Malmo2009

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“The ruins of the unsustainable are the 21st century’s frontier.”

-- Bruce Sterling

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The Shift: Personal actions, small steps.

Recent study by Dietza, etc. found low-hanging fruit could reduce 7.4% of U.S. national emissions. 10% almost immediately is possible (UK: 10% by 2010)

The problem is, that still leaves a lot of work - systems. And voluntary change is always limited. Live our values, but don't mistake that for changing the world (sufficiently).Image courtesy NYT

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Clean energy the most common Swap component.

(Though there are issues: Google “Renewistan.”)

The Swap involves changing components of the current system, without changing the system itself.

It ends up revealing the places that system is broken.

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We know now that we need to not only do things differently, we need to do different things; and cities are the leverage points for change.

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Image: Hans Monderman

People who live in cities use less stuff, waste less energy and are more ecologically innovative. The biggest reason for this is simply proximity: put things closer together and people drive less to get them, they live in more compact spaces to be near them, and they’re far more likely to share objects and use public goods. All of this has a huge impact on their ecological/carbon footprints.

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The change in life patterns in compact communities is so profound that it’s the closest thing we have to a simple answer on climate change.

The transportation impacts alone are so huge that it’s greener to live in a poorly-insulated condo than a super-green McMansion.

Want to reduce your GHG emissions? Build densely.

Compact urbanism also right-sizes homes, maximizes the efficient use of infrastructure, leads to different life choices and minimizes wasted public space. In fact, density promotes sustainability in pretty much every way we know how to measure.

How dense is too dense? There is not yet an upper limit on that curve: lowest energy use per unit of economic output is Tokyo, one of the densest places on the planet. (Places like Shanghai and Singapore are coming on fast though.)

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It’s one thing to have a goal, though, and quite another to achieve it.

If we want carbon-neutral bright green cities, how do we make it?

Innovation.

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Ambient technology helps us see and improve the flows of energy, resources.

When we measure things, we use them differently. Bringing the energy meter inside the home reduces energy use (aka the Prius Effect).

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Measurement begets transparency; transparency begs comparison; comparisons will be cruel to the irresponsible and asocial.

The upside is that people change even more quickly.

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The grid itself is getting smarter, working more like the Internet. It also allows for collaborative planning and responsive uses: there will certainly be an explosion of smart grid applications.

Electric cars and V2G solutions: connect them with smart meters, smart grids and you have a system of energy sponges. You can solve the peak load problem.

Especially good if the owners of those cars are only occasional drivers.

This also makes energy mortgages more workable; paying the cost of installing a clean energy system over time, with the savings on your energy bill.

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Intelligence can suffuse our infrastructure. Streetlights that know when the moon is full, water barrels that know when a storm is coming.

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The urban fabric is becoming woven through with technology.

We’re immersed in ambient urban technologies. Street as platform; not cyberspace but smart places. Adam Greenfield: ubiquitous computing = like horseless carriage; this is just the way technology comes now.

Image: Dan Hill

Ambient technology changes the world as we live it.

An Earth Sandwich is, actually, something people seem to want.

Indeed, a frankly disturbing number of people…

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Our sense of location in space is being transformed…

Adding precision to proximity can make cities even more sustainable: changes the relationship of people to stuff and space.

Many things are only garbage when they’re in the wrong place. Knowing where they are allows the person who wants them to change them from waste to resource.

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Ambient technology also changes our access to the spaces around us.

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Collaborative way-finding…

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Information smoothes inconveniences…

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Delivery models. Picking things up is the sign of a broken delivery system.

German Postal Service’s packstations.

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Even dumb things can have smartness layered over them. Technologies like augmented can change almost everything into stuff that can be dematerialized, coordinated and shared.

Stuff is now becoming a subset of information.

Knowing where things and who has them makes it easier to share them.

Car sharing went nowhere until it got easy, and technology is what’s made it convenient. Now a phone and a swipe card will take you anywhere you want to go.

Car sharing takes cars off the road, saving all the energy and resources that would have gone into their production, upkeep, storage and disposal.

In dense urban environments, each shared car may take as many as 20 private cars off the road. It also uses fewer parking spaces.

Each of these “nega-cars” represents huge ecological savings… and big cash savings for the users.

Bicing:

Radical bike-sharing made easy through density and technology. 24 euros and a swipe card, gives you the use any one of Bicing's bikes.

Since its launch in March 2007, Bicing has grown to serve 90,000 users, from 100 bicycles at 14 bike stations to 6,000 bikes at 400 stations. Very popular.

(There are problems, especially in Paris, but they’re also overstated…)

What can be shared?

The average power drill gets used for six to twenty minutes in its entire life.

We’ve made millions of power drills.

What we want is the hole, not the drill.

Sharing need not be low status.

Bag, Borrow or Steal is a product-service system for high-end fashion accessories.

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That model is spreading. We already share lots of high-status things: health clubs, country clubs, elite colleges…

All this information also makes it easier than ever to know the “backstory” of a product. Guilt-free affluence.

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Backstories are getting easier to verify.

A massive making visible of the invisible (transparency revolution), e.g. “virtual water.”

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Ambient technology means everything has a backstory.

People are eager to “de-cool” brands with bad backstories.

FUH2, a very popular site where people post pictures of themselves flipping off a Hummer.

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All this changes business: Backstory management, reverse supply chains, etc.

The same forces make possible a revolution in manufacturing: a new bargain between producers and users.

We feel no attachment to an airplane pillow; but we love the pillow grandma made.

Why should dishwashers or carpet be any different?

When we’re done with things, the companies that made them should take them back.

These reverse supply chains are a huge new field…

And when producers have to take back their products, design changes…

Zero waste.

Imagine having no garbage can. Imagine garbage cans not existing at all.

Design and creativity are suffusing very “boring” and “practical” things. The economy of the future is at least as much about ideas and culture as ports and freeways.

What makes us happy?

There’s been a acceleration of hyper-consumerism in the culture around us. Vertical emulation has robbed our prosperity of many of its pleasures.

At some point it became no longer enough to own a TV…

And we need to change our emotional relationship to stuff…

Now we’ve got to have a home theater…

It’s no longer enough to fly first class…

Now we have to fly in a private jet…

We are being told:

Prosperity is a private flying home theater.

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“Post-consumer” consumption…

Backstory + post-ownership + networks and reputation + financial insight.

This is not a small trend. This is the new normal, and places whose economies are built with this in mind will prosper.

Image: Logic+Emotion

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Changed relationships to stuff changes retail… Endossa in Sao Paulo

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It changes industry…

The Metrix: CreateSpace on Broadway, with its bottomless toolboxes, circuit board vending machine and fabbers…

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It changes engineering. Open-source hardware and fabber culture.

The blueprint quickly loses value as a scarce object: the knowledge and network that created the blueprint is the value.

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Anything task that can be fully described can be outsourced, reverse-engineered, knocked off.

A world of connected people, all innovating rapidly to try to grow rich with a fraction of the ecological impacts we have today, sharing widely, substituting ideas for stuff… this is not what we’re used to.

Our biggest challenge right now is a conceptual one: acknowledging that assumptions we’re held for a long time are crumbling, and we’re moving into a world that works differently.

Business means something new now.

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The economy of our future is not being made on corporate campuses using proprietary software and heavy-handed legal departments. Even companies with proprietary software and heavy-handed legal departments are starting to realize this.

Image: BrentOzar CC

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The economy of the future isn’t even being made by companies as we’re used to thinking of them. Micro-enterpises, social entreprenuers, ad hoc projects, low-capital start-ups.

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But it foes farther: coworking sites as hotbeds of parallel collaboration.

DIY -> Do It Together

Clades; mutual support; cyclical patronage and local dollars.

Enthusiasm is a gift; attention engines.

And the line between business, culture, social life and civics no longer makes much sense.

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Youth magnet cities, power law curves. Young, smart places get younger and smarter.

Part of draw is openness to innovation, creative class concerns (e.g., gay marriage, good nightlife, dykes and drag queens playing softball), safety net (can I be a barista, start a new project and still eat?). Buzz matters. Location matters.

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Aggressive, worldchanging goals are critical. Young, creative people want to be part of the solution.

(Intergenerational Ponzi schemes, the rights of future generations, the generation gulf. “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it G.D.P." - Paul Hawken)

Want to be a magnet for young talent? Set wildly ambitious goals.

Most people on the planet are poor, young and ambitious, and they live in conditions like these, but aspire to conditions more like our own.

It’ll take big goals to fit nine billion healthy, happy people on 1 planet.

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Malmo2009

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