Four Questions
How should arts and culture being recognized, in the discourse on cities of the future (smart or otherwise)? Why is it necessary to have a cultural perspective in the global smart city discourse?
I used to say that Culture brings us sanity and harmony, in the way that we connect to each other by our common beliefs, behaviours and traditions. Arts, on the other way, is the most essential free form of expression of the Human Being. Dance. Paint. Draw. Sculpture. Video. Music. Landscape. All of them are vehicles to achieve personal and communitarian freedom.
In my perspective, for a sustainable future, arts and culture should be recognised as two important pillars of our societies, as the base for the creation of identity. Culture of nowadays, should carry the scope of filtering the excess of things in our world, and promoting the necessary knowledge to thrive, in harmony with all other living species on Earth, proceeding with the information needed for the evolution of the whole.
Aligning the ancestral knowledge, with the modern technologies, intelligence should be found in the balance between the resources we take, and the biodiversity we give back to Mother Nature. From this approach, all the other fields as arts, economy, food production, renewable energy, sustainable construction, water management, ecological industries and businesses, can function as a framework. This is a culture made of “green”, “sustainable”, “vegan”, “eco-consumer”, “naturalists”, “low footprint”, “healthy lifestyle”, “alernative therapies” and other worldwide known words, representing the power of this movement for more sustainable global societies. This movement has started after the Industrial Revolution, and since then it has been growing as a global culture, as a way of thinking, making decisions, consuming and behaving in our daily lives.Some of the results we observe, is the fact that this culture is raising the interconnected spectrum of humans with themselves, and with Planet Earth, through respect, care and love. Cities should be described and promoted within this culture, as the possible way for spreading these concepts and turning them into reality in a bigger scale, and with a greater speed, facing today's climate crisis, human crisis and economic.
The global smart city discourse is important for the transition towards sustainable cities, with less pollution, chemicals, density, traffic, and other aspects needed to improve in the cities worldwide. The citizens should have access to a wide amount of media content representing this culture, to be provided with knowledge related to Smart Cities and Self-Sufficiency. Creating awareness is the first step for the will to change, improve and achieve innovation and usage of solutions.
It is necessary to create worldwide campaigns revealing hundreds of examples of smart cities and the technologies they use to inspire and teach others, and to cultivate the mindset for sustainable cities. Renewable energy, landscape management, product distribution, water distribution, cultural traditions, are some shared aspects between cities, and this is another way for analysing smart cities from a cultural perspective, on a macro level. Cities should achieve self-sufficiency not only by themselves, but with the support of a bigger network, which contain other cities and villages, as a smart grid capable to sustain and compensate for one another.
Smart cities have to be seen and understood through different angles: energy, water, landscape, culture, and so on, in a way that can be adapt to different localities. In the global city disclosure, these angles should be shown and compared in different parts of the world, climates, social contexts, in order to exchange and produce knowledge for research replicable solutions.
Another interesting idea is to make a connection between the Smart City culture, and the EcoVillage culture, combining both best practices and structures. Arts and culture are transversal to both cultures, representing an opportunity for bigger cooperation and effectiveness between smart cities and ecovillages. Arts are a very important tool to create awareness around environmental problems, and other kinds of problems. As an example, I would like to present the amazing artist “Bordalo II”, a Portuguese who is creating activism around the world, by doing urban art pieces with trash, representing animals in extinction (https://www.bordaloii.com/). By recycling enormous quantities of trash and useless materials, the artist is developing awareness around animal extinction and biodiversity loss around the planet.This is a great example on how we can change the mindset of massive populations through the arts, in the cities, turning them into beautiful places where citizen-consciousness is expanding towards evolution.
How should/can we talk about smart city and urban transformation beyond technology and infrastructure?
We should talk about human organization and social design, in smart cities. Infrastructures and technologies exist as tools to help humankind, but only when humans learn how to organize together in balance, justice, truth, and nonviolence, we will be able to use them as tools to thrive in oneness.
Social Sustainable Organization, in the perspective of reducing environmental impact, is the golden key to discover how to influence massive groups of people, to disseminate positive ecological behaviours, ways of consuming, living, traveling, and relating with people and nature. Only in this way, plus political laws, market functions, and peaceful religions, we can act to stop Global Warming, carbon emissions, reducing excess Co2 in the atmosphere, freeing us from all kinds of pollution, plastic, fossil fuels, chemicals, dangerous environments, and reinventing our future with a decentralisation and degrowth logic.
Communication is the silver key to maintain an harmonious and effective Social Sustainable Organization. Fast, clear and abundant devices of communication are present in our daily lives, through internet, television, radio, telephone, and intuition. If used correctly, these are powerful forces to help humanity to solve the existing problems and challenges, on a global scale. Languages should be translated and used by these tools, to bond the integrity of a country and between countries, and its cultures, as a framework to create and organize smart cities adapted to different cultural contexts.
Knowledge, is the key of bronze, in a sense of educating for citizenship, recycling, circular economy, composting, gardening, natural building, nutrition, human development, landscape management, sports, and other skills, for individuals and collectives to implement in their lives, and industries, in order to reduce the ecological impact of their activities, and improve performance and values. Natural Capital has been lost in the past century, and a few is remaining in our planet. It should be used wisely, not to grow, but to sustain what we already created as a global civilization, transforming it in a non-dependent resource civilization.
“Science has made clear the wholesale transformation needed to address the climate crisis.” In its 2018 special report Global Warming of 1.5ºC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems.”. At present, global efforts come nowhere near the scale, speed, or scope required. Yet many of the means to achieve the necessary transformation already exist. Almost daily, there is promising evolution and acceleration of climate solutions, alongside growing efforts to sunset fossil fuel infrastructure and prevent expansion of these antiquated and dangerous energy sources. (The Drawdown Review, Climate Solutions for a New Decade, 2020)
What is the connection of arts and cultural practice and technology in (future) urban societies?
An attractive city is composed by the culture and history it has to offer.
Culture can be seen as the group of aesthetic, symbols, identities, services, colours, language, religion, technologies, and other aspects that characterise a group of persons and their beliefs and practices. A sustainable culture, to function and grow, use green technologies able to minimize its impact on the environment and to regenerate the biodiversity of natural ecosystems. In practice, for example, during artistic performances, street parades, festivals, events, theatres, concerts, parties, and any kind of ritual, citizens and institutions should adopt these principles and technologies, for self-sufficiency, biodegradable or renewable practices.
Technology will be always present in our daily lives, and is deeply connected to arts and cultural practices, as it serves this sector with multiple wonderful technologies. From bottom up, and from Top down, if for example the electricity produced is all renewable, the devices such as cameras, lights, screens, televisions, computers, and any electrical equipment, will be charged and used in responsible sustainable ways. Also on the other hand, citizens should be examples, vote and claim for the decision makers, the politics and leaders, to adopt the technologies, legislations , and strategies in use, for a possible sustainable development.
Please share your expert prediction or utopian view of the city of the future.
Inspired by my scientific research in Design, since 2009, I imagine the cities of the future, places where people will want to live, in peace, in a healthy environment, and in cooperation with each other, producing what they consume, mainly locally. What they cannot produce, they can trade with the nearest city or village, and if something is missing, it should be compensated from the local suppliers, as a smart grid. This is how nature works, for example, in the roots network systems.
Decentralised, autonomous, clean, beautiful, sophisticated, smart, intelligent, and organized cities where people don't use money, instead, they trade services, knowledge, objects, and their social status is valued by their knowledge and “honour points”. The “honour points” of a person increases in proportion to the good this person do to itself, to its family, to its community, and for the Planet Earth. People will buy, trade and invest honour points, motivated by the good actions of daily life, and producing more than they consume. Permaculture techniques, and Circular Economy models, should be applied to how people live and how people produce vs. consume natural resources. I imagine cities with no violence, producing its own meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables, wood, paper, clothes, in a healthy and respectful way, for all species.I imagine a city where people have space and privacy, loads of natural parks and organic farms, collective farms, organic seed banks, pure water sources, and places for ecological markets, ecological performances and events. I imagine cities running with solar energy, energy from the wind, cars which produce their own energy to move, and other smart systems. I imagine cities where information is abundant, and promoted in a safe and trustable way, not only by a small group of media, but from all kinds of sources, including citizens itself.cars which produce their own energy to move, and other smart systems. I imagine cities where information is abundant, and promoted in a safe and trustable way, not only by a small group of media, but from all kinds of sources, including citizens itself.
Most of the cities from today, have everything that humans need to survive and to be able to evolve and to grow if we look to infra-structures, technologies and available resources in circulation. The only problems are the different ways on how they consume natural resources, and the way its based and organized, most of the times.
I believe humans have the capacity to transform our cities in the way that they can last long and still don't pollute the environment. The best-case scenario, is a city who actually regenerates nature inside, and the ecosystems outside and the biodiversity they contain. Roads, posts, benches, fences, walls, and all kinds of city elements, are designed with intelligence and organicity, with the minimum impactful ecological footprint of the materials used and the whole cycle of production. I believe in cities that use exactly the amount of energy, water and light that they need, motorised by artificial intelligence systems.
I imagine cities capable to compost all of its organic waste, to produce fertile soil by vermicomposting, and applying it to public land available for citizens to cultivate their food, sharing products and experiences. I imagine smart cities with no traffic, with no noise, and where children can grow and learn in safety and peace.
I used to say that Culture brings us sanity and harmony, in the way that we connect to each other by our common beliefs, behaviours and traditions. Arts, on the other way, is the most essential free form of expression of the Human Being. Dance. Paint. Draw. Sculpture. Video. Music. Landscape. All of them are vehicles to achieve personal and communitarian freedom.
In my perspective, for a sustainable future, arts and culture should be recognised as two important pillars of our societies, as the base for the creation of identity. Culture of nowadays, should carry the scope of filtering the excess of things in our world, and promoting the necessary knowledge to thrive, in harmony with all other living species on Earth, proceeding with the information needed for the evolution of the whole.
Aligning the ancestral knowledge, with the modern technologies, intelligence should be found in the balance between the resources we take, and the biodiversity we give back to Mother Nature. From this approach, all the other fields as arts, economy, food production, renewable energy, sustainable construction, water management, ecological industries and businesses, can function as a framework. This is a culture made of “green”, “sustainable”, “vegan”, “eco-consumer”, “naturalists”, “low footprint”, “healthy lifestyle”, “alernative therapies” and other worldwide known words, representing the power of this movement for more sustainable global societies. This movement has started after the Industrial Revolution, and since then it has been growing as a global culture, as a way of thinking, making decisions, consuming and behaving in our daily lives.Some of the results we observe, is the fact that this culture is raising the interconnected spectrum of humans with themselves, and with Planet Earth, through respect, care and love. Cities should be described and promoted within this culture, as the possible way for spreading these concepts and turning them into reality in a bigger scale, and with a greater speed, facing today's climate crisis, human crisis and economic.
The global smart city discourse is important for the transition towards sustainable cities, with less pollution, chemicals, density, traffic, and other aspects needed to improve in the cities worldwide. The citizens should have access to a wide amount of media content representing this culture, to be provided with knowledge related to Smart Cities and Self-Sufficiency. Creating awareness is the first step for the will to change, improve and achieve innovation and usage of solutions.
It is necessary to create worldwide campaigns revealing hundreds of examples of smart cities and the technologies they use to inspire and teach others, and to cultivate the mindset for sustainable cities. Renewable energy, landscape management, product distribution, water distribution, cultural traditions, are some shared aspects between cities, and this is another way for analysing smart cities from a cultural perspective, on a macro level. Cities should achieve self-sufficiency not only by themselves, but with the support of a bigger network, which contain other cities and villages, as a smart grid capable to sustain and compensate for one another.
Smart cities have to be seen and understood through different angles: energy, water, landscape, culture, and so on, in a way that can be adapt to different localities. In the global city disclosure, these angles should be shown and compared in different parts of the world, climates, social contexts, in order to exchange and produce knowledge for research replicable solutions.
Another interesting idea is to make a connection between the Smart City culture, and the EcoVillage culture, combining both best practices and structures. Arts and culture are transversal to both cultures, representing an opportunity for bigger cooperation and effectiveness between smart cities and ecovillages. Arts are a very important tool to create awareness around environmental problems, and other kinds of problems. As an example, I would like to present the amazing artist “Bordalo II”, a Portuguese who is creating activism around the world, by doing urban art pieces with trash, representing animals in extinction (https://www.bordaloii.com/). By recycling enormous quantities of trash and useless materials, the artist is developing awareness around animal extinction and biodiversity loss around the planet.This is a great example on how we can change the mindset of massive populations through the arts, in the cities, turning them into beautiful places where citizen-consciousness is expanding towards evolution.
How should/can we talk about smart city and urban transformation beyond technology and infrastructure?
We should talk about human organization and social design, in smart cities. Infrastructures and technologies exist as tools to help humankind, but only when humans learn how to organize together in balance, justice, truth, and nonviolence, we will be able to use them as tools to thrive in oneness.
Social Sustainable Organization, in the perspective of reducing environmental impact, is the golden key to discover how to influence massive groups of people, to disseminate positive ecological behaviours, ways of consuming, living, traveling, and relating with people and nature. Only in this way, plus political laws, market functions, and peaceful religions, we can act to stop Global Warming, carbon emissions, reducing excess Co2 in the atmosphere, freeing us from all kinds of pollution, plastic, fossil fuels, chemicals, dangerous environments, and reinventing our future with a decentralisation and degrowth logic.
Communication is the silver key to maintain an harmonious and effective Social Sustainable Organization. Fast, clear and abundant devices of communication are present in our daily lives, through internet, television, radio, telephone, and intuition. If used correctly, these are powerful forces to help humanity to solve the existing problems and challenges, on a global scale. Languages should be translated and used by these tools, to bond the integrity of a country and between countries, and its cultures, as a framework to create and organize smart cities adapted to different cultural contexts.
Knowledge, is the key of bronze, in a sense of educating for citizenship, recycling, circular economy, composting, gardening, natural building, nutrition, human development, landscape management, sports, and other skills, for individuals and collectives to implement in their lives, and industries, in order to reduce the ecological impact of their activities, and improve performance and values. Natural Capital has been lost in the past century, and a few is remaining in our planet. It should be used wisely, not to grow, but to sustain what we already created as a global civilization, transforming it in a non-dependent resource civilization.
“Science has made clear the wholesale transformation needed to address the climate crisis.” In its 2018 special report Global Warming of 1.5ºC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems.”. At present, global efforts come nowhere near the scale, speed, or scope required. Yet many of the means to achieve the necessary transformation already exist. Almost daily, there is promising evolution and acceleration of climate solutions, alongside growing efforts to sunset fossil fuel infrastructure and prevent expansion of these antiquated and dangerous energy sources. (The Drawdown Review, Climate Solutions for a New Decade, 2020)
What is the connection of arts and cultural practice and technology in (future) urban societies?
An attractive city is composed by the culture and history it has to offer.
Culture can be seen as the group of aesthetic, symbols, identities, services, colours, language, religion, technologies, and other aspects that characterise a group of persons and their beliefs and practices. A sustainable culture, to function and grow, use green technologies able to minimize its impact on the environment and to regenerate the biodiversity of natural ecosystems. In practice, for example, during artistic performances, street parades, festivals, events, theatres, concerts, parties, and any kind of ritual, citizens and institutions should adopt these principles and technologies, for self-sufficiency, biodegradable or renewable practices.
Technology will be always present in our daily lives, and is deeply connected to arts and cultural practices, as it serves this sector with multiple wonderful technologies. From bottom up, and from Top down, if for example the electricity produced is all renewable, the devices such as cameras, lights, screens, televisions, computers, and any electrical equipment, will be charged and used in responsible sustainable ways. Also on the other hand, citizens should be examples, vote and claim for the decision makers, the politics and leaders, to adopt the technologies, legislations , and strategies in use, for a possible sustainable development.
Please share your expert prediction or utopian view of the city of the future.
Imagine for a moment a world where cities have become peaceful and serene because cars and buses are whisper quiet, vehicles exhaust only water vapor, and parks and greenways have replaced unneeded urban freeways. OPEC has ceased to function because the price of oil has fallen to five dollars a barrel, but there are few buyers for it because cheaper and better ways now exist to get the services people once turned to oil to provide. Living standards for all people have dramatically improved, particularly for the poor and those in developing countries. Involuntary unemployment no longer exists, and income taxes have largely been eliminated. Houses, even low-income housing units, can pay part of their mortgage costs by the energy they produce; there are few if any active landfills; worldwide forest cover is increasing; dams are being dismantled; atmospheric CO2 levels are decreasing for the first time in two hundred years; and effluent water leaving factories is cleaner than the water coming into them. Industrialized countries have reduced resource use by 80 percent while improving the quality of life. Among these technological changes, there are important social changes. The frayed social nets of Western countries have been repaired. With the explosion of family-wage jobs, welfare demand has fallen. A progressive and active union movement has taken the lead to work with business, environmentalists, and government to create "just transitions" for workers as society phases out coal, nuclear energy, and oil. In communities and towns, churches, corporations, and labour groups promote a new living-wage social contract as the least expensive way to ensure the growth and preservation of valuable social capital. Is this the vision of a utopia? In fact, the changes described here could come about in the decades to come as the result of economic and technological trends already in place.
Natural Capitalism, Hawken P., Lovins A., L.Hunter L.Decentralised, autonomous, clean, beautiful, sophisticated, smart, intelligent, and organized cities where people don't use money, instead, they trade services, knowledge, objects, and their social status is valued by their knowledge and “honour points”. The “honour points” of a person increases in proportion to the good this person do to itself, to its family, to its community, and for the Planet Earth. People will buy, trade and invest honour points, motivated by the good actions of daily life, and producing more than they consume. Permaculture techniques, and Circular Economy models, should be applied to how people live and how people produce vs. consume natural resources. I imagine cities with no violence, producing its own meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables, wood, paper, clothes, in a healthy and respectful way, for all species.I imagine a city where people have space and privacy, loads of natural parks and organic farms, collective farms, organic seed banks, pure water sources, and places for ecological markets, ecological performances and events. I imagine cities running with solar energy, energy from the wind, cars which produce their own energy to move, and other smart systems. I imagine cities where information is abundant, and promoted in a safe and trustable way, not only by a small group of media, but from all kinds of sources, including citizens itself.cars which produce their own energy to move, and other smart systems. I imagine cities where information is abundant, and promoted in a safe and trustable way, not only by a small group of media, but from all kinds of sources, including citizens itself.
Most of the cities from today, have everything that humans need to survive and to be able to evolve and to grow if we look to infra-structures, technologies and available resources in circulation. The only problems are the different ways on how they consume natural resources, and the way its based and organized, most of the times.
I believe humans have the capacity to transform our cities in the way that they can last long and still don't pollute the environment. The best-case scenario, is a city who actually regenerates nature inside, and the ecosystems outside and the biodiversity they contain. Roads, posts, benches, fences, walls, and all kinds of city elements, are designed with intelligence and organicity, with the minimum impactful ecological footprint of the materials used and the whole cycle of production. I believe in cities that use exactly the amount of energy, water and light that they need, motorised by artificial intelligence systems.
I imagine cities capable to compost all of its organic waste, to produce fertile soil by vermicomposting, and applying it to public land available for citizens to cultivate their food, sharing products and experiences. I imagine smart cities with no traffic, with no noise, and where children can grow and learn in safety and peace.