Have you seen the revealing of the designs for the new city for Saudi Vision 2030? The video looks like fantasy but also like a possible future. It surely is outside the box. To build something new that’s low emission and smart on waste but with materials and tools that are high-emission and extractive is a major coup nicely feeding into the existing growth narrative.
Degrowth is not not doing energy-efficient transport, cities, smart houses to save and even generate energy. It’s looking at what we already have and refit it to last another 10, 20, or more years. Or do more with it than originally planned. Yes, a bit like Mortal Engines, gobbling up the old and reuse every scrap.
Jason Hickel in Less is More points out that ending planned obsolescence is a major step to get off the growth bandwaggon.
The small country town I live in in Aotearoa New Zealand is 20 minutes by car from a bigger town where the supermarkets, schools, most recreation and most workplaces are situated.
There is no public transport. Aotearoa New Zealand has a shocking low uptake of public transport, rural routes are pretty hopeless outside the tourist beaten track. So everyone drives to “town”, sometimes a few times a day with kid’s activities after school. There are schoolbuses but they are only running in the morning and in the afternoon and of course they are only for school students.
So instead of the council investigating, doing focus groups and inviting resident feedback (who should give that in their leisure time?!) and then setting up bus routes for public transport that will likely cost the ratepayer heaps of money, would it not be a good idea to test something new? First an inexpensive upgrade of the buses to show on a map, like Uber. The bus stops have no roofs, so most teenagers will string out waiting for the bus to the last minute. Knowing where the bus is moving this minute could be just that one little step to make them feel more respected as members of the community. Then, letting commuters ride the bus, for a small fee. Yes it would not be a 8 hour work day as the buses would run back early afternoon but open communication for such a trial could establish if there were in fact people able to work less than 8 hours, behold the possibility!
There are countless more examples of using what already exists and making it better.
The shift of these infrastructure components have massive job potential, just watch Jeremy Rifkin’s The Third Industrial Revolution tonight instead of binging the latest on Amazon Prime.
Every business must now start to Rethink, Retrain, Regenerate. Possibilities are everywhere.
Let me know what you come across that’s ripe for a rethink, maybe it’s happening already somewhere else and we can start it in our communities and businesses.