you wrote:

If a sustainable life is to be less about stuff, and more about people - with few new buildings and products being made - what is there left for designers and artists to do?

A big part of the answer is to seek out daily life solutions that already exist - such as the collaborative, low-energy food storage solution shown in the photograph - and then to adapt and improve them for new contexts.

[...]

I've been thinking about your model of achieving sustainability via doing (almost) nothing new and wondering just how sustainable it really is.

By which I mean: it seems unlikely that the whole of human civilization will think it's a good idea for architects to design few new buildings, engineers to create few new constructs and so on. Indeed, even if this was true for a time, how many generations would pass before there was an ideological revolt against even the most well-intended constraints?

I suppose the reply would be that 'peak oil' (along with the other theorized peaks) will sort all that out by collectively forcing us to make do with less, whether we like it or not.

That's debatable, to say the least (not that oil will become scarcer, but rather, that this will happen on the timetable and in precisely the way peakists describe and that our response will be as they imagine). But even if, for the sake of argument, I fully accept the peakist view it seems to me that humanity's answer will not uniformly fall into line with the 'small is beautiful' visions you and your colleagues espouse.

For example, perhaps S. Korea (which I know a thing or two about) concludes that the way to deal with peak is by developing a more sophisticated grid and building even more super-dense urban centers (to capture greater efficiencies of scale), as opposed to the hauntologically shaped idea of small town, 'everyone's a gardener' localism.

Would such a 'high tech' response clash with the implicit ethical assumptions built into your model (i.e., the apparent belief that 'localism' means generally nicer and more 'human scaled' communities)?

There's also the question of capitalism or rather, the near total lack of a critique of capitalist logic in the eco-design movement.

We don't have hundreds (maybe thousands, I don't know) of brands of toothpaste simply because designers are currently too fond of innovation (which, unless I miss my guess, you believe to be one of our problems). We have too many brands because profit is the key motivator of capitalist enterprises and market differentiation is often achieved via novelty (also, there's the matter of research genuinely producing better formulas for inhibiting disease and decay).

My point is to bring to the forefront the fact that much of what the ecologists of various stripes attribute to a 'separation from nature' or gigantism or what have you is the direct result of market ideology.

The eco-design movement appears to believe that this ideology will either go away because of the various peaks or be tamed and shrunk to small community, 'human' scale. But what would prevent, say, a British agribusiness firm (or design firm) from simply co-opting localized farming and design work and un-doing the localization movement by adapting itself to the language (the way Whole Foods, in the US, both encourages and dominates organic farming)?

What I'm pointing at here is what I see as a very large blind spot in your movement, whose heart is certainly in the right place and which bristles with intriguing ideas but which seems to think it can build a parallel world without completely taking the dominant one into account.

.d.

Dwayne,

I did not mean to propose that we do "nothing new", and I share your disinterest in "everyone's a gardener' localism."

Although I still prefer those kimchi pots to the freezer section in Tesco.

What I meant to say is that the most important innovation needed now is social, not technical.

The problem with the scenarios like smart grids and super-dense urban centers in Korea is that the money, energy and human resources needed to build them are unlikely to be available.

(Read John Michael Greer's paper on "catabolic collapse" for an explanation of why not).

You are right, of course, that many of the smarter corporate dinosaurs will try to co-opt localism; that's already happening.

It's just that when you are small, swarming is more effective than kicking.

Yes, Greer's paper is interesting, though I'm disturbed by the large number of eager apocalyptarians who've adopted it as a source text.

I note that all of his examples are societies which were expansionist.

Consider this excerpt, which describes the western Roman Empire's collapse:

The collapse of the western Roman Empire, by contrast, was a catabolic collapse driven by a combined maintenance and resource crisis. While the ancient Mediterranean world, like imperial China, was primarily dependent on readily replenished resources, the Empire itself was the product of an anabolic cycle fueled by easily depleted resources and driven by Roman military superiority. Beginning in the third century BCE, Roman expansion transformed the capital of other societies into resources for Rome as country after country was conquered and stripped of movable wealth. Each new conquest increased the Roman resource base and helped pay for further conquests. After the first century CE, though, further expansion failed to pay its own costs. All remaining peoples within the reach of Rome were either barbarian tribes with little wealth, such as the Germans, or rival empires capable of defending themselves, such as the Parthians (Jones 1974). Without income from new conquests, the maintenance costs of empire proved unsustainable, and a catabolic cycle followed rapidly. The first major breakdown in the imperial system came in 166 CE, and further crises followed until the Western empire ceased to exist in 476 CE (Grant 1990, Grant 1999).

[...]

What intrigues me is the way Greer identifies the mechanics of collapse while missing the larger point his research reveals. Which is that the theory and practice of endless expansion, rather than societal complexity, was the root cause of the collapse of the civilizations he cites.

We have, for example, no idea how Rome would've fared had she contented herself to the boot of Italia (or, as Gibbon instructs, corrected the system created by Augustus by creating an actual democracy rather than an 'absolute monarchy, hidden by republican forms').

It's my contention that in our own time, capitalism is the expansionist ideology which prevents us from achieving a more rational and resource-wise global society (only a person trying to eternally sell you something new would think landfills -- instead of re-use -- are a good idea).

Actually, this means that although I still have disagreements with your program (at least, as I understand it presently) I completely agree with you when you say:

"What I meant to say is that the most important innovation needed now is social, not technical."

Although, I'd like to see a balance of respect between technical and social innovations. Speaking of which, I recommend the following book which, in my view, is a good first attempt:

"Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" --
http://www.withouthotair.com/

In short, let's not assume out of hand, because it flatters our 'green' philosophy, that those smart grids are off the menu.

.d.

I just wanted to thank you for all your work on the Biennial of Saint-Etienne, and for this presentation of City Eco Lab...
I am a guide for the Biennial and I am happy to find all this information on your website... even if everything is written in English (a little harder for me to understand)...

Thank you
Laurent Guerrieri