[P2P-F] Towards a bio-urbanist policy for the Basque region,

[Michel Bauwens]

<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=15037>

Towards a bio-urbanist policy for the Basque region,
<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=15037>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]
Michel Bauwens
4th April 2011


via http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=25978

*Question: is the p2p urbanist community in anyway connected with the great
work of John Thackara?*

see below:

Excerpted <http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=25978>from
a long article by John Thackara, which cites many examples of
alternative Basque urbanists working in this direction, against the
starchitectural options still chosen by mainstream politicians and planners:

*“Buildings conceived as icons, spectacles or tourism destinations have
fallen victim to the law of diminishing returns. Bilbao’s Guggenheim is now
one among hundreds of me-too cultural buildings around the world. As their
number has grown, their capacity to attract attention, or differentiate
their host city, has declined. Spoiled consumer-travelers are liable to
lunch in the café, buy the t-shirt, and move on. That’s not a great return
on all the time, work and money needed to bring these totemic edifices
about.*

*The second objection to the Euskal Hiria strategy, and Guggenheim 2 as its
emblem, is that they would stand for the high entropy economic model that
caused the global crisis in the first place — and that is now dying.*

*If the iconic cultural building as a catalyst of development has run its
course, and the Real Estate Industrial Complex is gone forever, is there an
alternative?*

*A conference in Bilbao last week, organized by Fernando Golvano and Xabier
Laka, challenged speakers to propose new models of development based on more
artful and sustainable uses of the region’s social, landscape and natural
assets.*

*My contribution was to say that a bioregion — more than a high-entropy
“knowledge hub” preoccupied with abstraction — could be the ideal basis on
which to re-imagine the future development of the Basque Country. At the
scale of the city-region, a bioregional approach re-imagines the man-made
world as being one element among a complex of interacting, co-dependent
ecologies: energy, water, food, production and information.*

*The beauty of this approach is that it engages with the next economy, not
the dying one we have now. Its core value is stewardship, not perpetual
growth. It focuses on service and social innovation, not on the outputs of
extractive industries. Being unique to its place, it fosters infinite
diversity.*

*The idea of a bioregion also changes the ways we think about the cities we
have now. It triggers people to seek practical ways to re-connect with the
soils, trees, animals, landscapes, energy systems, water and energy sources
on which all life depends. It re-imagines the urban landscape itself as an
ecology with the potential to support us.*

*A bioregion is literally and etymologically a “life-place” — a unique area,
in the words of American writer Robert Thayer, that is “definable by natural
(rather than political) boundaries with a geographic, climatic,
hydrological, and ecological character capable of supporting unique human
and nonhuman living communities.”*

*A growing worldwide movement is looking at the idea of development through
this fresh lens. Sensible to the value of natural and social ecologies,
groups and communities are searching for ways to preserve, steward and
restore assets that already exist — so-called net present assets — rather
than thinking first about extracting raw materials to make new iconic
buildings from scratch. “*


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