the more egalitarian and socially participative of the models discussed today. The discussions in this chapter have revealed two subtly different kinds of utopian impulse. One is paternalistic, the other democratic. They are distinguished by the origin and direction of the utopian vision, the power to realize this vision, different attitudes to the act of design, and/or different attitudes to place and users. In New Urbanism, the vision flows from the landowners and the architects; in cohousing, it flows from collaboration between the group who will live in the community and the architects. The power to realize these visions lies in fi nancial resources and influence. Prince Charles and Robert Davis both have access to the funds and influence that enable the realization of a grand vision. Advocates of both New Urbanism and cohousing depict architecture and urban design as ways of enabling people to live better lives, develop better communities, and perhaps become better citizens. The former provides designed spaces in which residents can begin their “greener” lives. The latter requires residents to contemplate the design themselves. Both appear to have efficacy, but cohousing, although it represents the longer and harder road, produces more robust communities in which residents own the vision and the process that shape their greener lives.

240

Lucy Sargisson

NOTES 1. The content of this program was published as a book authored by the Prince of Wales (1989), A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture. 2. Other principles are enclosure (provision of spaces for the public to meet), materials (local where possible), decoration (attention to detail), art (creating unique things of beauty), and signs and lights (street furniture should be beautiful and non-invasive) (Prince of Wales, 1989, pp. 86–95). 3. More than three times as many were listed as “forming.” 4. Approximately 1% of the Danish population (roughly 50,000 people) lives in cohousing. 5. This consists of limited fieldwork (in just two communities) and extensive scrutiny of the primary sources (e.g., documents, leaflets, and websites) produced by 50 communities. 6. Nonprofit organizations also offer facilitation services; these are also effective but slower. 7. Saguaro Seminar, Social capital national benchmark survey, 2000–2006 (see Harvard Kennedy School, 2012; Poley and Stephenson, 2007). 8. Proxy measures for this were: volunteered time, work on a community project, service as officer or committee member of a local organization, attendance at public meetings, donations to charity, blood donation, registration to vote, claim to be interested in national affairs, and attendance of a rally or protest (Poley and Stephenson, 2007, p. 15; see also Williams, 2005b). 9. Hardy is a Professor of Urban Planning who has pioneered work on space, communities, and utopianism.

REFERENCES BBC Dorset. (2007). Local history: Poundbury. Retrieved from http://www.bbc. co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2007/12/11/poundbury_feature.shtml BBC Dorset. (2008). Local history: Around Poundbury (photo gallery). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/image_galleries/poundbury_gallery. shtml Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope (Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, & Paul Knight, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. (Originally written 1938–1947; revised 1953, 1959) Calthorpe, P. (1994). The region. In P. Katz (Ed.), The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community (pp. xi-xvii). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Canadian Cohousing. (2004). What is cohousing? Retrieved from http://www. cohousing.ca/whatis.htm Cohousing Association of the United States. (n.d.). Home page. Retrieved from http://www.cohousing.org Congress for New Urbanism (CNU). (2011). Home page. Retrieved from http:// www.cnu.org/ Day, C., & Parnell, R. (2002). Consensus design: Socially inclusive process. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Architectural Press. Duany, A., & Plater-Zyberk, E. (1994). The neighbourhood: The district and the corridor. In P. Katz (Ed.), The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community (pp. xvii–xxi). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Duany and Plater-Zyberk & Company. (2008). Projects. Retrieved from http:// www.dpz.com/projects.aspx

Utopianism in the Architecture of New Urbanism

241

Duchy of Cornwall. (2006a). Design & development: Poundbury. Retrieved from http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/designanddevelopment_poundbury.htm Duchy of Cornwall. (2006b). Design & development: The masterplan. Retrieved from http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/designanddevelopment_poundbury_ masterplan.htm Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood. (2007). Principles. Retrieved from http://www. earthsong.org.nz/infobook/principles.html Edwards, B. (Ed.). (2001). Green architecture. London, UK: Wiley. Gudmand-Høyer, J. (1968). Det manglende led mellem utopi og det foraeldede en familiehus. Information, 26 June. Hardy, D. (2006). Poundbury: The town that Charles built. London, UK: Town and Country Planning Association. Harvard Kennedy School. (2012). The Saguaro seminar: Civic engagement in America—Social capital measurement overview. Retrieved from http://www. hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/measurement/measurement.htm Howard, E. (2009). Garden cities of tomorrow. Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press. (Original work published 1898) Katz, P. (1994). Preface. In P. Katz (Ed.), The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community (ix–x). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Krier, L. (2001). The future of cities: An interview of Nikos Salingaros with Léon Krier. Retrieved from http://luciensteil.tripod.com/katarxis02–1/id23.html Krier, L. (2006, 28 June). Interview: The godfather of urban soul (interviewed by Peter Hetherington). The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian. co.uk/society/2006/jun/28/communities.guardiansocietysupplement Lancaster Cohousing. (2012). About us: Videos and photo galleries. Retrieved from http://www.lancastercohousing.org.uk/About/Videos Le Corbusier, C.-É. J. (1923). Toward an architecture. In A. Danchev (Ed.), 100 artists’ manifestos: From the futurists to the Stuckists (pp. 223–229). London, UK: Penguin. Levitas, R. (1990). The concept of utopia. Hemel Hempstead, UK: Philip Allen. Marcus, C., & Dovey, K. (1991). Cohousing: An option for the 1990s. Progressive Architecture, 6, 112–113. Marcus, C.C., & Sarkissan, W. (1986). Housing as if people mattered: Site design guidelines for medium-density family housing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. McCamant, K., & Durrett, C. (1988). Cohousing: A contemporary approach to housing ourselves. Berkley, CA: Ten Speed Press. McCamant, K., & Durrett, C. (2009). Homepage. Retrieved from http://www. cohousingco.com/. McCamant and Durrett Architects. (2012). Cohousing communities: Characteristics of cohousing communities. Retrieved from http://www.mccamant-durrett. com/characteristics.cfm Meltzer, G. (2005). Sustainable community: Learning from the cohousing model. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing. NewUrbanism.org. (2011). New urbanism: Creating Livable Sustainable Communities. Retrieved from http://www.newurbanism.org/ Poley, L., & Stephenson, M. (2007, August). Community, trust, and the habits of democratic citizenship: An investigation into social capital and civic engagement in US cohousing neighborhoods. Paper presented at the 103rd annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. Quoted with the authors’ permission. Prince of Wales. (1988). A Vision of Britain [documentary fi lm]. London, UK: BBC1.

242

Lucy Sargisson

Prince of Wales. (1989). A vision of Britain: A personal view of architecture. London, UK: Doubleday. Prince of Wales. (2011). Personal profi les. Retrieved from http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/personalprofi les/theprinceofwales Puget Ridge Cohousing. (2010). Home page. Retrieved from http://www.pugetridge.net Ragland, C. (2008, 30 May). Cohousing offers opportunities for boomer (interview by Rita Robinson). Seattle PI. Retrieved from http://blog.seattlepi.com/ boomerconsumer/2008/05/30/cohousing-offers-opportunities-for-boomers/ Sargent, L.T. (1994). Three faces of utopianism revisited. Utopian Studies, 5(1), 1–37. Sargent, L.T. (2010). Colonial and postcolonial utopias. In G. Claeys (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to utopian literature (pp. 200–222). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sargisson, L. (2012). Second-wave cohousing: A modern utopia? Utopian Studies, 21, 28–57. Seaside. (2011). Community history. Retrieved from http://sowal.com/the-storyof-seaside-florida Shadow Lake Village. (2010). Our history. Retrieved from http://www.shadowlakevillage.org Silver Sage Cohousing. (2011). Silver Sage [video]. Retrieved from http://www.silversagevillage.com/_movie/SilverSage.mov Sonora Cohousing. (2010). About us. Retrieved from http://sonoracoho.com/ about_us Towers, G. (1995). Building democracy: Community architecture in the inner cities. London, UK: UCL Press. UK Cohousing Network. (2008) Building a sustainable society one neighborhood at a time: Annual report 2008. Available from http://www.cohousing.org.uk/ fi les/CfS4.pdf Wates, N., & Knevitt, C. (1987). Community architecture: How people are creating their own environment. London, UK: Penguin. Williams, J. (2005a). Designing neighbourhoods for social interaction: The case of cohousing. Journal of Urban Design, 10, 195–227. Williams, J. (2005b). Sun, surf and sustainable housing—Cohousing, the Californian experience. International Planning Studies, 10, 145–177.

14 Transition Delayed The 1980s Ecotopia of a Decentralized Renewable Energy System Martin Hultman

1. ECOTOPIA REVISITED This essay deals with the practice of ecotopias (Kumar, 1987, 1991; Veldman, 1994). The study of utopias has quite recently shifted from purely literary studies of ideal cities to include more sociologically inspired analyses of various visions of the future reflected in science fiction, movies, the media, foresight studies, forecast reports, governmental investigations, and models of the future (Kumar, 1991; Parrinder, 2000; Sargisson, 2012). In attempting to understand these utopias, the focus is on comprehending descriptions of future human communities in which confl ict is absent, descriptions that attract supporters by using scientific terminology, invoking logical necessity, and making emotional appeals (Manuel & Manuel, 1979, p. 29; see also Goodwin, 1978; Kumar, 1991; Marin, 1993). The need to shift energy and transport systems towards climate neutrality is thoroughly discussed in current environmental policy debate. With climate change and peak oil on the agenda, shortcuts are no longer available if we are to take care of ourselves and our world. Research papers and reports cite many examples of transitional projects, both concrete and hypothetical, as possible ways forward. Ideas and practical examples of decentralized, renewable energy systems, closed-loop biogas systems, ecovillages, and localized food chains are offered (Bailey & Wilson, 2009; Brangwyn & Hopkins, 2008; Bulkeley, 2005; Darley, Room, & Rich, 2006; Davies, 2002). But with the 1980 referendum on nuclear power, inhabitants in Sweden had already voted to reorient the entire energy system in line with current ideas of transition towards a renewable, decentralized, and small-scale energy network. The emphasis on large-scale, centralized organization fell out of favor due to natural resource concerns, health risks, and pollution. A totally different energy system was envisioned for Sweden. An ecological discourse was established in which energy demand would be met through distributed renewable energy resources and local production. A preference for local democracy and a call for reduced consumption were also included in the discourse (Hultman, 2010; Lindquist, 1997).

244 Martin Hultman Despite the outcome of the 1980 referendum and the change that seemed on its way at the time, Sweden today still relies on fossil fuels and nuclear power for 60% of its overall energy use. Progress was delayed because the eco-modern discourse became mainstream in energy and environmental politics in the 1990s and, in fact, still dominates the field, providing guidance on how to think and act. Initiated in late 1980s, becoming even more influential after the Rio meeting of 1992, the eco-modern discourse emphasized market solutions and green consumerism, transformed the role of nation-state into that of a green technology growth incubator and guided social movements towards applying collaborative approaches. All of this brought changing discursive practices and emerging new ideologies (Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000) as well as shifting the focus from systematic energy system change to emission control (Hultman, 2010). This change happened in various countries, such as Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany, as documented by Hajer (1997), Spaargaren (2000), and Mol (2001). History could have taken a different course. The ecotopias of the 1980s, exemplified by the WELGAS project, which we will examine here, could have become today’s norms and be understood as forerunners, not naïve attempts to alter societal use of energy. This historical research closely examines the practice of one ecotopia and discusses the struggle regarding the future of the energy system, a key political issue in the 1980s. The aim is to demonstrate how potentially transitional ecotopian visions and practices interacted with Swedish energy and environmental politics. The WELGAS project, which was part of this ecotopian drive, sought to construct a small-scale energy system based on renewable, decentralized technologies (“Epokgörande uppfi nning,” 1980). It was not created by some obscure innovator on the political margins. The present chapter should be understood as a case study that identifies vital aspects of the overall development of Swedish energy and environmental policy at the time. WELGAS was actually hailed by leading environmentalists such as Rolf Edberg, Social Democrat and internationally acknowledged environmental pioneer, who published two letters to the editor in Arbetet urging “progressive politicians” to consider WELGAS for clues as to how to save human civilization from destruction (Edberg, 1987a,b; see also Edberg 1989). WELGAS was also portrayed as a prototype for the future in Centre Party and Green Party petitions as well as by influential politicians. WELGAS even attracted international interest in the form of journal articles (“Autark mit,” 1986; Lutterbeck, 1986). This case study of WELGAS is based on three types of materials: fi rst, publicly available reports, journal articles, mass media texts, and petitions collected via database searches; second, an abundance of uncategorized archival material, including minutes, contracts, personal letters, personal notes, information materials, and reports, preserved by the community housing company of Härnösand; and, third, one interview with WELGAS

Transition Delayed

245

initiators Olof and Inga Tegström complemented with written materials from their personal archives.1

2. INTRODUCING WELGAS During a stay in Mexico in 1980, Olof Tegström saw a program on television showing how people drove cars and used gas cookers powered by hydrogen in the American town of Provo, Utah (Stepler, 1978). At this time in his life, Tegström was an experienced innovator, entrepreneur, and environmentalist. He had worked in research and development at Ericsson phone systems and with analogue control systems for trams at Hägglund & Sons until 1966, when he started his own engineering business, TEBETRON. This fi rm undertook various research and development projects, primarily in the Swedish and international sawmill industries, and Tegström became well regarded for his work in northern Sweden. He was also influenced by the environmental movement and its systemic critique of society, which were gaining in popularity at the time. Tegström joined the Green Party at its formation in 1981, after the Swedish nuclear power referendum mentioned above. In mid 1983, Tegström was told via his political connections that there were opportunities to propose projects for the city of Härnösand’s 400th anniversary celebration (Håkansson, 1987; Tegström & Tegström, 2008). He submitted his proposal for WELGAS, which included three energy transformations that would be made possible using four key technologies. First, a wind turbine collected kinetic energy and transformed it into electrical energy. Second, the electrical energy was then transformed into hydrogen using a reversible fuel cell that also functioned as an electrolyzer. Third, the hydrogen was then converted by combustion into kinetic energy in a car and heat by an oven in a house. Härnösand’s anniversary committee supported the proposal, giving the project needed legitimacy. A feasibility group was later formed to realize the project (Håkansson, 1987; Tegström & Tegström, 2008). In January 1983, the group of actors who would later become very influential in implementing WELGAS met in Härnösand for the fi rst time. In the following months, this group developed a concept that included the reasons for the project, background information on previous hydrogen projects, and a timetable for implementation. All this was summarized as leading the way towards “the start of an ecological society” (Hydrogen Organization, 1985). 2 The fundamental idea of an ecological society was highly influential at the beginning of the WELGAS project, and plans for the project house included a greenhouse, composting, a root cellar, and waste recycling (Tegström et. al. , 1983). The concept was later presented to the Härnösand city council and the council-owned Härnösandshus AB. The

246 Martin Hultman municipality decided to fi nancially guarantee the project and set aside money to conduct a feasibility study (Oscarsson & Helsing, 1984).

3. EXPLICIT CONFLICT BETWEEN SMALL/LARGE SCALE When given the go-ahead, the WELGAS project initiators tried to spread the word about the project as well as recruit new supporters. The engineering consultancy K-Konsult was assigned to lead the group, and Swedish experts in the field as well as potential sponsors were contacted. This expanded the feasibility study group but also created a schism within the newly composed group. Engineer Björn Örtenheim was appointed coordinator of the new organization and was responsible for issues such as the technical/economic evaluation, generator development, and creating a new system for the WELGAS house. Kjell Perneståhl from the Swedish nuclear energy research institute Studsvik was employed by state-owned energy company Vattenfall as an expert. Olsson and Anders Nyquist were the consultants from K-Konsult (Nyquist, 1983b). Parallel to this development, Tegström created his own WELGAS exhibition in an old school building in Vålanger, which also served as his family’s residence (Tegström, 1983). At this point the feasibility study group was fully operational and meetings took place every fortnight. In December 1983, the group met at Nyquist’s office at K-Konsult. All the group members were involved except for one key person: Tegström was not invited to this meeting, nor was he even notified of it. Perneståhl had instead created a new overall proposal for the project. In Perneståhl’s view, an energy system of the future had to be constructed on a different scale from WELGAS (Nyquist, 1983b; Eriksson, 1985). WELGAS still had a role to play, Perneståhl claimed, but that was only to test and evaluate the technology. Some turbulent weeks were now to follow in the WELGAS project, because of the exclusion of Tegström and the simultaneous attempt to reformulate WELGAS as only a test laboratory, not an ecotopia for the future. Örtenheim and Perneståhl together proposed a different system, which did not include wind power at all. Instead, they proposed the electrolyzer preferably use power from the main power system and charge the car directly (Nyquist, 1984; Perneståhl, 1984). According to Perneståhl, neither the Swedish National Board for Technical Development nor the National Energy Board would invest in WELGAS if it were set up with a wind turbine. A few weeks later, Tegström wrote a personal letter to the CEO of Härnösandshus AB in which he expressed his disappointment. This letter also alleged that the WELGAS project had been turned in “the wrong direction” (Tegström, 1984). Perneståhl and Örtenheim, for their part, wanted WELGAS to become part of official Swedish hydrogen research connected to the dominant energy and environmental policy. This research was dominated by Studsvik, which envisioned a large-scale nuclear system using

Transition Delayed

247

hydrogen as the energy carrier (Carleson, 1983). The second group, with Tegström as the central figure, wanted WELGAS to show how infrastructure could be changed to be based on renewable sources of energy in small-scale, decentralized networks. If driven by Studsvik, the project would only entail testing distinct hydrogen technologies (e.g., electrolyzers, hydride tanks, and hydrogen engines) separately from each other; if driven by Härnösand, with Härnösandshus AB as the principal and Tegström as the project coordinator, the project would showcase an entirely renewable system. The feasibility analysis was ready at the end of March 1984. The report began by stating that the WELGAS project was “an attempt to meet a family’s energy needs as a whole—that is, energy for heating, hot water, cooking, and running a fridge/freezer as well as fuel for the family car are to be seen as a system” (Oscarsson & Helsing, 1984, p. 5). Tegström’s vision of creating WELGAS as an overall concept was mobilized in favor of Perneståhl and Örtenheim’s perspective, whose report was placed as appendix; Perneståhl there emphasized the need to build very large-scale installations that “require the large-scale use of nuclear power” (Perneståhl, 1984, p. 15). For the time being, however, the small-scale renewable energy network and its proponents succeeded in keeping their ecotopia intact, temporarily deflecting the challenge from the advocates of a nationally centralized, large-scale nuclear-powered society.

4. BUILDING THE ECOLOGICAL FUTURE The summer came and went without any significant new developments, but in October 1984 the fi nal decision was made by the City of Härnösand and AB Härnösandshus to help set up WELGAS. Härnösand’s shared leadership, in form of its two mayors, Svante Adelhult (Centre Party) and Tord Oscarsson (Social Democratic Party), called a press conference to announce and promote the project. Many journalists attended, and they described the scheme as revolutionary and unique (Håkansson, 1984), a bold attempt to achieve the world’s fi rst zero-energy family (Thelberg, 1984). The unique project house, as described in the Swedish daily paper Expressen, would be “the fi rst fully self-sufficient house in Europe” (Damm, 1984). The vision of a decentralized society powered by renewable energy, which was an important starting point for the WELGAS project, emerged from the ecological discourse gaining ground in Sweden at this time (Hultman, 2010). In the 1980 referendum, the citizens of Sweden voted to reorient their energy system. The referendum had been preceded by in-depth debate in which citizens had participated in numerous study circles and mass media discussions, and energy issues were debated extensively in Parliament. The referendum sprang from insight into the increasingly urgent need to reduce dependence on oil due to reduced access to cheap fossil fuels, awareness of the environmental problems caused by burning fossil fuels,

248

Martin Hultman

and understanding of nuclear power as a dead end in terms of resources, risk, and waste (Anshelm, 2000). In the mid 1980s, the ecological discourse was approaching the point where it could actually challenge the dominant modern industrial discourse; this juncture has been recognized in previous research into educational material (Linnér, 2005) and attested to by opinion polls (Bennulf, 1994), mass media coverage (Djerf Pierre, 1996), protests against large-scale industrial projects (Hrelja, 2006; Linderström, 2001), and the rise of the Green Party (Vedung, 1991). In this formative period, a window of opportunity for transition, actors had the potential to shift the society in the direction of ecological sustainability. By the mid 1980s, the WELGAS project was under way. The municipality supported it and the list of sponsors was substantial. With only six months to the opening of the house, Tegström was now in charge of setting up the hydrogen system (Lidzell, 1985). Many issues were still in limbo, such as permits for the hydrogen technology, exemption from exhaust law requirements, and the gas tanks (Gradin, 1985). All these issues were solved by the classification of WELGAS as “a successive building process” (von Post, 1985b). Vattenfall lent the project a reversible fuel cell for free, the only requirement being that Vattenfall would get it back after the project (Hannervall, 1983; Mets & Helsing, 1984).

5. OPENING AND DEMONSTRATION By summer 1985, WELGAS was ready to be presented. All the essential elements had been assembled and were ready to impress the public. During the Swedish royal couple’s “Eriksgata,” when they travel the country after being crowned, WELGAS was presented as a concrete illustration of how to build the energy system of the future. The hydrogen-powered car idled during presentation (von Post, 1985a). A large crowd that had gathered outside WELGAS house watched as the Swedish king, Carl Gustaf XVI, hesitated to drink the condensed exhaust from the car; to convince the king and the spectators, Olof Tegström drank the water from the car’s tailpipe. In late 1985, the various elements were in their places. Tegström was reassured and, in a Christmas message to the other members, he wrote: “The last piece was put in place in November, which was the hydrogen car . . . [that had been test driven by] automotive writers of integrity” (Tegström, 1985). It passed the emission tests (Gerlach, 1985). Tegström felt confident about the progress of the project and was looking forward to the following year. The hydrogen car was an especially valuable display piece: Reporters often asked about it in interviews and, when running, it attracted admiration and prompted glowing descriptions (Faxén, 1986). The car was also a recurrent subject in the list of questions that Tegström and his wife Inga collected, summarizing what visitors had asked about; in fact, questions about the car topped the list (Håkansson, 1987; Tegström, 1986a).

Transition Delayed

249

The renewable system appeared to be reliable and practically viable. In early 1986, the car had run eight local itineraries in Härnösand. It ran well on these occasions, at temperatures as low as–7°C, but long-distance driving was impossible because the car stopped after five minutes of driving at 60–80 kilometers per hour. The heat exchanger could not raise the temperature as required (Tegström, 1986b).

6. INFLUENTIAL VISITORS In line with increasing discussion of the environment as fragile and worth protecting—not only for its own sake but for humanity’s survival—the notion of a hydrogen society based on renewable energy was described as a realistic option. When the WELGAS project was in full operation, Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson appointed Birgitta Dahl as minister of both Energy and the Environment. The historically and internationally unique composition of her portfolio indicates the influence of ecological ideas at the time, promoted by Social Democratic special interest groups. In 1985, these organizations issued a joint environment manifesto stating that humanity was facing an acute crisis of survival and that it was time for Social Democratic environmental policies to shift from fighting symptoms to investing in prevention (Anshelm, 1995, p. 88; see also Anshelm, 2000, p. 324f.; Linderström, 2001, p. 196). This manifesto, coauthored by Dahl and originating from the Social Democratic Party grassroots, stated that the Social Democrats must dramatically rethink their expert-driven, large-scale environmental policy and instead stimulate local efforts to foster environmentally friendly production and the sustainable management of local resources (Anshelm, 1995, p. 95). Dahl’s visit to WELGAS and her encouragement of the project in its promotional video can be understood as part of an ongoing shift in energy and environmental policy. After the visit, she even emphasized in a letter to the editor of Dagens Nyheter, and in interviews, that investment in hydrogen systems would bring great environmental benefits and that such efforts could pave the way for “hydrogen as an environmentally friendly energy carrier” (Dahl, 1989; Kolare, 1988; Oldin, 1988). As well as Dahl, three other leading Social Democrats (i.e., Anna Lind, Bo Holmström, and Svante Lundkvist) visited the WELGAS house and were impressed by it. In addition, people from the Green Party, Rotary Club, People’s Campaign against Nuclear Power, Centre Party, and Swedish Society for Nature Conservation also signed the visitors’ book (Tegström, 1987). Since the 1980s, Green Party and Centre Party members in particular were committed to renewables and decentralization as a vision of the future. With explicit reference to WELGAS, the representatives of these parties later painted an overall picture of what Sweden’s future society might be like in various legislative bills: Hambreus (Centre Party), 1990/91:U662;

250 Martin Hultman Hambreus (Centre Party), 1990/91:N453; Pohlanka and Goës (Green Party), 1990/91:T240; Roxbergh et al. (Green Party), 1990/91:T82; and Schörling et al. (Green Party) 1990/91:T27). One of the last bills Green Party members proposed before being voted out of Parliament stressed the potential of hydrogen, making positive references to WELGAS, i.e., Goës and Spångberg (Green Party), 1990/91:N62.

7. HALTING THE PROJECT After a successful period in which WELGAS was promoted as an energy system option, the project was halted in March 1987 due to cost considerations, political confl ict, and technological failure (von Post, 1987). The car was sent to Gothenburg, where it was acquired by Professor Jan Stefensson of Chalmers University of Technology. The fuel cell was returned to Vattenfall. The wind turbine went to the Danish company Vestas, although it stood for a few years beside the house previously known as the WELGAS house as a monument to the past. What had happened? From the beginning, WELGAS was a contested project hailed by its proponents and condemned by its critics. Local politicians in the city of Härnösand discussed extending the project, but would grant additional funding only if an evaluation was conducted. This evaluation became fundamental to the ongoing development and legacy of WELGAS. The State Energy Board and Studsvik, where Perneståhl worked, had been skeptical about the WELGAS project from the outset and now outsourced the evaluation to the Energy Committee (EFN). WELGAS was evaluated by Professor Gunnar Wettermark and engineer Carina Johansson. Johansson wrote the report and possibly added to the evaluation fi ndings of Bengt Finnström and Gunnar Wettermark (Olofsson, 1986). Finnström was invited to become involved in WELGAS early on and was a longstanding acquaintance of Perneståhl. At the time of the evaluation, he was research director of EFN’s Department of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research, which focused mainly on nuclear power (Finnström, 1989, 1991). At a meeting with the WELGAS feasibility study group in summer 1983, he explained that EFN had already invested in hydride storage with Studsvik and did not see the research potential of the project (Nyquist, 1983a). The EFN evaluation criticized the spirit of WELGAS in the same way as Vattenfall, the State Energy Board, and Perneståhl had earlier. The evaluators said that the decentralized organization of the energy system was the biggest fallacy of the WELGAS project. They announced that “in most situations in which hydrogen technologies have been discussed, large-scale units have been a prerequisite to achieving reasonable economic performance” (Wettermark & Johansson, 1987, p. 81). Wettermark and Johansson were not gracious in their criticism of the project, summarizing it by saying: “The project has done fi ne as an exhibition and yielded insight into

Transition Delayed

251

future technologies. From an energy system point of view, however, the hydrogen technology should be described as a Potemkin facade” (Wettermark & Johansson, 1987, p. 13). This assessment made a huge impact. If politicians in Härnösand had been unsure whether to extend the project and if WELGAS was still locally thought of as an amazing achievement as of spring 1987, the EFN evaluation changed all that. A few years after the evaluation, WELGAS was not discussed in the same positive manner; Olof Tegström was no longer interviewed in the most influential papers Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, or Aftonbladet, nor was he described as a visionary who could point out the necessary path of societal transition. Tegström had been marginalized, and he was interviewed only by the Green Party’s youth magazine. The small-scale, renewable hydrogen society that had been proposed as an option in the mid 1980s was dismissed a few years later and shunted to the periphery of energy and environmental policy. The ecological discourse was also marginalized in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The priorities of Dahl’s integrated energy and environmental portfolio met very stiff resistance from both the Employers Association (a business and industry interest group) and United Labor Unions. Both organizations forcefully advocated an increased supply of cheap energy, particularly electricity from nuclear power (Linderström, 2001). Even more drama followed when labor unions, large-scale industry, and power producers joined forces with the bourgeois politicians in a campaign for nuclear power. This coincided with Dahl’s deposition as energy and environment minister in 1990 due to a power struggle between her and above-mentioned opponents (Anshelm, 2000). Progress towards a decentralized, renewable energy network stopped and the momentum was lost in the early 1990s. The influence the ecological discourse had gained over the century was now a situation of the past (Hultman, 2010). WELGAS as well as the ecological discourse lost power, and instead the eco-modern discourse came to dominate energy and environmental politics for the next decades.

8. DISCUSSION As in the 1980s, we today see the upsurge of transitional experiments and projects. Decentralized localization practices have again emerged as visionary prototypes of what the future might be like (Hopkins, 2008; North, 2009; Woods, 2007). Utopian visions of the future and concrete actions to achieve a better world underpin the human propensity to long for and imagine a different mode of living, demonstrating how pockets of transition function today while serving as utopias that are possibly realizable in the future (de Geus, 1999). If a utopia is understood as expressing the desire for a better mode of living, it may represent a secular version of the spiritual quest to understand who we are, why we are here, and how we connect with each other (Bloch, 2000; Fournier, 2002; Harvey, 2000).

252 Martin Hultman This chapter has studied a 1980s ecotopia of a decentralized renewable energy system and how it was intertwined with overall energy and environmental politics. The WELGAS project presented a practical and visionary example of what a decentralized energy system based on renewable energy sources might be like. It demonstrated the possibilities of creating an alternative, more networked type of society in which power was more decentralized. In Sweden, the mid to late 1980s was a time of reassessment in the political elite regarding energy and environmental policy. The strength of this reassessment can be seen in how the Social Democratic Party was forced to alter how it conducted energy and environmental politics. Before and after the mid 1980s, the Social Democratic government’s policies regarding energy and the environment characteristically deemphasized nature conservation relative to (or in exceptional cases, balanced it against) economic growth and employment. The losses to the Green Party in the 1985 and 1988 elections prompted extensive self-criticism. Influential people in the largest, and at the time ruling, Social Democratic party tried to pursue the idea that energy and environmental policies would in the future be subordinated to the limits set by nature: Economic growth could not be the sole goal of political policy. In that light, WELGAS was both visited and supported by several Social Democrats as well as leaders from the Green Party. In these years, Tegström was not regarded as an eccentric who suggested far-flung solutions. Instead, WELGAS was regarded as a realistic vision of a future energy system, which was decentralized and based on renewable energy sources. Local supporters were proud of being in the frontline of technological development, a course of development that followed national recommendations. WELGAS was both supported by, and cited as an example of, the opportunities offered by ecological discourse. However, the WELGAS project was never allowed to become a longstanding prototype and vision for the future. At the time when WELGAS was most publicized and discussed, its supporters encountered stiff resistance from actors directly related to the project and were affected by the shift in the national discourse hegemony. The early critics from powerful institutions took the opportunity to evaluate the project. They framed WELGAS as insufficient and incongruent with how successful energy technology worked, a criticism they had already formulated at the start of the project. In the case of WELGAS, it is possible to understand how energy and environmental policies in the late 1980s hung in the balance between the possibilities of shifting towards small-scale, renewable energy or continuing with a large-scale nuclear/fossil-fuel system. The strong presence of environmental problems on the agenda forced actors with two totally different discourses to formulate and construct the future. In the end, the conservative actors who described this ecotopian prototype as a mistake got the upper hand and transition was delayed, a development congruent with the hegemonic shift in energy and environmental politics towards the domination of an eco-modern discourse.

Transition Delayed

253

The WELGAS case also demonstrates that reality must include the horizon of future possibilities: Utopia as forward-looking dreaming is not culturally esoteric or a distraction from class struggle, but an unavoidable and indispensable element in producing the future. Any critique of the present needs to be accompanied by ideas for how to make another, and better, world possible. For example, when Tegström and Edberg criticized society’s dominant practice and unsustainable energy system, they also pointed out a pathway worth exploring. Utopia, in this sense, does not require the imaginative construction of whole other worlds; instead, it occurs as an element embedded in a vast range of human practice and culture (Bloch, 2000). Today the utopian drive is embodied in, for example, community cooperatives that own village shops, community banks (supporting, e.g., farms and farmers’ markets that sell directly to the consumer), and local currencies, all of which strengthen the localization of energy and economic flows (Aldridge, et al., 2001; Johanisova, 2005; Seyfang, 2001). It seems as though utopias are more commonly formulated when the future presses closely on the public mind or when there is a sense of urgency regarding societal and environmental problems. With the intensification of climate change discussion starting in 2006, ecotopias are once again being formulated and practiced. Transition might happen this time if the conservative “green growth” eco-modern discourse is thoroughly criticized and local pockets of alternatives are able to flourish. NOTES 1. Some of the mass media articles cited here were analyzed in Hultman (2010), but most of these articles as well as interviews and archival material are treated in a work in progress (Hultman, n.d.). 2. All original Swedish quotations have been translated by the author.

REFERENCES Aldridge, T., Tooke, J., Lee, R., Leyshon, A., Thrift, N., & Williams, C. (2001). Recasting work: The example of local exchange trading schemes. Work, Employment and Society, 15(3), 565–579. Anshelm, J. (1995). Socialdemokraterna och miljöfrågan—en studie av framstegstankens paradoxer [Social Democratic Party and the environmental issue—a study of the paradoxes of modernisation] Stockholm, Sweden: B. Östlings bokförlag Symposion Anshelm, J. (2000). Mellan frälsning och domedag: Om kärnkraftens politiska idéhistoria i Sverige 1945–1999 [Between salvation and doomsday: the history of nuclear power in Sweden, 1945–1999]. Stockholm, Sweden: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion. Bailey, I., & Wilson, G.A. (2009). Theorising transitional pathways in response to climate change: Technocentrism, ecocentrism, and the carbon economy. Environment and Planning A, 41(10), 2324–2341.

254 Martin Hultman Bennulf, M. (1994). Miljöopinionen i Sverige [Opinion regarding environment in Sweden]. Lund, Sweden: Dialogos. Bloch, E. (2000). The spirit of utopia. Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press. Brangwyn, B., & Hopkins, R. (2008). Transition initiatives primer: Becoming a transition town, city, district, village, community, or even island. Totnes, UK: Transition Network. Bulkeley, H. (2005). Reconfiguring environmental governance: Towards a politics of scales and networks. Political Geography, 24(8), 875–902. Carleson, G. (1983). Väteenergiforskningens utvecklingstrend 1981–82 [Trend of hydrogen research, 1981–82]. Stockholm, Sweden: Studsvik. Darley, J., Room, D., & Rich, C. (2006). Relocalise now! Getting ready for climate change and the end of cheap oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Davies, A. (2002). Power, politics and networks: Shaping partnerships for sustainable communities. Area, 34(2), 190–203. de Geus, M. (1999). Ecological utopias: Envisioning the sustainable society. Utrecht, the Netherlands: International Books. Djerf Pierre, M. (1996). Gröna nyheter: Miljöjournalistiken i televisionens nyhetssändningar 1961–1994 [Green news: environmental journalism in television news, 1961–1994]. Göteborg, Sweden: JMG, Institutionen för journalistik och masskommunikation, Göteborgs universitet. Finnström, B. (1989). Vätgasteknik: En studie av verkningsgrader [Hydrogen technologies: a study of efficiency rate]. Vällingby, Sweden: Vattenfall. Finnström, B. (1991). Program of research and development on the production of hydrogen from water: Annual progress report 1990. Stockholm: Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development. Fournier, V. (2002). Utopianism and the cultivation of possibilities: Grassroots movements of hope. In M. Parker (Ed.), Utopia and organisation (pp. 189–216). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Goodwin, B. (1978). Social science and utopia: Nineteenth century models of social harmony. Brighton, UK: The Harvester Press. Hajer, M.A. (1997). The politics of environmental discourse: Ecological modernization and the policy process. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Hopkins, R. (2008). The transition handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience. Dartington, UK: Green Books. Hrelja, R. (2006). I hettan från ångpannan: Vetenskap och politik i konfl ikter om tekniska anläggningar [In the heat of the steam turbine: science and politics in confl icts over large plants]. Lund, Sweden: Arkiv förlag. Hultman M. (2010). Full gas mot en (o)hållbar framtid: Förväntningar på bränsleceller och vätgas 1978–2005 i relation till svensk energi- och miljöpolitik [From hydrogen societies to hydrogen economy: expectations regarding hydrogen and fuel cells, 1978–2005, in relation to energy and environmental politics]. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, vol. 521. Linköping, Sweden: Linköpings Universitet. Hultman, M. (n.d.). Den inställda omställningen: En posthumanistisk analys av den svenska energi och miljöpolitiken 1980–1991 [The halted transition: a posthumanities analysis of Swedish energy and environmental politics, 1980–1991]. Manuscript in preparation. Johanisova, N. (2005). Living in the cracks. Bideford, UK: Green Books. Kumar, K. (1987). Utopia and anti-utopia in modern times. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. Kumar, K. (1991). Utopianism. London: Open University Press Linderström, M. (2001). Industrimoderniteten och miljöfrågans utmaningar: En analys av LO, SAF, Industriförbundet och miljöpolitiken 1965–2000 [Industrial modernity and the challenging environmental issue: An analysis of LO, SAF,

Transition Delayed

255

Industriförbundet and environmental politics 1965–2000]. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, vol. 246. Linköping, Sweden: Linköpings Universitet. Lindquist, P. (1997). Det klyvbara ämnet: Diskursiva ordningar i svensk kärnkraftspolitik 1972–1980 [A dividing substance: Discursive hegemonies in Swedish nuclear politics]. Lund Dissertations in Sociology, vol. 18. Lunds universitet, Lund, Sweden. Linnér, B-O. (2005). Att lära för överlevnad: Utbildningsprogrammen och miljöfrågorna 1962–2002 [Learning for survival: Educational programmes and environmental questions 1962–2002] Malmö, Sweden: Arkiv förlag. Manuel, F.E., & Manuel, F.P. (1979). Utopian thought in the western world. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Marin, L. (1993). Frontiers of utopia: past and present. Critical Inquiry, 19(3), 397–420. Mol, A.P.J. (2001). Globalization and environmental reform: The ecological modernization of the global economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mol, A.P.J., & Sonnenfeld, D.A. (2000). Ecological modernization around the world: An introduction. Environmental Politics, 9(1), 3–14. North, P. (2009). Eco-localisation as a progressive response to peak oil and climate change: A sympathetic critique. Geoforum, 41(4), 585–594. Parrinder, P. (2000). Introduction. In P. Parrinder (Ed.), Learning from other worlds (pp. 1–16). Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press Sargisson, L. (2012). Fool’s gold? Utopianism in the twenty-fi rst century. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Seyfang, G. (2001). Community currencies: Small change for a green economy. Environment and Planning A, 33(6), 975–996. Spaargaren, G. (2000). Ecological modernisation theory and the changing discourse on environment and modernity. In G. Spaargaren, A.P.J. Mol, & F. Buttel (Eds.), Environment and global modernity (pp. 41–71). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Tegström, I., & Tegström, O. (2008, May 8). Interview by M. Hultman [Transcription]. Umeå, Sweden. Vedung, E. (1991). The formation of green parties: Environmentalism, state response and political entrepreneurship. In J.A. Hansen (Ed.), Environmental concerns (pp. 257–274). London, UK: Elsevier. Veldman, M. (1994). Fantasy, the bomb, and the greening of Britain: Romantic protest, 1945–1980. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Woods, M. (2007). Engaging the global countryside: Globalization, hybridity, and the reconstitution of rural place. Progress in Human Geography, 31(4), 485–507.

NEWSPAPER AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES Autark mit dezentral erzeugtem Wasserstoff [Selfsufficient with decentralized hydrogen] (1986, June). Sonnenergie. Dahl, B. (1989, June 29). Klimatpåverkan kan stoppas! [Our climate change gas emissions can be stopped]. Dagens Nyheter. Damm, B. (1984). Underhuset [The amazing house]. Expressen. Edberg, R. (1987a, June 3). Rena energin: På väg mot väteåldern I [Clean energy: on our way to the hydrogen age]. Arbetet. Edberg, R. (1987b, June 5). Satsa NU på vätgas: På väg mot väteåldern II [Put the money on hydrogen: on our way to the hydrogen age]. Arbetet. Edberg, R. (1989). Utmaningen. Ny Teknik, 36. Epokgörande uppfi nning utarbetad i Vålånger: Vindkraft ger energi åt både villa och bil [Revolutionary invention created in Vålånger. Wind powering both house and car]]. (1980, March 11). Västernorrlands Allehanda.

256 Martin Hultman Eriksson, L. (1985). Forskarbild av Framtidssverige: VÄTGASSAMHÄLLET [Research image of a future Sweden: hydrogen society]. Ny Teknik, 5. Faxén, K. (1986). Bilen rullar och huset värms för 80 kr om året [The car runs and the house is heated for SEK 80 a year]. MiljöAktuellt, 4. Gerlach, C. (1985, December 4). Skål—i avgaser [Cheers in fumes]. Expressen. Gradin, U. (1985, June 7). Vindkraftverket på plats [Windturbine in place]. Västernorrlands Allehanda. Håkansson, C. (1984, November 6). Nu kan de andas ut [Now they can relax]. Nya Norrland. Håkansson, C. (1987, January 5). Welgas bra men hemma ännu bäst! [WELGAS is good, but home is even better]. Västernorrlands Allehanda. Kolare, S. (1988, November 16). Intervju med Birgitta Dahl [Interview with Birgitta Dahl]. Dagens Industri. Lidzell, Å. (1985, April 3). Vätgas ska driva huset och bilen: Här står världens första nollenergifamilj [Hydrogen will power the house and car: here is the world’s fi rst zero-energy family]. Dagens Nyheter. Lutterbeck, C. (1986, June 24). Brennstoff fur die Zukunft [Fuel for the future]. Stern, 113–114 Oldin, M.-B. (1988). Nu har Birgitta Dahl många bollar i luften [Birgitta Dahl is juggling many issues]. Ny Teknik, 7. Stepler, R. (1978, March). Hydrogen homestead demonstrates the fuel of the future. Popular Science, 20, 25–26. Retrieved from http://books.google.se 20110315 Thelberg, O. (1984, November 6). Snart byggstart för lågenergihus på Stenhammar [Construction work for low-energy house on Stenhammar will soon begin]. Västernorrlands Allehanda.

PARLIAMENTARY BILLS Goës, E., & Spångberg, K. (Green Party). Med anledning av prop 1990/91:90 En god livsmiljö, Motion 1990/91:N62 [With reference to Government bill 1990/91:90, A healthy living environment, Nongovernmental bill 1990/91:N62]. Hambreus, B. (Centre Party). Förnybar energi, m.m, Motion 1990/91:N453 [Renewable energy, etc. Nongovernmental bill 1990/91:N453]. Hambreus, B. (Centre Party). Initiativ i FN för förnybara energikällor, Motion 1990/91:U662 [UN initiatives in renewable energy sources. Nongovernmental bill 1990:91N453]. Pohlanka, R., & Goës, E. (Green Party), Trafi ken i Dalarna, Motion 1990/91:T240 [Traffic in Dalarna, Nongovernmental bill 1990/91:T240]. Roxbergh, C. et al. (Green Party), med anledning av prop 1990/91:90 En god livsmiljö, Motion 1990/91:T82 [With reference to Government bill 1990/91:90 A healthy living environment, Nongovernmental bill 1990/91:T82]. Schörling, I. et al. (Green Party), Väg och bil, Motion 1990/91:T27 [Roads and vehicles, Nongovernmental bill 1990/91:T27].

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL FROM AN UNCATALOGUED AND UNSORTED ARCHIVE AT HÄRNÖSANDSHUS AB

Minutes from meetings of the WELGAS group Nyquist, A. (1983a, June 23). Protokoll [Minutes]. Nyquist, A. (1983b, December 21). Protokoll [Minutes].

Transition Delayed

257

Nyquist, A. (1984, January 12). Protokoll [Minutes]. Olofsson, S. (1986, November 25). Minnesanteckningar från WELGAS-mötet [Notes from meeting with WELGAS]. von Post, L. (1985a, April 1). Protokoll [Minutes]. von Post, L. (1985b, May 29). Protokoll [Minutes]. von Post, L. (1987, March 18). Protokoll [Minutes].

Personal letters sent to or from members of WELGAS Hannervall, L. (1983, June 22). Projekt WELGAS [WELGAS project]. Mets, V., & Helsing, N.-E. (1984). Avtal mellan Vattenfall och Härnösandshus [Contract between Vattenfall and Härnösandshus]. Tegström, O. (1984, January 14). Betr. Welgasprojektet [Regarding WELGAS]. Tegström, O. (n.d.) Personlig verksamhetsberättelse, intygad av Dir. Jan Nilason [Curriculum Vitae certified by Jan Nilason], Board Member Utvecklingsfonden Härnösand-Västernorrland. Tegström, O. (1986a, October 2). Intresserades vanligaste frågor med svar [Visitors’ most common questions with answers].

Reports Oscarsson, T., & Helsing, N.-E. (1984). WELGAS-projektet. Energiklok bebyggelse i Härnösand: Teknisk/ekonomisk analys—förprojektering [WELGAS project. Energy-wise buildings in Härnösand: technical/economic analysis— pre-planning]. Härnösand, Sweden. Perneståhl, K. (1984). Förslag till projektutformning m.m. [Proposal for project design]. Studsvik energiteknik AB, Sweden. Tegström, O., Nyquist, A., Oscarsson, T., & Helsing, N.-E. (1983). Koncept: WELGAS-projektet [Concept: the WELGAS project]. Härnösand, Sweden. Tegström, O. (1985). En delrapport: Welgasprojektet [A report of WELGAS]. Härnösand, Sweden. Tegström, O. (1986b). Rapport Welgasbilen [Report regarding WELGAS project car]. Härnösand, Sweden. Tegström, O. 1987. Besöksrapport [Visitor’s log]. Härnösand, Sweden. Wettermark, G., & Johansson, C. (1987). Welgas: Vätgasprojektet vid Härnösands 400 års jubileum [Welgas: the hydrogen project at Härnösand’s 400-year anniversary]. (Energiforskningsnämnden Report 27). EFN, Stockholm, Sweden. Hydrogen Organization. (1985). Härnösand 400 år. 0=energihusjubileumsåret 1985 [Härnösand 400 years. 0 = energyhouse anniversary year 1985]. TEBETRON, Härnösand, Sweden.

15 R-Urban Strategies and Tactics for Participative Utopias and Resilient Practices 1

2

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

1. INTRODUCTION Recently, growing global awareness has led to increased calls for collective action to confront current and future challenges, such as global warming, depletion of fossil fuels and other natural resources, economic recession, population growth, housing and employment crises, growing social and economic divides, and geopolitical confl ict.3 These calls have been amplified in the context of the current economic crisis and, while governments and institutions seem to be taking too long to reach agreement and to act, many initiatives have started at the local level.4 These initiatives are nevertheless confronted with the difficulty of changing current economic and social models based on global-scale economics, which are premised on increasing consumption and the exclusion of those who cannot consume. How can we support initiatives that oppose current modes of consumption? How can we construct a more socially equitable economy? How can we begin to act? What tools and means can be used at times of crisis and scarcity? How do we reactivate and sustain cultures of collaboration and sharing in our current individualistic and competition-based society? How can progressive practices be initiated while acting locally and at a small scale? These are some questions we asked within R-Urban, a project initiated in our research-based practice, atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa), as a bottom-up framework for resilient urban regeneration. After three years of research, we have proposed the project to various municipalities and to grassroots organizations in cities and towns. We conceived it as a participative strategy based on local ecological cycles that activate material (e.g., water, energy, waste, and food) and immaterial (e.g., local skill, socioeconomic, cultural, and self-building) flows between key fields of activity (e.g., the economy, habitation, and urban agriculture) that exist or are implemented within the existing fabric of the city. R-Urban started in 2011 in Colombes, a suburban town of 84,000 inhabitants near Paris, in partnership with the local municipality and a number of organizations, and

R-Urban

259

involving a range of local residents. The project is intended to gradually create a network around three “pilot units,” each with complementary urban functions, bringing together emerging citizen projects. This bottom–up strategy explores possibilities of enhancing the capacity for urban resilience by introducing a network of resident-run facilities.5 In this chapter we will describe and reflect on the R-Urban strategy and the practical experience gained in Colombes. Through this case, we will explore how self-governing can work in practice and the possible role of architecture in this undertaking. We will analyze the various ideas, tools, value systems, and lifestyles that should be developed to make such initiatives resilient and enduring. Colombes offers a typical suburban context with a mix of individual and social housing estates. Suburbia is a key territory for R-Urban: Although specific to a modern conception of the city, suburbia is today one of the most crucial territories to be redeveloped and regenerated in the interest of resilience. With its mix of individual and social housing estates, Colombes combines all kinds of suburban problems, such as social and economic deprivation and youth crime, typical of large-scale dormitory suburbs and of the consumerist, car-dependent lifestyle of more affluent suburbs with generally middle-class populations. Nevertheless, Colombes also has a number of advantages: Despite its high unemployment (17% of the workforce, well above the national rate of 10.2% in 2012), Colombes has many local organizations (i.e., approximately 450) and a very active civic life. R-Urban, drawing strength from this civic activity and from Colombes’s cultural and social diversity, started by launching several collective facilities, including recycling and eco-construction projects, cooperative housing, and urban agriculture units, that are working together to set up the fi rst spatial and ecological agencies in the area. Their architecture showcases the various issues they address, such as local material recycling, local skills, energy production, and food growing. The fi rst three pilot facilities—Agrocité, Recyclab, and Ecohab—are collectively run and catalyze existing activities aiming to introduce and disseminate resilient habits and lifestyles that residents can adopt and practice at the individual and domestic levels, such as retrofitting dwellings to accommodate food growing and energy production. Agrocité is an agro–cultural unit comprising an experimental microfarm, community gardens, pedagogical and cultural spaces, and a series of experimental devices for compost heating, rainwater collection, solar energy production, aquaponic gardening, and phyto-remediation. Agrocité is a hybrid structure, with some components running as social enterprises (e.g., the microfarm, market, and cafe) and others being run by user organizations (e.g., the community garden, cultural space, and pedagogical space) and local associations.

Figure 15.1 R-Urban micro-urbanism principles: Urban retrofitting, interstitial occupation, reversible use of space, small scale (source: aaa).

260 Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

Figure 15.2 R-Urban ecology: Locally closed cycles, complementary and transversal networks (source: aaa).

R-Urban 261

262

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

Recyclab is a recycling and eco-construction unit comprising several facilities for storing and reusing locally salvaged materials, recycling and transforming them into eco-construction elements for self-building and retrofitting. An associated “fab lab”6 has been set up for resident use. Recyclab will function as a social enterprise.

Figure 15.3 Agrocité, agro–cultural unit—drawing (source: aaa).

Figure 15.4 Agrocité, civic gardening, June 2012 (source: aaa).

R-Urban

263

Figure 15.5 Agrocité, view from a residential tower, July 2012 (source: aaa).

Ecohab is a cooperative eco-housing project comprising a number of partially self-built and collectively managed ecological dwellings, including several shared facilities and schemes (e.g., food growing, production spaces, energy and water harvesting, and car sharing). The seven dwellings will include two social flats and a temporary residence unit for students and researchers. Ecohab will be run as a cooperative. The R-Urban collective facilities will grow in number and be managed by a cooperative land trust, which will acquire space, facilitate development, and guarantee democratic governance.7 Flows, networks, and cycles of production–consumption will form between the collective facilities and the neighborhood, closing chains of need and supply as locally as possible. To overcome the current crisis, we must try, as French philosopher André Gorz (2008) states, “to produce what we consume and consume what we produce” (p. 13). R-Urban interprets this production–consumption chain broadly, going well beyond material aspects to include the cultural, cognitive, and affective dimensions. The project sets a precedent for the participative retrofitting of metropolitan suburbs, in which the relationship between the urban and the rural is reconsidered. It tries to demonstrate what citizens can do if they change their working and living habits to collectively address the challenges of the future.

264

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

“R” “R”-Urban relates directly to the three “R” imperatives discussed in any ecological approach—i.e., reduce, reuse, and recycle—and suggests other iterations, such as repair, redesign, and rethink. In addition, the term indicates explicitly that R-Urban reconnects the urban and the rural through new, more complementary and less hierarchical kinds of relationships. The “R” of R-Urban also reminds us that the main goal of the strategy is “resilience.” “Resilience” is a key term in the context of the current economic crisis and resource scarcity. In contrast to sustainability, which focuses on maintaining the status quo of a system by controlling the balance between its inputs and outputs, without necessarily addressing the factors of change and disequilibrium, resilience addresses how systems can adapt and thrive in changing circumstances. Resilience is a dynamic concept that does not have a stable defi nition or identity outside the circumstances that produce it. In contrast to sustainability, which tends to focus on maintaining the environmental balance, resilience is adaptive and transformative, inducing change that offers huge potential to rethink assumptions and build new systems (Maguire & Cartwright, 2008). Although the current resilience discourse should not be embraced uncritically, without acknowledging the sometimes naïve and idealistic comparison of social to biological systems and their capacity to adapt to engender wellbeing, the concept of “resilience” has the potential to include questions and contradictions addressed in political ecology terms.8 R-Urban is thus not about “sustainable development” but about societal change and political and cultural reinvention, addressing issues of social inequality, power, and cultural difference. The resilience of a social system also implies the capacity to preserve specific democratic principles and cultural values, local histories and traditions, while adapting to more ecological and economically mindful lifestyles. A city can only become resilient with the active involvement of its inhabitants. To stimulate the democratic engagement of the largest number of citizens, we need tools, knowledge, and places for testing new collective practices and initiatives and for showcasing the results and benefits of a resilient transformation of the city. In this, architects have a role to play. Rather than acting merely as building designers, they can be initiators, negotiators, comanagers, and enablers of processes and agencies. Concentrating on spatial agencies and pilot facilities, R-Urban tries to supply tools and spaces that will manifest citizens’ existing resilience initiatives and practices. Spatial design processes contribute to expressing ecological cycles in tangible ways and help facilitate citizen experiences of making and doing. Democratic governance principles are as such associated with concrete hands-on actions whose consequences are visible and measurable. More than just adaptation, resilience is for R-Urban a catalyst of urban activation, innovation, and creativity.

R-Urban

265

Parallel to its pilot facilities, which form a new ecological urban infrastructure, R-Urban puts in place new political and democratic tools. These tools are corealized with other partners and concerned citizens, being transferable and multipliable. As noted by the Marxist philosopher John Holloway in Change the World without Taking Power (2002), the numerous movements seeking ways to overcome the current crisis are somehow locked in oppositional struggles with the state, understood as a political instrument of coercion. Holloway (2002) believes that fetishizing the state and/or capital traps most people within existing power systems, preventing them from striving for radical change. He concludes that if we want to escape the current societal blockage, we should not fight to take power but for alternatives to power, for the dynamics of social self-determination. These dynamics must necessarily be anchored in everyday life: “the movement against-and-beyond is a movement that emerges from everyday life” (Holloway, 2006, pp. 17–21, authors’ translation).

2. MODELS OF RESILIENT CITIES: THE GARDEN CITY, REGIONAL CITY, AND TRANSITION TOWN Although anchored in everyday life and committed to radical change, R-Urban is simultaneously part of a specific tradition of models of resilient development, starting with Howard’s Garden City and Geddes’s Regional City and continuing today with the Transition Town. In 1902, Ebenezer Howard published his book Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1946), proposing a model utopian city that would combine qualities of urban and rural life. The book was thought to provide a solution to the urban crisis that followed the agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century and generated a whole movement. The model proposed by Howard supposed a mechanism through which ownership would be transferred gradually from fi nancial capitalists to inhabitants, with the idea that rent payments would maintain a local welfare state. The cooperative aspects of the original Garden City model were expressed not only in community gardens and communal kitchens, but also in mechanisms for space appropriation by inhabitants. These mechanisms have not been implemented in most of the urban and suburban developments that claimed to follow these ideas, which adopted only the urban form and not its social and political principles. Similarly, a few decades later, Patrick Geddes proposed a more naturalistic understanding of the city, establishing the principles of a “region city” in his books City Development (1904) and City in Evolution (1915). With his background in biology, Geddes stated that, before starting any kind of urban planning, one should thoroughly study the natural resources at regional scale and analyze the existing economic and social dynamics. The Regional City is defi ned by complex relationships between climate,

266 Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu vegetation, animals, and economic activities, which all influence human and societal evolution. Geddes’s vision of the city emphasizes institutions and civic life, as well as social interaction and public space. An egalitarian relationship between men and women is carefully considered together with various modes of local-scale self-management. Across a geographic vision, the region is considered in its capacity to promote social and political regeneration. Geddes had the occasion to partially apply his theoretical analysis, but his vision of the Regional City has been simplified and reduced, just as the Garden City was, in its modernist applications. More recently, Rob Hopkins (2008) published the Transition Handbook, which soon became the reference of a whole “Transition” movement. The concept of a “transition town” does not designate a specifi c utopian model to be built, but instead proposes a guide to be followed by grassroots organizations that want to initiate transition dynamics in their existing towns. It is no longer a matter of a movement proposing a new type of city, but a set of rules and principles for the bottom–up adaptation of existing cities. Rather than from planning, this model of development emerges from permaculture. The driving dynamic is that of “transition” within the horizon of a challenging future whose main parameters are peak oil and climate change. If, for the Garden City, comfort and political emancipation were ways of embracing an abundant future, for the Transition Town, the idea of local resilience and solidarity are ways of adapting to a future of resource scarcity. In contrast to these models, R-Urban is not the direct application of theory but tries to develop both an exploratory practice and a theoretical analysis that constantly inform each other. R-Urban shares with the Garden City concept an interest in combining qualities of urban and rural life in the context of existing cities and creating a closed loop in terms of cycles of production and consumption. It also shares an interest in cooperative organization and mechanisms by which inhabitants can appropriate and manage space and in how these mechanisms translate into design solutions. However, R-Urban is more interested in designing processes and cycles than in forms, programs, and buildings. It does not propose a new model based on an ideal urban form, but instead deals with existing urban fabric and proposes social and political processes to negotiate adaptations and newly built structures and facilities. Alterations will result from the retrofitting of urban elements included in locally closed ecological cycles. Spatial devices and civic run facilities will make the new organization visible in the city. They combine existing initiatives in a coherent organization, adding missing elements and contributing new inputs. In contrast to the Garden City concept, R-Urban does not propose an ideal model of transformation but deals with the collapse of modern urban ideals and their many failures in addressing the future, for example, a monotonous urban fabric, obsolete residential tower blocks, real estate bankruptcy, segregation, social and economic exclusion, and contaminated brownfields.

R-Urban

267

R-Urban picks up from the Regional City concept the idea of regional dynamics, but based in this case on the bottom–up initiatives of local inhabitants. It considers both large-scale processes and small-scale phenomena. Global concerns are addressed locally, but within existing conditions. The R-Urban transformation is realized through successive phases, by investing in temporarily available spaces and creating short-term uses, which can prefigure future urban developments. R-Urban also incorporates many Transition Town principles. However, in R-Urban resilience is not understood as an imperative to maintain the existing order but as a necessity to transform and invent new possibilities, as a driver of collective creativity. Through its pilot projects and collective facilities, R-Urban tries to make visible the solidarity networks and ecological cycles that it creates. It does not have a specific scale or size and does not necessarily operate in a “town,” but negotiates its own scale (e.g., a block, neighborhood, or district) depending on actor participation. No preexisting communities are targeted; instead, new communities formed through the project must agree on their own rules and principles to be followed in project management.

3. MICROSOCIAL AND MICROCULTURAL RESILIENCE Unlike other initiatives that deal exclusively with sustainability from a technological and environmental perspective, R-Urban advocates a general “change of culture,” understood as a change in how we do things, in order to change our future. The future is culturally shaped as much as the past is, because culture gives us “the capacity to aspire” (Appadurai, 2004). R-Urban proposes new collective practices that, in addition to ecological footprint reduction, contribute to reinventing proximity relationships based on solidarities (i.e., ways of being involved and deciding collectively, sharing spaces and grouping facilities, and rules and principles of cohabitation). In neoliberal societies, urban lifestyles have progressively abandoned various forms of solidarity that were perceived as inadequate or outdated. Notably, however, these relationships of reciprocity constitute the very basis of social progress. In his analysis of the connections between the economy and politics (inspired by Tarde’s sociology), philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato (2002) critically describes the civilization of “progress” as “a constantly renewed effort to replace reciprocal possession with unilateral possession” (p. 354, authors’ translation). It is precisely these relationships of reciprocity and solidarity that are missing from today’s urban environment. The dwelling models proposed by R-Urban aim at restoring these solidarity relationships through processes that implicitly produce sociability, shared spaces, common values, and affective relationships. A dwelling complex such as Ecohab—a housing cooperative including social flats and student residential units—creates conditions for neighbors

268

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

from different social backgrounds to collectively manage their energy production, waste recycling, and food growing. Residents will also manage the ground-floor common space with the option of conducting productive or service activities jointly with other people in the neighborhood, for example, providing compost and other products to Agrocité and trading products with Recyclab. This is, of course, an ideal scenario, which assumes that the pilot units will work well together and that enough people will buy into the scheme to make it viable in the long term. In reality, we are aware that some potential stakeholders will hesitate to abandon their current lifestyles and get involved in an adventure such as R-Urban, notably because, during the current economic crisis, it is difficult to radically redirect one’s professional career, every error being penalized, sometimes irreversibly. Flexible workers and self-employed without secure jobs will potentially be less involved in such experiences, given that they have little time. Nevertheless, we count on the unemployed and those who need reskilling to become key participants in the project. Transformation must occur at the micro scale with each individual, each subjectivity, and this is how a culture of resilience is constructed. As Rob Hopkins puts it, “resilience is not just an outer process: it is also an inner one, of becoming more flexible, robust and skilled” (Hopkins, 2009, p. 15). The culture of resilience includes processes of reskilling, skill sharing, social

Figure 15.6 Recyclab, recycling, and ecoconstruction unit—drawing (source: aaa).

R-Urban

269

network building and mutual learning. These microsocial and microcultural practices, which are usually related to individual lifestyles and practices (e.g., growing food and collecting waste, sharing a car, and exchanging tools and skills with neighbors), prompt attention to details, singularities, and the capacities for creativity and innovation that operate at the level of everyday life. R-Urban maps in detail this local capacity to invent and transform but also, in parallel, the administrative constraints that block it, proposing ways of bypassing these constraints through renewed policies and structures.

4. THE “RIGHT TO RESILIENCE” R-Urban claims that urban sustainability is a civic right. In this sense, R-Urban creates the conditions for this “right to sustainability” to be exercised not only as a right to access and consume sustainability (provided by the welfare state) but as a right to produce sustainability (allowing citizen involvement in decision making and action). Sustainability is on the agenda of many urban projects today, but this does not mean that all these projects are political in their approach to the issue. A political ecology approach, like that of R-Urban, does not just positively and uncritically propose “improved” development dynamics, but also questions the processes that bring about inequitable urban environments.9 People such as David Harvey (2008) argue that the transformation of urban spaces is a collective rather than an individual right, because collective power is necessary to reshape urban processes. Harvey (2008) describes “the right to the city” as the citizen’s freedom to access urban resources: “it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city” (p. 23). In this sense, R-Urban follows Harvey’s ideas and facilitates the exercise of this “right” through processes of appropriation, transformation, networking, and use of city infrastructure. R-Urban perhaps differs from Harvey in scope, as it does not seek to instigate a large-scale global movement to oppose the fi nancial capital that controls urban development, but instead seeks to empower city inhabitants to propose alternative projects where they live and to foster local and translocal networks, testing methods of self-management, self-building, and self-production. Here R-Urban is perhaps closer to Lefebvre’s idea of “the right to the city.” Lefebvre imagines a locally framed emancipatory project, emphasizing the need to freely propose alternative possibilities for urban practice at the level of everyday life. He proposes a new methodology, called “transduction,” to encourage the creation of “experimental utopias.” Framed by existing reality, this would “introduce rigour in invention and knowledge in utopia,” as a way of avoiding irresponsible idealism (Lefebvre, 1996, pp. 129–130). Lefebvre underlines the key role of urban imaginaries in understanding, challenging, and transforming the urban and opening the door to a multiplicity

270 Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu of representations and interventions. From this perspective, R-Urban is a “transductive” project, both rigorous and utopian, popular and experimental. It is a bottom–up approach based on the aggregation of many individual and collective interventions that complement each other, forming metabolic networks that stimulate circulatory changes and simultaneously determine each other. Such networks will accommodate multiplicity and valorize imagination at all levels. However, R-Urban could be suspected of aligning itself opportunistically with the “Big Society” principles recently proposed by the UK’s Tory prime minister, David Cameron, to translate “the idea of communities taking more control, of more volunteerism, more charitable giving, of social enterprises taking on a bigger role, of people establishing public services themselves” (Cameron, 2011). The essential difference is that R-Urban is not reacting directly to the onset of the fi nancial crisis and is not embracing a program of economic resilience from which the state is absent: Such a program explicitly promotes the use of unpaid work to mask the disappearance of welfare structures and massive cuts in public services. The R-Urban strategy does not relegate economic responsibility to citizens because the state is unable or unwilling to assume it anymore, but claims the social and political right to question state power as to its role and responsibility. Municipalities and public institutions are involved as equal partners in the strategy, assuming the roles of enablers, funders, and administrators. In addition to city residents and civic organizations, public institutions (e.g., city councils, regeneration offices, public land trusts, schools, and cultural agencies) are invited to take part in this experimental utopia and challenge their habits. It is not only the inhabitants who must “change themselves by changing the city,” as claimed by Harvey (2008), but also the politicians and specialists currently in charge of the city. As such, R-Urban is not only about grassroots innovation to meet social, economic, and environmental needs, but also about political critique and ideological expression, affi rming the necessity of new social and economic agencies based on alternatives to the dominant socio–technical regime. R-Urban gives its self-organized constituency the means to act locally at the neighborhood scale and creates opportunities for actions and activities that could change their future. It affi rms their “right to resilience.”

5. DEMOCRATIC WAYS OF WORKING AND DWELLING The modes of production introduced by Ford have desubjectivized labor relations through the progressive accumulation of repetitive tasks that, by their fragmented and repetitive nature, have destroyed the long-term vision of labor goals and results.10 Under post-Fordist labor conditions, microsocial universes are created only in connection with the leisure domains (e.g., cinema, holidays, sports, parties, and, more recently,

R-Urban

271

events organized via social networks). This “free-time” sociality as the only form of sociality is alienating: It is intended to fi ll an existential void, while being implemented insidiously and radically modifying collective values and behaviors. R-Urban tries to restore the possibility of reappropriating and resubjectifying labor as a fundamental ontological activity, while developing links and transversalities between work and emancipatory social, cultural, political, and environmental values. The diversity of activities developed by R-Urban should allow not only a new assemblage and emerging agencies but also a gradual disassembly of a system in crisis. To slowly escape from the generalized footprint of the neoliberal economy, which excludes other forms of material and symbolic exchange, we must dismantle one by one our ties to the market system and withdraw from the system to enable the change. We must undo, disassemble—des-agencer, as Deleuze and Guattari might say (1980, p. 17ff.)—and step outside the neoliberal logic in order to reassemble new ethical, environmental, and long-term ecological agencies. This reassembly is a collective act based on the convictions of each participant. The R-Urban strategy relies on off-market elements that can potentially leave the system (e.g., interstitial spaces, community associations, and marginalized or emerging practices) and can be integrated into new agencies and collective processes of re-assembly. The resilience R-Urban promotes using minimal means allows for considerable social, cultural, and subjective diversity. This is similar to the situation in ecology in which, as Clément (2004) noted, “the poverty of a soil [i.e., in a pedological sense] is a gauge of diversity” (p. 188). The minimal economy of means also implies a space that is not over-designed and provides for a diversity of agencies and reconfigurations: It guarantees a capacity to welcome newcomers into the project. From another perspective, this simplicity can easily support new assemblages as well as a necessary deterritorialization of the process. Accumulating numerous small changes that together form a large-scale strategy depends on the long-term involvement of individual participants and on the collective dynamics of their initiatives. R-Urban aims for an urban environment that can adapt itself to the aspirations of every city dweller. This should be constituted progressively, by welcoming the most varied range of activities proposed by all kind of residents, including leisure activities developed in free time. The majority of these temporary activities could evolve into sustainable economic, cultural, and ecological initiatives that will gradually replace the current productive and reproductive relationships and will fundamentally defi ne more democratic and more resilient ways of working and living. R-Urban recognizes the condition of “dwellers” as political and promotes an emancipatory politics of living in populations that are usually limited in existential choice by their social conditions and by the spatial, social, and cultural experiences to which they have access.

272

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

“Democracy,” as Rancière (1998) says, “is neither in the realm of communal law assigned by juridical–political texts, nor in the realm of passions. It is fi rst and foremost the place of all these places where factuality is affected by contingency and egalitarian resolution. In this way, the street, the factory, or the university can be places for such resurgence” (p. 126, authors’ translation). The collective spaces initiated by R-Urban will constitute, as in aaa’s other projects, places of permanent negotiation, learning by doing, and the bottom–up reconstruction of the political fundamentals of democracy, such as equality of representation, general interest in the common good, liberty and responsibility, and collective governance. These spaces are open to reconfiguration, introducing the dynamics of self-management and of responsibility, initiative, and negotiation. This is the basis of any democratic functioning. In R-Urban, we try to create spaces for self-managed sociality that is self-regulated and in permanent reconstruction. We try to create conditions for what Rancière (1998) called a “new sociality based on equality of conditions. This sociality will bring its providential solutions to the regulatory mechanism between the social and the political. What the most informed politics do not manage to do, the production of a self-regulated sociality . . . the providential movement of equalizing social conditions will achieve” (pp. 36–37, authors’ translation). Although in R-Urban this self-regulated sociality is achieved only partially and at small scale, within the limitations of a local project, the scale can grow in space and time through accumulation and in connection with other small-scale experiences. The project does not follow an imposed ideological model, but evolves organically, embedded in everyday life. All activities are open and anyone can choose to participate with different degrees of involvement, following rules determined collectively. Rather than politically opposing the existing system, this sociality infiltrates and changes the system from within its interstices, by promoting other mutually supporting lifestyles and living practices that gradually start to create independent networks, parallel to the global capitalist system. In the long term, R-Urban could help reconnect the political to the social through a more democratic way of dwelling.

6. ECOLOMY OF THE COMMONS R-Urban participative networks will generate a multitude of microsocial dynamics (e.g., bottom–up, local, translocal, rural, and urban). Based on trust and solidarity, these participative networks should gradually increase the capacity for action across various social and cultural milieus and structures, giving birth to a new long-term social pact. In his seminal book Freefall, Joseph Stiglitz (2010) explains the roots of the current economic crisis and notes that “trust is the grease that makes society function” (p. 289). Destabilized by egocentric behavior, social trust needs to be reconstructed

R-Urban

273

collectively and on a daily basis. The “grease that makes a society function” needs regeneration and needs to infi ltrate the practices of everyday life. In this sense, we need to replace the obsession with “purchasing power” and the drive to sell and consume with the desire to self-produce locally, to reuse and recycle, to preserve and transmit, to share services, and to mutualize space through collective management. R-Urban proposes a change of mentality and of social and economic vision that will simultaneously preserve both attention to the other and care for our common future. As Stiglitz (2010) demonstrates, we need to orient ourselves toward a new political economy that will “reconstruct the balance between the Market and the State, between individual and collective, between man and nature, between means and goals” (p. 516). The current market economy should quickly evolve into an “ecological economy,” i.e., an economy driven by ecology or, more precisely, by principles of political ecology—what we call an “ecolomy.”11 It is the direction to be taken if we want the economy to be adapted to different territorial scales and developed on a long-term basis under principles of solidarity and sharing. This attitude will change not only how we manage our economy but also how we manage our lives. By introducing a capacity for multiple collective production (e.g., green productive spaces, active dwellings, and local economic hubs), R-Urban enables new forms of ecolomy within the existing urban conditions and the production of a range of new commons.12 The question of the commons lies at the heart of discussions of democracy today. In some recent texts, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004) defi ne the commons as something that is not discovered but is produced biopolitically: “We call the current dominant model ‘biopolitical production’ to underline the fact that it involves not only material production in straight economic terms, but also that it affects and contributes to producing all other aspects of social life, i.e., economic, cultural, and political. This biopolitical production and the increased commons that it creates support the possibility of democracy today” (pp. 9–10, authors’ translation). A sustainable democracy should be based on a long-term politics of the commons as well as on social solidarities understood as commons. “Creating value today is about networking subjectivities and capturing, diverting, and appropriating what they do with the commons that they began” (Ravel and Negri, 2008, p. 7, authors’ translation). According to Ravel and Negri (2008), the contemporary revolutionary project is about this capturing, diverting, appropriating, and reclaiming of the commons as a constituent process. It is at the same time a reappropriation and a reinvention. This undertaking needs new categories and institutions, forms of management and governance, space and actors—an entire infrastructure that is both material and virtual. R-Urban is trying to create this new infrastructure, which is at the same time a reappropriation and reinvention of new forms of commons, ranging from collective self-managed facilities and collective knowledge and skills,

274

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

to new forms of groups and networks. The facilities and uses proposed by R-Urban will be shared and disseminated at various scales, progressively constituting a network open to various users, including adaptable elements and processes based on open-source knowledge. The resilient city is a city of sharing, empathy, and cooperation: it is a city of commons. We have learned from our previous projects (i.e., Ecobox and Passage 56)13 that, to avoid opposition and delay, one can tactically use easily accessible space. Rather than buying land, the R-Urban land trust bypasses the fi xation on the idea of property and negotiates land for use (both short and long term) rather than for possession. The right to use as opposed to the right to possess is an intrinsic quality of the commons. As in previous projects, we focus especially on urban interstices and spaces that escape, if only temporarily, from financial speculation. This interstitial strategy involves spaces, actors, local partners, and time. This is also the position of Holloway (2006) who, after having analyzed various forms and initiatives to transform society, concludes that “the only possible way to think about radical change in society is within its interstices” and that “the best way of operating within interstices is to organize them” (pp. 19–20, authors’ translation). This is also what R-Urban does: It organizes a series of spatial, temporal, and human interstices and transforms them into common facilities; it sets up a different type of urban space, neither public nor private, hosting reinvented collective practices and collaborative organizations; it initiates networks of interstices to reinvent the commons in metropolitan contexts.

7. PIONEERING R-URBAN R-Urban is on the way. Over the next few years, we will nurture the diverse economies and initiate progressive practices within the R-Urban network in Colombes. We will reactivate cultures of collaboration and sharing. We have designed R-Urban to be a process and infrastructure that can grow with time, being easy to appropriate and replicate. We will be testing it for a while, before leaving it to proliferate by itself. Will it succeed? For how long? These are questions to be answered in a few years. For the present, it is a visionary attempt to realize more democratic and bottom–up processes of resilient regeneration in a suburban context; it is a process designed specifically to be appropriated and followed up by others in similar contexts. No radical change will happen in current society without the involvement of the many. Change needs to be multiplied and disseminated rhizomatically, involving a multitude of processes of self-emancipation of people who choose to change their current lifestyle. As suggested by Holloway (2006), “if we want to take seriously the idea of self-emancipation . . . we need to look at people around us—the people at work, in the street, in the supermarket—and accept their own way of being rebellious, despite their external appearance. In a self-emancipated world, people shouldn’t be

R-Urban

275

taken for what they seem. They are not contained by their assigned identities, which they overpass and break into pieces, going against-and-beyond them” (p. 2, authors’ translation). R-Urban is for the people who are now “at work, in the street, in the supermarket.” It is up to them to take the effort further, “against-and-beyond-themselves,” toward a radical change of society.

NOTES 1. This chapter is an expanded version of Petcou, C. & Petrescu, D. (2012) “R-urban resilience,” in R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith, N. Clark, & M. Butcher (Eds.). (2012). ATLAS: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World. London: Black Dog Publishing. It is reprinted by permission of the editors and publisher. 2. Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu are founders of atelier d’architecture autogérée. 3. One of the fi rst occasions marking the emergence of this global awareness was the fi rst UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (1972), followed up by the Nairobi (1982), Rio (1992), Johannesburg (2002), and Rio+20 (2012) meetings. In recent years, such summits have multiplied and diversified in both scope and participants. The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference of 2009 recently exemplified the blockage resulting from the growing confl icts between and opposing interests of major international actors (e.g., governments, corporations, and NGOs), blockage that paralyzes decisions at the global scale. 4. Transition Towns, Incredible Edible, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPULs), and Ecovillage Networks are a few such initiatives that have started at the local scale and developed into extended networks. 5. For more information, see http://r-urban.net 6. “Fab lab” is short for “fabrication laboratory,” a small-scale workshop equipped with various fabrication machines and tools that enable users to produce “almost anything” (Fab lab, n.d.). 7. For more information about the R-Urban cooperative land trust, go to http:// r-urban.net/en/property/ 8. We are joining here with those political ecologists who criticize the superficial understanding of politics, power, and social construction promoted in resilience rhetoric (see, e.g., Hornborg, 2009, pp. 237–265). 9. Some of these ideas were developed in Brass, Bowden, and McGeevor (2011). 10. These ideas have been developed elsewhere, notably in the work of Ivan Illich and Andre Gorz. 11. We borrow the term “ecolomy” from architect Bjarke Ingels (2010, pp. 55–66). Ingels draws inspiration from the idea of an economy of ecology, based on production and consumption rather than reduction and abstention. He promotes a sort of “cradle-to-cradle” approach that channels new flows and establishes closed cycles. However, our understanding of “ecolomy” extends his idea of “economy of ecology” to its inverse: an “ecology of economy,” i.e., an economy aware of the relationships it creates and driven by ethical principles. 12. The “commons” traditionally defi ned the natural resources of an environmental space—such as forests, the atmosphere, rivers, and pasture—the

276

Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu

management and use of which was shared by the community. It constituted spaces that no one could own but everyone could use. The term has now been enlarged to include all material or virtual resources collectively shared by a population. 13. The ECObox (Paris 18e) and Passage 56, St. Blaise Street (Paris 20e) projects of aaa consist of the interim occupation by residents of interstitial spaces and temporarily available plots resulting from demolitions and awaiting development. These plots are transformed into self-managed spaces that host collective activities such as gardening, cooking, cultural events, and political debates. This occupation, which is meant to be temporary, can be temporally extended due to the mobility of the infrastructure and the territorial expansion of the strategy, allowing the projects to be moved and reinstalled opportunistically in new locations (for more detail, see www.urbantactics.org).

REFERENCES Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire. In V. Rao & M. Walton (Eds.), Cultural and public action (pp. 59–84). Stamford, CT: Stamford University Press. Brass, C., Bowden, F., & McGeevor, K. (2011). Co-designing urban opportunities (SCIBE Working Paper No. 4). Retrieved from http://www.scibe.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2010/11/04-PSI.pdf. Cameron, D. (2011). PM’s speech on Big Society, 14 February 2011. Retrieved from http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/ pms-speech-on-big-society-60563. Clément, G. (2004). Manifeste du tiers paysage [Manifesto of the third landscape]. Paris, France: Éditions Sujet/Objet. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980). Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2: Mille plateaux [A Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia]. Paris, France: Les Éditions de Minuit. Fab lab. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fablab Geddes, P. (1904). City Development.: A study of parks, gardens and culture-institutes: A report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust . Bournville, Birmingham, UK: The Saint George Press.. Geddes, P. (1915). City in Evolution. London, UK: Williams & Norgate Gorz, A. (2008). Manifeste utopia [Manifest utopia]. Brest, France: Edition Parangon. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: Guerre et démocratie à l’âge de l’Empire [Multitude: War and democracy in the age of Empire]. Paris, France: La Découverte. Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, 53(9–10), 23–40. Holloway, J. (2002). Change the world without taking power. London, UK: Pluto Press. Holloway, J. (2006). Un mouvement “contre-et-au-delà”: À propos du débat sur mon livre Changer le monde sans prendre le pouvoir [A movement “againstand-beyond”: About the discussion of the beginning of my book] Change the world without taking power]. Variations: Revue internationale de théorie critique, 18(4), 15–30. Hopkins, R. (2008). The transition handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Hopkins, R. (2009). Resilience thinking. Resurgence, 257, 12–15. Hornborg, A. (2009). Zero-sum world: Challenges in conceptualizing environmental load displacement and ecologically unequal exchange in the world-system. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 5(3–4), 237–262.

R-Urban

277

Howard, E. (1946). Garden Cities of To-morrow. London: Faber and Faber. (Original work published 1902) Ingels, B. (2010). The joys of ecolomy: How to make sustainability a haven of hedonism. In I. Ruby & A. Ruby (Eds.), Re-inventing construction (pp. 55–66), Berlin: Ruby Press. Lazzarato, M. (2002). Puissance de l’invention: La psychologie économique de Gabriel Tarde contre l’économie politique [Powers of Invention: Gabrial Tarde’s Economic Psychology Against Political Economy]. Paris, France: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on cities. New York, NY: Blackwell. Maguire, B., & Cartwright, S. (2008). Assessing a community’s capacity to manage change: A resilience approach to social assessment. Retrieved from http:// adl.brs.gov.au/brsShop/data/dewha_resilience_sa_report_fi nal_4.pdf Rancière, J. (1998). Au bord du politique [On the Shores of Politics]. Paris, France: La Fabrique Éditions. Ravel, J., & Negri, A. (2008). Inventer le commun des hommes [Inventing the common] (Multitudes No. 31). Paris, France: Éditions Amsterdam. Stiglitz, J. (2010). Freefall: Free markets and the sinking of the global economy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Tyszczuk, R., Smith, J., Clark, N., & Butcher, M. (2012). ATLAS: Geography, architecture, and change in an interdependent world. London, UK: Black Dog Publishing.

This page intentionally left blank

Contributors

EDITORS Karin Bradley is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Her research concerns sustainable living, environmental justice, alternative futures, and contemporary movements concerning the commons, and degrowth. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled Just Environments: Politicising Sustainable Urban Development and she has published articles in Local Environment and International Planning Studies, as well as in several popular collections and journals. Her current research projects deal with alternative economies, degrowth and socioenvironmental movements. Johan Hedrén is an Associate Professor of Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University, engaged in research and teaching from the cultural and social science perspectives. The central themes of his work are ideologies and discourses concerning the environment and sustainable development, utopian thought concerning the same issues, and the relationship between politics and science. His main theoretical inspiration comes from neo-Marxism and poststructuralism. He and BjörnOla Linnér were guest editors of a special 2009 issue of Futures about Utopian Thought and Sustainable Development, which grew out of an international workshop on the same topic a few years before.

CONTRIBUTORS J.K. Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham, feminist political economists and economic geographers based at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Their 1996 book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy was republished in 2006 by University of Minnesota Press along with its sequel, A

280 Contributors Postcapitalist Politics. They have coedited two collections with Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff: Class and Its Others (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism (Duke University Press, 2001). Gibson and Graham are founding members of the Community Economies Collective. Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling is a researcher in Planning and Decision Analysis, specializing in Urban and Regional Studies, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Her doctoral dissertation, Just Sustainable Futures: Gender and Environmental Justice Considerations in Planning (2011), treats issues of gender and environmental justice when planning for sustainable futures. Earlier publications include: (with M. Höjer) “Scenario Planning for Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden: Environmental Justice Considerations” (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2011), and (with K. Larsen and E. Westholm) “Environmental Scenarios and Local–Global Level of Community Engagement: Environmental Justice, Jams, Institutions, and Innovation” (Futures, 2011). Alf Hornborg is a Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University. He has published widely on the cultural and political dimensions of human–environmental relations in past and present societies, particularly from the perspective of world-system analysis and global environmental history. He is the author of The Power of the Machine (AltaMira, 2001) and Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (Routledge, 2011), and lead editor of The World System and the Earth System (Left Coast Press, 2007), Rethinking Environmental History (AltaMira, 2007), International Trade and Environmental Justice (Nova Science Publishers, 2010), Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia (University Press of Colorado, 2011), and Ecology and Power (Routledge, 2012). Martin Hultman is a research fellow at the Department of historical, philosophical and religious studies at Umeå University. His research involves energy and environmental politics, environmental history, studies of science and technology and cultural analysis. He has published articles as ”The Making of an Environmental Hero: A History of Ecomodern Masculinity, Fuel Cells and Arnold Schwarzenegger” (Environmental Humanities, 2013), “Energizing technology: Expectations of fuel cells and the hydrogen economy, 1990–2005” (History and Technology, 2013) and ”A Green fatwā? Climate change as a threat to the masculinity of industrial modernity” (Norma: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, forthcoming 2014). His work on scientific theory has resulted in the book Posthumanistiska nyckeltexter [Key texts in posthumanities] (coedited with Cecilia Åsberg and Francis Lee, 2012) and currently he is working on a manuscript forthcoming on Routledge called Discourses of Global Climate Change.

Contributors

281

Karolina Isaksson is a senior research leader at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. In her research, she explores the interface between environmental studies, spatial planning and sustainable transport/mobility. Her theoretical interests concern issues of power, transitions, environmental justice, planning as a situated practice and norms of mobility. She has published articles in for instance Transportation Research, International Planning Studies, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management as well as in several popular collections and journals. Tom Mels is an Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Uppsala (Campus Gotland). His research and teaching is concerned with gaining critical reflexive knowledge about power, environmental justice and the politics of nature and landscape. Current empirical interests include capitalist modernity, neoliberalism and nature conservation in Sweden; Power, capital and the nature of wetland reclamation on Gotland 1850–1950; Wind power planning and scales of environmental justice. Constantin Petcou is a Paris-based architect whose work stresses the intersection between architecture, urbanism, and semiotics. He has coedited Urban Act: A Handbook for Alternative Practice (2007) and Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across (2010). He is a cofounder of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa), a collective that conducts explorations, actions, and research concerning sociopolitical practices in the contemporary city. aaa acts through “urban tactics,” encouraging inhabitants to self-manage disused urban spaces, engage in nomadic and reversible projects, and initiate interstitial practices. aaa has been laureate of the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2010 and the Prix Grand Public des Architectures contemporaines en Métropole Parisienne 2010. Doina Petrescu is a Professor of Architecture and Design Activism at the University of Sheffield. She is, with Constantin Petcou, the cofounder of atelier d’architecture autogérée. Her research focuses on gender and space in contemporary society as well as participation in architecture. Her approach broadens the scope of architectural discourse by bringing cultural, social, and political issues to inform the design and thinking processes in architecture. Her research methodology combines approaches from architectural theory and design, contemporary arts, social sciences, political philosophy, and feminist theory. She is the editor of Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (2007) and coeditor of Architecture and Participation (2005), Urban Act (2007), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (2009), and Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across (2010).

282 Contributors Lucy Sargisson is an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham. Her research concerns political utopias and utopianism. It includes imaginary explorations of utopianism as well as lived experiments. Her publications treat alternative lifestyles, intentional communities, religious fundamentalism, and feminist and environmentalist theory. She recently wrote Fools’ Gold? Utopianism in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), dealing with various aspects of contemporary utopian thought as manifested in architecture, theory, fiction, and social experimentation. Another ongoing project deals with property and utopian alternatives to private property. Meike Schalk is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and works in Stockholm and Berlin as an architect and researcher. She teaches Critical Studies at KTH and pursues an artistic praxis together with the artist Apolonija Šušterčič. Her doctoral dissertation, Imagining the Organic City: Modern Tropes of Organization, treated theoretical and applied aesthetics in landscape architecture. In 2010, she was project leader for the artistic research project Participative Mapping. She is coinitiator of the feminist group FATALE (Feminist Architecture Theory–Analysis Laboratory Education) pursuing research and education within, and through, feminist architecture theory and practice. She also serves on the editorial board of SITE. Erik Swyngedouw is a Professor of Geography in the School of Environment and Development at Manchester University. He was a Professor of Geography at Oxford University and Fellow of St. Peter’s College until 2006. His research interests include political ecology, urban governance, democracy and political power, water and water resources, the political economy of capitalist societies, and the politics of globalization. He has published over 50 papers on these themes. Recent books include: The Globalized City (coedited with Frank Moulaert and Arantxa Rodridgues, Oxford University Press, 2003), Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power (Oxford University Press, 2004), and In the Nature of Cities (coedited with Nik Heynen and Maria Kaika, Routledge, 2006), Can Neighbourhoods Safe the City? (coedited with Sara Gonzales, Flavia Martinelli and Frank Moulaert, Routledge, 2010) and Spectres of the Political (coedited with Japhy Wilson, Edinburgh University Press, 2014). Ylva Uggla is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CUReS) at Örebro University. Her research concerns multilevel governance, environmental politics and regulation, urban planning, and local politics. Central issues are the interplay between science and policy and the handling of uncertainty in decision-making

Contributors

283

processes. Her empirical research subjects in the environmental field are climate change adaptation, the sea transport of oil, and biodiversity and intervention in natural biological systems. Other areas of interest are the negotiation of nature in urban areas and how the urban and the natural are constructed in planning processes and city marketing. Alexander Vasudevan is a Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Geography in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. His current research focuses on radical politics in Germany and the wider geographies of neo-liberal globalization. He is fi nishing a book on the history of squatting in Berlin (Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin, Wiley-Blackwell) and has begun work on a book that explores the wider history of squatting in Europe and North America. His work has appeared in journals including Antipode, Cultural Geographies, Environment and Planning A and D, Public Culture and Social and Cultural Geography.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

A “accumulation by disposession”, 207 activism, 132, 145, 189, 208, 210–211, 213, 215 architectural, 205, 207, 219, 221 cycling, 16 environmental, 23 open source, 183 particularistic, 177 Adger, Neil, 60, 61, 69 agonism, 31–35, 103, 111 agonistic struggle, 31 alternative currencies, 12, 13, 45–47, 48, 50, 253 antagonism, 30, 176 Anthropocene, 24–27, 35, 42, 51 anti-anti-utopianism. See utopianism appropriation, 145, 190, 220, 265, 269 reappropriation, 205, 214, 271, 273 architecture, 15, 16, 197, 208, 211, 214, 226–242 landscape, 140 open source, 190–191, 197 participatory, 208, 214–215, 219 peer-to-peer, 189–192 autonomous autonomous urbanism, 14, 205–206, 208, 222 housing autonomy, 207, 216, 219 temporary autonomous zones, 188–189, 190, 197

B Badiou, Alain, 23, 29, 33–34 Bauman, Zygmunt, 120 Bauwens, Michael, 187, 199, 200 Benkler, Yochai, 13, 184, 186–187, 189, 198 Bennett, Jane, 27, 40–41, 47

Berlin socioeconomic situation in, 132–133 squatter movement of, 205–222 Tempelhof field in, 15, 133–142 urban planning in, 15, 132–133, 142–146 Beuys, Joseph, 216–217 Bey, Hakim, 188–190 “Big society”, 270 biking, 118, 124–126 biodiversity, 16, 25, 26, 28, 68, 101, 109, 156, 162, 172 Bloch, Ernst, 6–7, 57, 120, 131, 226, 251, 253 Bookchin, Murray, 184, 188, 197 Botsman, Rachel & Rogers, Roo, 195, 197 Botsman, Rachel, 197, 199 Bourdieu, Pierre, 219

C Campbell, Heather, 102, 105–106 capitalism, 1–2, 5, 9–10, 29–30 critique of, 6, 24–25, 31, 107, 194, 198, 200–201 in relation to urbanization, 207 Clément, Gilles, 271 citizen initiatives, 15, 132–134, 137, 141–142, 145, 213 cohousing, 2, 3, 13–14, 226–227, 232–240 as squats, 211, 215, 217 collaborative consumption, 13, 195, 200 collective space, 135, 205, 214, 219, 235, 259, 263, 265, 272 commodification, 5, 161 commons as collective facilities, 273

286

Index

commoning, 221–222 digital, 186–187 governing of the, 34, 187–189 natural resource, 32, 187–189 reclaiming of the, 35, 145, 273 self-management of, 187–189 tragedy of the, 188 urban, 207, 219, 221, 274 commons-based peer production. See peer production communal housing. See cohousing community garden, 14, 49, 135, 141, 259, 265 communal space. See collective space Community Supported Agriculture, 47–48 consensus, 5, 29, 68, 101–104, 109, 111–112, 176, 232, 236 consumerism, 5, 183–184, 244, 259 consumption, 1–2, 13, 15–16, 38, 48, 71 87, 90, 105,114, 116, 131, 162, 172–173, 177, 183, 195–197, 199–200, 202–203, 243, 258, 263, 266, 275 cooperative, 44, 50, 253, 263 Evergreen Cooperatives, Ohio, 12, 16, 43–44, 45 Mondragon Cooperative, Basques region, 44–45 Corbett, Julia, 153, 161 Le Corbusier, 14, 102, 227 Creative Commons, 186, 193, 199 Critical Mass movement, 11, 124 cultural heritage, 159, 161, 169

Dryzek, John, 101, 103 dystopia. See utopianism

E ecolocical economics, 2, 73, 84–92 ecological modernization, 3, 4–5, 15, 71 “ecolomy”, 273 ecotopia, 243–244, 252–253 egalitarianism, 13, 14, 24, 32–34, 89, 106, 137, 208, 238–239, 266, 272 egalitarian ecologies, 35 empowerment, 68, 72, 141, 189, 208, 219, 269 environmental justice. See justice environmental limits. See planetary boundaries estrangement (utopian), 10, 59, 64–68 Exyzt, 189–192

F fab lab, 14, 192, 262 Fainstein, Susan, 102–103, 106–108 fantasies, 26, 30, 40 feminism, 38–42, 109–110 Folke, Carl, 60–70, 72 futures feminist futures, 110 green futures, 1–3, 9, 13, 23–24, 33, 166 technological futures, 76–97 futures studies, 102, 107–112 backcasting, 108

D

G

Deleuze, Giles & Guattari, Félix, 27, 28, 271 democracy, 6, 24, 111, 136, 190, 272 dialogical, 101–107 economic, 46 liberal, 24 local, 243 proper, 35 revitalization of, 5 desire, 26, 226, 227, 251 distributed systems, 48, 243 diverse economy, 39, 42, 49–50, 274 do-it-yourself culture, 11, 200–201 maintenance, 212, 214 production, 192, 201 tactics, 189 urbanism, 189

Geddes, Patrick, 265–266 gentrification,132, 137–138, 141–142, 207, 219, 221 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, 75, 82–87, 90, 91–92 de Geus, Marius, 7, 9, 251 Gibson, Katherine, 12–13 Gibson-Graham, J.K., 13, 16, 38, 107, 200 global distribution, 77, 91–92 globalism, 168, 172–177 Gorz, André, 263 governance, 31–33, 58, 68–71, 263–264, 272, 273 grass roots initiatives. See citizen initiatives green areas, 151, 161–162, 137–142 green growth, 2, 253

Index Guattari, Félix, 72, 211

H hacker culture, 186, 190 hackerspace, See makerspace Hajer, Maarten, 3, 244 Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, 221, 273 Harvey, David, 7, 9, 11, 16, 28, 59, 67, 72, 107, 111, 120, 126, 131, 132, 141, 144, 145, 153, 162, 166–168, 171, 174, 176–177, 207, 220, 251, 269, 270 Hayden, Dolores, 51 Holling, Buzz, 58, 60, 62–65, 69 hooks, bell, 131 Hopkins, Rob, 3, 11, 12, 183, 243, 251, 266, 268 Hornborg, Alf, 1, 6, 12, 16, 66–68, 72, 78, 81, 84, 86, 87, 88, 93 housing communities, 13, 234–238 Howard, Ebenezer, 14, 102, 227, 265

I IBA—International Building Exhibition, 133, 134, 142–145 ideal cities. See utopianism, ideal cities ideology, 27, 85, 166, 167, 176, 229, 244 ideological, 27, 76, 166, 168, 172, 174, 270, 272 ideology and utopia, 58–60, 120, 122, 153 ideology critique, 59 innovation 1, 4, 53, 62, 69, 71, 78–79 technological innovation, 41, 77–79, 108 insurgencies, 33, 35, 214

J Jameson, Fredric, 5, 7, 9–10, 30, 58–59, 67, 72, 121, 126 justice in cities,106–108, 221, in relation to diversity, 106–107 in relation to the environment, 72, 109, 111–112

K Kumar, Krishan, 7, 70, 243

L labour, 88–89, 92 landscape agricultural, 155

287

heritage, 51, 137, 153, 162, 165, 169, 172 open, 137, 171 suburban, 14, 53 urban, 116 wind power,168–169, 174, 176–177 Latour, Bruno, 27, 28, 39, 42, 81 Lefebvre, Henri, 216, 269 Levitas, Ruth, 7–10, 58–59, 119–120, 127, 131–132, 141, 144–145, 227 local currencies. See alternative currencies local economy, 12, 39, 228 low tech. See technology

M maker movement, 192, 195, 201 making, 12, 185 makerspace, 192 Mannheim, Karl, 58, 120, 122 Marin, Louis, 153, 243 Martinez-Alier, Juan, 89, 94 Marx, Karl, 76, 85–89, 94, 215 Marxism, 82, 84–92 master plan, 136, 139–141 micro-politics, 205, 211, 214, 220 “militant particularism”, 16, 166–168, 171–172, 176, 177 modernity, 31, 91, 150–151 modernist architecture, 229 “molecular revolution”, 211 Moore, Thomas, 120 “more than human”, 40–42, 49, 53 Mouffe, Chantal, 67, 103, 166, 176

N nature, 5, 6, 23–29, 32, 60, 65–66, 69 end of (death of), 23–29 natures, 27–32, 35 naturalization, 59, 171 nature conservation, 150–152, 155, 169–171, 177, 252 the value of, 86–87, 89, 91 needs, 72, 104, 111, 186–187, 198, 228, 234, 239, 247, 270 neoliberalism, 5, 8, 10, 32, 108, 132, 167, 172, 174, 176, 188, 197, 267, 271 “free market fundamentalism”, 9, 59 New Urbanism, 13, 227–232, 239–240 non-capitalism, 14, 208

288

Index

non-capitalist enterprises, 14, 49, 53, 107, 50, 259, 262, 270 nostalgia, 112, 153, 162, 172, 231

O open source architecture, 190–192 economy, 193–194, 200 hardware, 185, 192–195 movement, 13, 183, 185–186 Open Source Ecology, 185, 192–195 philosophy, 185–186 software, 46, 47, 50, 186 oppression, 33, 110 Ostrom, Elinor, 184, 188–189, 197, 199

P “paradise contrived”, 153 park, 133–134, 150–162 national park, 150–162 participation informal participation, 138, 141 public participation, 103, 112, 132, 135, 137, 144–145 stakeholder participation, 69, 101 user participation, 218, 234, 239 participatory architecture. See architecture particularism, 166–172, 177 partipatory planning. See planning peak oil, 12, 76, 79, 85, 91, 119, 183, 243, 266 peer economies, 197–201 peer-to-peer currency, 13, 45–46 peer production, 2, 184–185, 186–187 commercial peer production, 195–196 peer-to-peer architecture, 189–192 Pickerill, Jenny & Chatterton, Paul, 14, 205, 208 pioneer, 133, 139–140, 144–146 “pioneer fields”, 133, 135, 138–142 planetary boundaries, 101, 119 planning, 101–104 collaborative, 103 communicative, 103 crowd-sourced,189 grassroots, 15, 133, 137 informal participative, 133 modernist, 231 participatory, 135, 141, 145–146, 234 postmodern, 105–106 postpositivist, 103

techno-managerial, 31 unplanning, 146 urban, 8, 14–16, 141, 145–146, 230, 265 Plumwood, Val, 38, 39 “the political”, 4–6, 23–25, 27, 31–35, 102, 103, 112, 211, 214, 272 depolitization, 24 post-politics, 4–6, 24, 104 repolitization, 24 political ecology, 27, 73, 107, 269, 273 postanarchism, 188–189, 197 postcapitalism, 12, 42, 187 post-scarcity anarchism, 188 power relations, 16, 35, 68, 70, 72, 77, 81, 104, 115, 131, 193, 211 preservation of green areas, 150–152, 155 progress of a society, 1, 267, 86, 92, 151 technological, 76–83, 89–93

R Rancière, Jacques, 33, 166, 272 Raymond, Eric, 186 reappropriation. See appropriation recycling, 83, 264, 273 reducing consumption, 196, 243, 264 environmental impact, 172, 174 oil dependence, 247 traveling, 118, 119 regional development, 38, 41–42, 44–54 resilience, 57–58, 60–75 culture of resilience, 268, 271 local resilience, 266 resilience as utopia, 68–73 resilience theory, 60–68, 264 urban resilience, 259 reskilling, 11, 14, 268 resource scarcity, 258, 264, 266 artificial resource scarcity, 193, 198 retrofitting, 14, 48, 52, 259, 262–263, 266 reusing, 144, 195, 196, 264, 273 “right to the city”, 145, 205, 220, 269 rhizome, 28, 274 rhizomatic networks, 28

S Sandercock, Leonie, 102, 107 Sargisson, Lucy, 7, 8, 9–11, 13–14, 17, 58, 59, 189, 238, 243

Index Schwartzman, David, 82, 85–86 self-building, 258, 262, 263, 269 self-management. See self-organization self-organization of housing, 218–219 of nature, 61, 70 of resource management, 45, 48, 53, 188–189, 192, 199, 266, 269, 272 of urban space, 141, 146, 190, 197, 270, 273 self-provision. See self-sufficiency self-sufficiency, 49, 50, 193 sharing bike-sharing, 124 car-sharing, 123, 195 of consumer goods, 195–197 of digital information, 186 of housing and facilities, 234–235 of skills, 192 peer-to-peer sharing, 199 sharing economy, 197 social enterprise, see non capitalism, non-capitalist enterprises socioecological systems, 57–75 solar energy, 15, 76–97, 259 solidarity in society, 32–35, 53, 266, 267, 272–273 solidarity economy, 49, 53 wage solidarity, 45 spatial alterity, 155 squatting, 14, 205–222 Stallman, Richard, 186 Stiglitz, Joseph, 272–273 Stockholm environmental politics of, 104–105 Stockholm National City Park, 150–158, 160–162 suburb, 14, 47, 48, 52, 258–259, 263, 265, 274 sustainability. See sustainable development sustainable development, 4, 6, 69, 30, 101–102, 111–112, 264 sustainable mobility, 115–117, 118–119 Swyngedouw, Erik, 4, 5, 6, 27, 29, 31, 33, 59, 107, 169, 176

T technology, 1, 16, 30, 66, 76–97, 198 green technology, 1, 4, 30, 118, 172, 244–248, 251 high technology, 174 information technology, 122, 197 low technology, 187, 192

289

proprietary technology, 183 technological fi x, 66 technological progress, 76 technological utopianism, 76 temporary built structures, 190 makerspaces, 192 use of open space, 140, 189, 219 temporary autonomous zones. See autonomous totalitarianism, 33, 66 transduction, 269–270 transition, 243–244, 251–253 the Transition movement, 11, 37–38, 57, 266 transport, 4, 105, 115–128, 187, 230, 243 European transport policy, 115–116, 121–124 EU White Paper on transportation, 121–122 public transport,123 transport policy, 115–116, 118–119, 121–124

U unequal exchange, 6, 87, 90–91, 93 unequal relations, 24, 79, 166 urban planning. See planning urban sprawl, 51, 151, 227, 229 utopianism, 1–3, 6–11, 16–17, 120, 153, 226–227, 232, 238–239, 243–244, 251–253 anti-anti-utopianism, 10, 120, 126, 128 as blueprints, 8–10, 33, 59, 66, 70–72, 93, 146, 189, 229, 232, 239 as ideal cities, 102, 265–266 as micropractices, 12–14, 124, 127, 191–192, 197–198, 201, 207, 258–263 as transgression, 10, 189 dialectical utopianism, 131, 144 dystopia, 7, 29 egalitarian utopianism, 13, 238 participative utopia, 258 purposes of, 9–11 technological utopianism, 76–97, 243–257 utopia proper, 7 utopian desire, 15, 131, 145, 185 utopian impulse, 2, 9, 59, 68, 120, 126, 102 utopian thought, 2–3, 7, 102 utopianism in science, 57–75

290 Index V vital materialism, 40–41, 48, 51, 53

Williams, Raymond, 167, 171, 177 wind power, 16, 80–81, 165–177

W

Z

Weir, Jessica, 39

Žižek, Slavoj, 23, 25–28, 31, 34–35