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• The Urbal Fix • Extra Reference Clips • References • The Urbal City • Urbal Policy • UI • • Forum • 'Rurban' describes the bleeding of unsustainable urban consumerism into formerly healthy rural resources. 'Urbal', its polar opposite, describes the only logical cure: The injection of countryside, or more specifically; green productivity, deep into the heart of our cities. | ||
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The Urbal Institute
The Problem We have discussed the global and national issues in the film, and on our policy page, and, we believe, established that radical 'centre-out' change is necessary. 'Centre out' change requires the motivation, education and liberation of the citizenry - and especially 'expert' professionals such as planners, architects, landscape architects (supported by their clients) and local authority officers, as well as farmers and food scientists and other key actors such as educationalists, health professionals and the local corporate sector, (and, ideally, national/international corporates if they are willing to engage at an Urbal level). It also requires 'expert' parties, such as environmental designers / managers and academics, to adopt a pro-active approach and where necessary to step beyond the safe confines of their professional comfort zones. There is currently a critical disconnect between the way many, even most experts (well, most people, actually) feel personally about the sustainability imperative, and how they are required to act at work. This is not only holding back change, but it's creating huge (frequently unrecognised and therefore doubly dangerous) levels of psychological stress. Think about about your mind-set on the sofa watching, say, Age of Stupid, and your mind-set in the office chair next day when the phone rings. Design and management professionals are locked into learned/habitual behaviours, such as interventionist/impositional design processes, 'making places' (instead of ecosystems), conventional high carbon specifications, low bio-mimicry aesthetics and role-trammelled multi-disciplinary methods - and very few are on top of the 'alternative' low carbon / carbon-negative building, growing and engagement solutions which need now to become mainstream. They need to be willing to re-skill, to embrace systems and methods that they would have once rejected, and what is more to convince their clients and other team members to do so as well. A majority of academics, specially climate scientists, geographers, urbanists, ecologists, and building scientists are locked into modes of communication suitable only for other academics. They will need to find ways of stepping beyond the peer review system (which of course still has it's place) directly to communicate with, engage with, and motivate the general public, land owners and politicians. This may leave them open to peer-based criticism, because it will not always be possible to back up every idea with evidence, nor to nuance every suggestion. But they must be willing to take a lead, to think creatively and to make suggestions, because academics know more than the rest us, and we need output from them now. Local authority officers and other providers are constrained by political, financial and legal considerations. They will need to be willing to help drive legislative change, seek innovative funding and low-cost systems, and to facilitate the local engagement and skilling processes. Above all there is an urgent need to establish, develop and share best practice in terms of genuinely sustainable techniques. Much of this knowledge currently resides with 'un-qualified' non-professionals, so ways must be found to seek out and include this crucial resource. This is why our film "The Urbal Fix" calls for the creation of an organisation capable of addressing these problems: The Urbal Institute.
Key Principles The Urbal Institute will need to encourage new concepts in teamwork to: 1) Operate co-operatively via open door, open source, permeable and inclusive horizontal and vertical networks. 2) Drive political change - engaging with central government, local government, third sector and community groups to develop legislation (specially planning and building law to facilitate carbon-negative schemes), sustainable finance and best practice systems. 3) Conduct research - collating and sharing existing best practices, developing master-planning techniques, monitoring progress, identifying areas for new research, and communicating findings in plain English (etc), effectively, to the general public. 4) Establish, and make business-as-usual among environmental designers, new holistic ecological design and implementation systems (reducing carbon-wasteful stages such as over-egged Environmental Impact Assessments) - using multi-disciplinary or rather trans-disciplinary techniques wherein experience (as a citizen) trumps expertise (as a professional) - while maintaining safety nets where expertise is re-deployed to ensure functionality. Also to drive a change in fashion from tidy, suburban, 'city park'-style, low biodiversity / high carbon aesthetics, towards a universal appreciation of Urbal Nature. 5) Provide training, skilling, mentoring and engagement - via tutor/champion-led, on-line and cascaded courses, plus DIY methodologies/systems for Urbal adaptation/mitigation. This will require close partnership and collaboration with existing and new providers. 6) Be fully engaged with, and supported by, for example, bodies such as the RIBA, LI, TCPA, RTPI, CABE, BREEAM, The Sustainable Development Commission, The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, The Co-Operative Movement, The Schumacher Centre, Friends of the Earth, The Permaculture Association, The Soil Association, Centre for Alternative Technology, Universities, market gardeners, veg box providers, local farmers and food growers, allotment associations, community gardeners, local shops and businesses and many, many others, both at a national and a local level. 7) Facilitate synergy with other key sustainability initiatives such as building insulation retrofit, new low impact construction (specially eco build and co-housing), waste management and up-cycling, point-of-use renewable energy and smart power, sustainable transport, co-operative / mutual commerce - and all within the context of a converging steady state economy. 8) Evangelise and motivate via all available media, to build belief that Urbalism is necessary, achievable, worthwhile, beneficial (and fun). (Note, the Urbal Institute is still at a fledgeling stage. Tom Bliss is currently working to establish the educational arm in collaboration with various universities and other bodies).
Urbal Designers/Mentors We need to see a new role emerging which we might call Urbal Designer and/or Mentor. This will be similar to the German/US role of Ecological Engineer, but it will be more flexible and more accessible, and will major as much in mentoring and engagement as in ecological literacy, design, law, construction techniques etc. We do not need a new chartered profession, just levels of training and qualification (as with BREEAM) appropriate to the level of responsibility being assumed. Candidates will migrate from the existing design professions (landscape architects will certainly have a head start, though many architects, planners and urban designers are equally well-qualified), as well as from the 'alternative' building and growing communities, from both amateur and professional gardening, market gardening, horticulture, agriculture and forestry, and also from ecology, and other earth sciences, plus many other motivated parties.
The Urbal City The concept in practice here
Please contact Tom Bliss with your thoughts, criticisms and suggestions - or if you want a DVD to show to a group. • Top of Page •
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