Green Building Forum - Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Joiner — Wed, 30 May 2012 07:31:49 +0100

This has resolved me to watch the "What The Green Movement Got Wrong" again. So glad I recorded BOTH sections of the programme because all that's still available now is the studio debate.

I'm thinking of the criticisms that said that the greens had failed to engage with the people who NEEDED to be convinced of "the argument"; that they'd assumed a Messianic identity and, in leading from the front, had lost sight of the people they were leaving behind in their wake, condemned for their inability to keep up.

(Just wish the first half of the programme had been more balanced. Very badly edited.)

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Wed, 30 May 2012 10:36:16 +0100

Posted By: Joinerthe greens had failed to engage with the people who NEEDED to be convinced of "the argument"

That's a pretty hopeless mission to hold - when has anyone ever turned around a working majority, or even a useful quorum of the influential, just by argument, debate, publication etc?

Activists may imagine that's how it works, so that's what they have to do. But IMO, they waste three quarters at least of their energy with all the messianic stuff, pouring water down a deep well.

Posted By: Joinerin leading from the front, had lost sight of the people they were leaving behind in their wake, condemned for their inability to keep up

That condemnation, I think, is due not to 'leading from the front', but from believing that the task is to 'convert' 'the people' - when 'the people' fail to perform as hoped, then they're condemned.

If activists are successful, it's because as well as the hopeless campaigning, they are also 'leading from the front', walking the talk (tho that's not always 100% obligatory), creating a new reality, being infectious. People then can 'get it', because it's 'in the atmosphere' (Sheldrake would say that they respond to the morphic field that's been created) when they're ready, and for their own strange reasons.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

SteamyTea — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:47:19 +0100

We could speed up all this 'green' stuff just by putting a high tax on FF, would soon sort it all out. Probably find that there is then a demand for Welch hill sheep.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:07:41 +0100

Absolutely - that as well. Or just wait for all-fuel price rises to really bite.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Ed Davies — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:30:15 +0100

Posted By: SteamyTeaWe could speed up all this 'green' stuff just by putting a high tax on FF, would soon sort it all out.

That is, I agree, the â€œrightâ€ answer and I'm sure the politicians will be happy to apply such taxes the moment they see that the electorate will support it. In the mean time, what?

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:37:39 +0100

Posted By: fostertomjust wait for all-fuel price rises to really bite.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Joiner — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:27:32 +0100

Tom: "If activists are successful, it's because as well as the hopeless campaigning, they are also 'leading from the front'".

Fine. But one should always be careful...

http://www.wimp.com/flagprank/

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

SteveZ — Wed, 30 May 2012 19:03:18 +0100

Until recently I, like most people on here I assume, accepted that the world was warming up and pretty soon we would be at the tipping point, if we haven't already reached it. I've read the newspapers and most opinions seem to agree, apart from the oil companies and the republicans. We may differ in our thoughts on the cause(s) of the warming and the results, but the world is getting warmer - right?

Doubts have been raised for me by reading a novel by Michael Crichton called 'State of Fear' I read it because he writes a good story, usually with a bit of science included. The title refers to our present attitude of worry over the ruination of the earth, or at least of the conditions we need to live a comfortable life. The premise is that big climate protest organisations have a lot to lose if the increasing amount of CO2 is not warming the Earth, and they are ready to kill to keep the story alive. It's a good read. The worrying part of the novel is where he quotes from historic climate stats, which I think are authentic, and fails to find any real global warming effect, despite the amount of Carbon Dioxide rising steadily from 310ppm in 1957 to >370ppm in 2003. The reported local temperatures go up or down by a little or a lot, but a global effect should have them all rising.

He also has a look at the 'rising' sea levels and makes a good point about how exactly do you measure sea level. i have watched the tide coming in here in Cornwall and it keeps moving about - not easy to measure the actual height at all. Use the satellite data for the mid-ocean maybe. Accurate to millimetres I guess, but then you have to allow for the air pressure at the measuring point, the swell and probably more factors as well.

After reading the book, I had a look at the website quoted for the American temp figures and the USHCN site says that by 2010 42% of the weather station sites have been compromised by development nearby and are not top grade any longer, and I assume that the effect of that development would be to warm rather than cool the immediate surrounding area, which could account for the increasing temperatures reported.

Food for thought or a good book recommendation at least

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

SteamyTea — Wed, 30 May 2012 19:40:51 +0100

Steve
It is the signal to noise ratio problem that makes getting a true reading out of observations.
Sea levels are also rising because we are pumping fresh water from aquifers, and that eventually makes it way back to the sea. Also, in Cornwall, the land is sinking (remember that Newlyn is very important when it comes to sea levels).
Urban Island effect is well understood and is often accounted for, and new stations/satellites are always being double checked.
As time goes by we get a better picture of what is going on, but only a total nonce will predict with certainty what will happen in the future. Now who has predicted with certainty what will happen, generally popular press journalists. Says it all.

Not sure which bit of Cornwall your in, but St. Ives can have very different weather from Penzance, as can Bude and Freathy, Take data from weather station there for a couple of hundred years and you would have a different climate. Satellite record are still a bit low res, but getting better. The aim is to get 1 km^2 resolution.

There are better reasons to reduce FF usage than climate change, mainly preservation of natural resource and global equality.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Joiner — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:06:07 +0100

Global warming is just a component of climate change.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Ed Davies — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:44:49 +0100

Posted By: SteveZThe reported local temperatures go up or down by a little or a lot, but a global effect should have them all rising.

Most of what you write is fairly weak but this is just plain wrong. It is quite plausible that general warming would cause cooling in certain areas, e.g., by changing the way that jet streams flow. The persistent use of misrepresentations of this sort is one of the reasons that there's been a change of emphasis from the term â€œglobal warmingâ€ to the more general term â€œclimate changeâ€.

...and I assume that the effect of that development would be to warm rather than cool the immediate surrounding area, which could account for the increasing temperatures reported.

Better tell the HadCRU and GISS people, they might not have thought of that!!! (<-- That's sarcasm.) This has been thrashed to death â€” even the most rabid deniers don't bother with this argument any more; State of Fear is not exactly recent. Of course the temperature records adjust for these sort of effects. The deniers accused GISS, etc, of fiddling the numbers with these adjustments and did their own survey (Watts and friends) of met stations then quietly dropped the whole matter when they found that, if anything, GISS had overcompensated and the true temperature rises where probably actually slightly higher than those reported.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:10:24 +0100

Surely the answer to suggestions that atmospheric temps aren't rising in dramatic manner, is to sidestep the debateable subtleties of that, instead say that scads of warming is going into the multi-multi bigger heat sink of the deep oceans (and ice melting which absorbs heat without showing a temp rise). Which will break surface sooner or later - then watch atmospheric temps shoot up.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:14:44 +0100

Back to the original proposition. Here's the text, if you couldn't view the link:

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Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

Urban farming and pop-up hipster urbanism alone do not bode well for a serious progressive architectural vision

Wouter Vanstiphout

If we accept that urban projects are the most visceral expression of public policy and political positions, then it is a tragedy that we find it impossible to imagine what a truly progressive, collective urban agenda would look like.

This points to a disturbing emptiness at the heart of left-wing politics. But it also leaves us without any alternative to how we have been doing things for the past 30 years.

Yet, elections all over Europe â€” from France to local council elections in England â€” are causing left-wing pundits to hail a new dawn.

Finally, itâ€™s claimed, there will be an end to austerity and to neo-liberal politics. Finally justice, equality and progressive politics will come back. Despite Europeâ€™s economic implosion, thereâ€™s a suppressed euphoria: if things have become so bad, surely they can now only get better.

Letâ€™s just assume that they will. That there will be a new left consensus that will lay the groundwork for a Europe of proudly progressive and collective nations. Letâ€™s just disregard the leftâ€™s deep rifts, and imagine that the various factions will get together and actually reform our cities and countries with the same Ã©lan and certitude as did their forefathers in the late forties and fifties when the welfare states in western Europe were constructed. But what would the left actually do? And how would it be different from what we are getting right now?

The problem with left-wing politics is that over the last 30 years they have been reduced to a reactive, derivative position of softening the blows or spreading the damage a little bit differently. If we look at how left and right distinguish themselves on an urban or architectural level, we see only small, gradual differences, often merely rhetorical.

Left-wing mayors and ministers have probably been even more active than right-wing ones in promoting a happy capitalist paradigm of trickle-down urbanism and architecture, throwing themselves behind the Olympics and massive regeneration projects that swiftly degenerate into gentrification and public private partnerships.

Yet, whatever we might think of Londonâ€™s Canary Wharf or any of its descendants in dozens of European waterfront and gentrification projects, as a heady mixture of post-sixties non-plan models, postmodern neoclassicism and hardcore Milton Friedmanesque ideology, it really did offer another model. It really did destroy the past and bully itself into the future.

And what can the current left come up with that is truly â€œdifferentâ€? Urban farming, do-it-yourself architecture, pop-up urbanism â€” slight, temporary, hipster incidents for a tiny elite. That is not enough; worse still, it does not bode well for the seriousness or the inner coherence of a progressive agenda for our cities that this is all there is.

There might be some hope for the left-wing renaissance if architecture could come up with something just as ideologically rigorous, just as aesthetically specific, just as reckless as the neo-liberal planning of the early eighties, but then completely different.

Where are the leftâ€™s urban visionaries?

fostertom — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:26:10 +0100

Wouter Vanstiphout (who else could it be?) says:

"we find it impossible to imagine what a truly progressive, collective urban agenda would look like.

This points to a disturbing emptiness at the heart of left-wing politics. But it also leaves us without any alternative to how we have been doing things for the past 30 years."

I say:

What about the Transition Movement and its allies (incl GBF)?

The traditional Left's old enemy/targets have transformed or melted away, but the underlying subjugation of populations to the exploitative strategies of big biz still remain - even if said populations, in the west at least, are bought into complicity by all the goodies they can shop for.

Transition may disingenuously say it's non-political, but the very name - Transition - means a profound moving from one kind of social organising to another. That is, from central organisation to suit the needs of big biz, to Localisation down to v small scale, that puts power and decision v much more into individuals' hands. Also integral to Transition is new forms of governance to achieve effective and efficient bottom-up consensus instead of top-down direction (via manipulation via media).

That sounds like a leftward reform movement to me, even if more rightward individuals join the Transition movement just to concentrate on energy measures.