THE
POWER OF POSITIVE IMAGININGS
These
six necessary transitions imply radical
changes which might seem overwhelmingly
difficult to achieve, or even completely
impossible in the short term. But what
would a sustainable city, or a sustainable
world look and feel like? This is an important
question because, according to Dutch sociologist,
Fred Polak, our images of the future ‘act
as magnets on our behaviour in the present’
to precipitate social change.
Polak
sifted through western civilisation’s
images of the future and found that in
most of them, the future was described
as somewhere positive where many of the
problems of the present had been solved.
It was a place for people to look forward
to. He suggested that positive visions
were what mobilised Europe towards those
great periods of social transformation
we now call the ‘Renaissance’,
the ‘Reformation’, and the
‘Enlightenment’. And in more
down to earth terms, such images of a
better world mobilised us towards the
abolition of slavery and child labour,
the emancipation of women, parliamentary
democracy, universal suffrage, universal
literacy, the eight hour day, and Mabo
… all those milestones we in Australia
now hold sacred, but which were once considered
by those resistant to change to be ‘impossible’.
Yet, over a period of several generations
the conservative forces have been proven
wrong in each of these cases!
I’d
like to suggest that ‘sustainability’
is the new collective vision of the future
that is dragging us all into a better
world. Even though the vision is still
very fuzzy and ill-defined, it is mobilising
millions of us to voluntarily change our
behaviour in the present to help make
that imagined future real. (And we can
expect, over time, those conservative
forces in our society who don’t
want to change will go the same way the
people who told us that women, or indigenous
people, would never have full citizenship
rights went!)
PAINTING
THE FUTURE REAL
But
let me repeat that question: what would
a sustainable city look and feel like?
This
is the question my organisation, Imagine
The Future Inc, is seeking to answer
with an innovative sustainable futures
R&D project called ‘Painting
the future real’, which explores
what a sustainable agro-urban-industrial
system (or city) might look like in the
coastal basalt plain between Melbourne’s
Docklands and the Bellarine Peninsula
in southern Victoria, within the lifetime
of a child born today.
Before
Europeans arrived this bioregion was exclusively
Kulin territory, but is now home to people
from an extraordinarily diverse range
of backgrounds. It includes the municipalities
of Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong,
Melton, Wyndham, the City of Greater Geelong,
and the City of Melbourne; the waters
of Port Phillip Bay, the catchments of
the Yarra, Maribyrnong, Werribee, Little
and Barwon rivers; and many streams and
creeks. It also includes internationally
significant wetlands and some highly endangered
remnant native grassland ecosystems, where
a number of species, like the beautiful
Gold Moths Orchid, have been pushed to
the brink of extinction by agriculture
or urban and industrial development.
This
project looks at the linkages between
the natural ecological systems and human
systems in the bioregion, and this means
we are very interested in all the present-day
social challenges, such as the very high
levels of unemployment (Footscray’s
official rate is 18.6%, for example);
the inequitable distribution of resources
and opportunities; the high car dependency
and poor access to public transport; and
the very unsustainable urban and industrial
development, including the ever-sprawling
outer suburbs of Melbourne and Geelong.
MULTIMEDIA
IMAGE
A
major focus of Painting
the future real is the
creation of a large-scale composite multimedia
image about the past, present and possible
sustainable future of the project bioregion.
The image content is being developed by
the project team from in-depth interviews
with people from many different backgrounds,
who have thought deeply about issues relevant
to social and ecological sustainability
– and are doing practical things
in their daily lives to bring us closer
to this goal.
We
are asking these people about the sustainability
issues they are most concerned about,
the strategies and actions they believe
are most appropriate to deal with those
issues, and what they themselves are doing
to effect change. We are then asking them
to describe their personal vision of a
sustainable future – which is something
most people have never been asked to do
before.
The
interviews are very revealing and when
read together, clearly articulate some
of the complex relationships between natural
systems and social systems. Gaye
Hamilton, Director of the Werribee
Zoo, spoke about biodiversity issues,
for example. In her vision of the future,
all the back and front yards (where they
continue to exist), and all the roadside
and railway verges have been replanted
with indigenous plants so ‘all those
tiny little orchids and other species
that are on the brink of extinction now
will be safe.’
‘We
will also be seeing more and more native
birds and butterflies and bandicoots and
all those other fantastic creatures that
belong to the grasslands, and large flocks
of the now-endangered orange bellied parrots,
rather than just an occasional very, very
fortunate sighting,’ she said. ‘And
all the rabbits and foxes and feral cats
that are now so destructive in the Australian
environment will have long gone.’
Gaye
Hamilton also talked about linking remaining
corridors of native vegetation along some
of the creeks and sewage lines and railway
verges in the bioregion ‘so our
wildlife can move from coastal areas through
the basalt plains, either to other coastal
areas or into the woodlands or rangelands.’
In
her vision of the future the bioregion
was also served by excellent public transport
systems and very efficient energy systems,
and people lived less resource-dependent
lifestyles. ‘I’m not suggesting
that we should deprive ourselves of aesthetic
pleasures,’ she said, ‘but
for me, those pleasures must includes
being able to watch a sunset or sunrise
over undisturbed wetlands, or a flock
of orange-bellied parrots flying by.’
Not
surprisingly, John
Hennessy, Director of the Western
Regional Economic Development Organisation,
emphasised local economic self-sufficiency
in his interview. ‘In my vision
of the future this region is leading the
way in the transition from the world of
today to the world of tomorrow,’
he said. ‘This future world will
probably be a lot more focussed on home-based
activities, a lot more focussed on small
enterprises, and people will have a much
more global perspective. There will be
no be reason why people who are developing
products and services in the West can’t
market them all over the world with the
telecommunication technologies that are
coming on stream right now.’
‘You
can already catch glimpses of this future,’
he explained. ‘At Melton, for example,
a pilot project based on the employment
node principles … is being developed
on about 500 hectares of land. Employment
nodes are about creating self-sufficient
local communities where people can work,
recreate, educate and live in the one
area rather than having to commute to
and from Melbourne each day as 90% of
the workforce in outlying growth areas
like Melton, Werribee, Sunbury and Craigieburn
does at the moment. So you might have
light industry adjacent to household living
and socialising areas next door to some
sort of tertiary education facility, and
all set in parklands with a lake.’
‘I
think it’s harder to visualise what
telecommunications will mean to the way
we live and design our urban spaces in
the future, though,’ John Hennessy
admitted. ‘People can already study,
shop, bank and be entertained from home,
but we probably haven’t thought
enough about the social implications of
this yet. It might not take a great deal
of community investment, however, to redesign
amenities so people don’t feel isolated
working from home.’
Local
self-reliance was also an important issue
for urban planner, Peter
Atkins, from Maribyrnong Council.
‘In a sustainable city, people would
recreate locally and produce their food
more locally,’ he said. ‘We
would not be frightened to grow green
leaf vegetables in an urban setting, for
example, because we’d be dealing
with our airborne pollutants. And the
natural environment would be reclaimed
and enhanced. Our river environs would
be treated with greater respect in terms
of what drains into them, and what’s
located next to them … I think a
sustainable city would also be more self-sufficient
in a social sense. There’d be more
opportunities for friendships and personal
support, for example. And that again would
reduce the need to travel.
‘I
guess I’ve been focussing on some
of the social aspects of sustainability,
because people often forget that there
are significant social solutions to environmental
problems,’ Peter Atkins said. ‘We
can list any number of ecological outcomes
that are necessary if we are to ever create
sustainable cities, but what I’m
interested in are the social and economic
linkages.’
Painting
the future real effectively represents
a collective re-imagining of a whole bioregion.
It focuses on real people doing real things
in a real place in real time – and
on the images of the future that are motivating
them. You can read the ‘Painting
the future rea’ interviews and background
material on Imagine The Future Inc’s
web site at www.ecoversity.org.au.
But let me ask you that question again:
what would a sustainable city look and
feel like? And what are you doing to help
make such a town or city real in your
bioregion?
______
Merrill
Findlay is founder/director of Imagine
The Future Inc, an organisation auspiced
by the Australian Conservation Foundation
in 1990.
Painting
the future real is hosted by Victoria
University of Technology within the project
bioregion, and is funded by the Sidney
Myer Fund and the Commonwealth Government
through the Australia Council, its arts
advisory body, and the Department of Transport
and Regional Development.
