urban reciprocity + Regeneration
A new model for green cities
Across the globe, recording-breaking lethal temperatures, fatal floods, droughts, and aggressive wildfires are wreaking havoc on the world’s natural environments. These catastrophic events mark the beginning of the impending climate and ecological emergency. The climate breakdown linked to these events has been identified by the United Nations as the defining crisis of our time. High concentrations of carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources such as the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production are causing the planet to warm to a catastrophic temperature (CO2 Human Emissions, 2020).
We need to take action to mitigate this crisis. The human impact on Earth’s ecosystems has become devastating – but, it doesn’t have to be. The knowledge and methods on how to maintain ecosystems and biodiversity already exist. Significantly, Indigenous communities around the world protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity, though they only constitute 5% of the global population (Raygorodetsky, 2018). If we reimagine our relationship with the natural world, similar to the connection with the more-than-human established by Indigenous communities for generations, I think we can both thrive in a truly sustainable way. Therefore, with this project, I sought to investigate how to mitigate the climate crisis in urban environments through Indigenous ways of knowing.
Research
Dominant Western Worldview
Capitalist societies which are propagated by the dominant western worldview have created a culture of compulsive over-consumption and fabricated demand. For the capitalist machine to continue to function, the natural world is overexploited, in some cases to a breaking point. This conquest of nature for the sake of progress and development hinges upon the belief of human exceptionalism, which asserts that humans are at the top of the hierarchy of Earth’s species and considers everything non-human as inanimate and without agency. This perspective fosters greed and the commodification of nature. The accumulation of wealth obtained from this practice creates a consumer society that recognizes the presence of scarcity, which in turn creates competition and promotes the idea of unmet desires. These systems perpetuate the production of waste and pollution for the sake of profit margins and the accumulation of wealth for personal and/or corporate gains.
From this information, it became clear to me that this worldview and how we live can never be truly sustainable. The commodification of nature and the greed with which we extract natural resources has led to the climate breakdown.
Indigenous Knowledge
Indigenous worldviews articulate the antithesis of the Dominant Western worldview’s conquest of nature. Where the Dominant Western worldview sees the land as existing
for the benefit of humans, Indigenous communities view the land as a sacred gift and the sustainer of life. They live with respect for natural law and give animacy to the more-than-human elements of the natural world. Indigenous communities around the globe have traditionally acknowledged that all life is sovereign and interdependent and that all elements of creation (including humans) have the right and responsibility to exist as equals within a shared system (Mitchell, 2020). This worldview decentres humans and acknowledges them as having a participatory role in maintaining the well-being of the land. This fosters a reciprocal and regenerative relationship between humanity and the more-than-human. Similarly, the acknowledgement of the wealth of resources for the benefit of the community cultivates collectivity and recognition of abundance that leads to the sharing of resources, and in turn the creation of less waste.
Cities
The Urban Century
It is estimated that “more than 2.4 billion additional residents are expected in the world’s cities and towns by 2050” (McDonald, et al., 2018). Consequently, these concrete jungles are fuelling the climate breakdown. Cities are responsible for consuming 78% of the world’s energy and producing 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, though they only account for 2% of the Earth’s surface (UN-Habitat). But, urban sprawl has not proven to be a more sustainable alternative. A UC Berkeley study has found that “suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population” (Sanders, 2014). We need to re-imagine what the density of urban life should look like, in a way that does not promote the climate and ecological break- downs caused by anthropogenic activity.
Nature-Based Solutions
Food Forests + Agriculture
To create climate breakdown mitigating residential urban spaces, I researched nature-based solutions. I wanted to find climate mitigating methods and technologies that would facilitate proximity to nature. For example, silvopasture is described as:
“Indigenous system that integrates nut and fruit trees, forage, and grasses to feed grazing livestock. Another, regenerative agriculture, involves minimal soil disturbance, organic production, compost application, the use of cover crops, and crop rotation. Both systems harness plants to capture greenhouse gas- es. Plants are nature’s alchemists, transforming atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugar and trapping it on the land where it belongs” (Penniman, 2020, pp. 304-305)
Similarly, Peter Andrews who developed Natural Sequence Farming has noted that:
“Around a quarter of the planet has been stripped almost entirely of vegetation. In other words, one-quarter of the planet has been stripped of its ability to moderate temperature...the fact that all major problems of our landscape have a common cause, a lack of vegetation, means that they also have a common solution” (Penniman, 2020, pp. 315-316)
Climate Solutions
I also researched some climate solutions from drawdown.org to include as elements of the future regenerative and reciprocal city I conceptualized. These included:
Green + Cool Roofs
Clean Energy: wind, solar, nuclear, ocean
Walkable Cities
Bicycle Infrastructure
Public Transit
Stakeholder
The primary stakeholder of this project is the natural environment. Nature has long been dominated by humans. The continued focus of human-centred design concerning sustainability projects prevents the creation of the disorder required to allow for the level of change that is necessary to tackle issues relating to the climate breakdown. Essentially, I felt that a nature-focused approach could allow for breakthrough innovation as it empowers us to think outside of the scope of the status quo.
Ideation
How can we decentralize humans within built environments like cities to benefit the more-than-human aspects of the Earth’s ecosystems? Speculative Approach
I took a speculative design approach, as the city is an entity that involves the intersection of a complex group of actors and systems. This allowed me to address the broad scope of the climate breakdown in cities within the limited timeframe of this project. And according to Dunne + Raby, who popularized the concept of speculative design, “Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” (Dunne & Raby, 2013). Therefore, the long-term goal of this project seeks to reimagine the city as an entity that decentres humans and functions on the principles of reciprocity with and regeneration of the natural environment. For the sake of the timeline of this project, my short-term goal, and where I conceptualized my intervention was in residential urban spaces. A speculative approach allowed me to imagine probable and preferable futures. I decided to contextualize my intervention in a new space to allow me to fully imagine the potential of this way of living, without being restricted by existing structures
Prototyping
My prototype is an early iteration of what I hope this intervention could become. It is a representational city model in which natural environments exist in equivalence to human-inhabited environments. Residents live amongst and care for green spaces such as gardens, crops, and food forests. I felt that the expansive green spaces in the city could stimulate a non-exploitative relationship with the environment. They can also support the sequestration of carbon in trees, vegetation, soil, and water to mitigate the climate breakdown.
This residential space sits within a walkable city, which favours pedestrian traffic and biking over the use of fossil-fuelled vehicles.
To promote regeneration within the city, agri- culture is integrated into urban areas with grazing sheep to promote soil regeneration to sequester carbon and encourage healthy soils to support crop growth and provide food for inhabitants. Renewable energies such as wind power, among others, provide all necessary power, without destroying the Earth while making use of them.
This model demonstrates the evolution of the way we can live in urban spaces. And ultimately substantiates a way of life that allows us to view the more-than-human as an entity of the global community that we have a responsibility to care for. In future, I hope this model could serve as an engagement tool to refine some of the systems I suggested. The elements are moveable and if I used them to interact with stakeholders, I could further iterate what this new form of residential urban space could be.
Looking Forward
The long-term goal of this project would be a fully realized city that is built upon notions of reciprocity and regeneration across all systems that function within an urban environment. This would require collaboration with a multitude of different actors, such as experts in traditional ecological knowledge, scientists, ecologists, engineers, and governments to be fully actualized.
Moreover, my aim is that this project will foreground the opportunity to bring Indigenous communities to the table to share their traditional knowledge on how to foster a reciprocal and regenerative relationship with the more-than-human that will ensure we have a future on Earth. The outcome I came to is just a starting point. It opens the door to examine the larger scope of the city and can be transferred to other systems and spaces that comprise a city environment.