Gilles
Clément: Gardens of Resistance
A
DREAM IN SEVEN POINTS FOR A NEW GOVERNANCE
Key
words as they appear in the text:
- the
common good
- planetary
stirring
- emergent
ecosystems
- delocalization
of production and distribution systems
- natural
and cultural hybridization
- emergent
economy
- evolution
- dependence
- self-sufficiency
- non-vital
exchanges
- vital
exchanges
- atomization
- networking
- planetary
garden
- symbiotic
man
A Dream in Seven Points for Gardens of Resistance
• A garden of resistance is an area, public or private, where the art of gardening – for sustenance, pleasure, parks or other programs of accompaniment, urban or rural –is practiced in harmony with nature and man, free of market domination. Diversity, both biological and cultural, as well as the preservation of water, soil and air is encouraged for the common good.
• A garden of resistance is part of a life style that, in a larger sense, reflects the relationship between man and his socio-biological environment . As in the Garden in Motion, this relationship, or the economy of life , does as much for and as little against existing energies. This applies to daily acts in all domains and is relevant at all levels. However, a constant state of alert must be maintained in order to avoid confusing consumerist values with ecology.
• Environment friendly practices emerge from gardens of resistance. They propose a way of life that is not wasteful of the common good as a basis for a new economy.
This economy is the confrontation of two processes:
- One is the planetary stirring of all living things and of distant exchange systems, leading to a series of biological and social readjustments : emergent ecosystems.
- The other, delocalization of exchange and distribution systems, minimizes global production and management costs, hence controlling pollution and carbon balance.
Planetary stirring multiplies exchanges and encounters between beings and cultures traditionally apart. These encounters produce the natural and cultural hybridization involved in the global process of evolution.
The delocalisation of exchange and distribution systems resulting from planetary stirring is an important aspect of the emergent economy, composed of new patterns of exchange (emerging ecosystems) and of new priorities: spend less and better, consume less and better, establish a dynamic sharing process.
• The emergent economy of gardens of resistance consolidates two opposing forces:
• One is connected to distant exchanges, generating dependence
• The second , connected to local exchanges, allows self-sufficiency
The emergent economy of gardens of resistance does not favor one or the other with regard to bulk exchange but establishes the frontier between dependency and self-sufficiency affirming that :
• Non-vital exchanges are tied to distance and dependence. A distant accident would only have an incidental impact upon the emerging economy and would not place it in danger.
• Vital (or highly necessary) exchanges are linked to proximity, hence to self-sufficiency.
A distant accident would not modify performance.
• None of the exchanges that could occur in gardens of resistance should, in principle, contribute to the deterioration of the biological or social balance
• Gardens of resistance already exist on the planet in dispersed form. This dispersion (“atomization”) is the logical consequence of self sufficiency but does not necessarily require a network.
A policy favorable to the emergent economy, originating from gardens of resistance and in a larger sense from the Planetary Garden, should federate a system with no legislative curbs in order to:
• establish fair exchanges
• establish forums for high level artistic and scientific exchanges
• encourage the exchange of immaterial goods derived from planetary cultural diversity
Dispersion (“atomization”), difficult to apprehend, operates in favor of resistance
• As long as the belief persists that capitalism is the only possible model, its destructive presence must be energetically challenged by multiplying “resistances” on the planet, forming a Milky Way that gains in force and intensity with time.
The substitution of one system by another is not necessarily a deflagration but an implosion, an irreversible shift from unjust to fairer distribution of imposition , from unjust to fairer distribution of goods – at least statistically – and from the privatization of the common good towards their municipalization.
It then becomes possible to federate a dispersed “(atomized”) system and establish a political project in harmony with the planetary garden.
• The Planetary Garden merges the Gardens of Resistance into a single concept. When resistance operates on a planetary level, a plan for humanistic ecology becomes possible.
The Planetary Garden is based upon the notion of diversity, underlining humanity’s dependence upon biological and non biological heterogeneity and hence its vulnerability. A key question is “How to capitalize from diversity without destroying it?” Indeed, any modification of the ecological balance through human behavior, causing the disappearance of non human species, ultimately condemns mankind. A scientistic vision of the future, substituting technology for circumspect management of natural resources, could only precipitate the “garden” towards destruction.
The Planetary Garden must federate comprehension of the living with intelligent use of technological assistance. It presumes a level of knowledge sufficient to run the garden by offsetting removal and return to the milieu. Symbiotic man is in a key position to maintain this balance while biotic potential continues to obey the evolutionary process.
Theoretically, these seven points open the way to new governance and, implicitly, prepare a new political program leading to the establishment of a novel government, complete with ministries and their responsibilities. As in a dream, the outline of a Constitution whose introductory articles establish the foundation for a society in which sharing and growth of knowledge supplant competition emerges.
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"the
principle of the recyclable city"
"Another
crucial question is production, what I call the principle of
the
recyclable city. Can society continue to live in a limited space
with
a high population density without destroying that space? Yes, by
recycling
everything the way it should be done, locally. For a
gardener
the model is obvious – you know how to make compost, sort
things,
recycle organic material without using complicated containers
or
plastic bags. But if we force a consumer society to recycle
everything,
we would have to redesign the consumer objects to make
them
recyclable. We wouldn’t have at all the same goals, the same way
of
life. For that, I think that vegetable gardens and gardening can
become
a model for society, for energy management.
In
a place like Aubervilliers, we face the typical problem of limited
space.
It’s surrounded on all sides, it’s not very big, but then
neither
is the planet."
Gilles
Clément in "Conversation between Gilles Clément, Marjetica
Potrč
and Gillain Roussel" (Oct. 4, 2011),
Gilles
Clément is a landscape architect, gardener and writer, known
for
such concepts as "Gardens of Resistance", "The Garden
in Motion",
"The
Planetary Garden", and "The Third Landscape"
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R-Urban
R-URBAN
is a bottom-up strategy of urban resilience involving the
creation
of a network of locally closed ecological cycles linking a
series
of fields of urban activities (i.e., economy, habitat,
mobility,
urban agriculture, culture) and using land reversibly.
*
AAA Atelier d’architecture autogérée is a research led practice
founded
by Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu in 2001 in Paris to
conduct
actions and research on participative architecture.
http://currystonedesignprize.com/winners/2011/atelier_d%E2%80%99architecture_autog%C3%A%C3%A9e_paris
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"to
produce what we consume and consume what we produce"
*
André Gorz, in Manifeste Utopia, Ed. Parangon, 2008
André
Gorz was one of the leading social philosophers of the 20th
century
and a pioneer of political ecology.
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The
Transition Network
The
Transition Network, founded in 2005, is an international
community-led
response to global warming and declining oil
reserves.
It continues to grow exponentially: more than 200 cities,
towns
and villages around the world have adopted the Transition
principles.
The movement is committed to adopting self-sufficient
solutions
to prepare communities to withstand the impact of, and
thrive
in a world transformed by an event known as “peak oil,” when
demand
for cheap energy outstrips supply, fundamentally altering the
global
economy and the way we live.
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"from
each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
Kibbutz
is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally
based
on agriculture. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities a
society
dedicated to mutual aid and social justice; a socioeconomic
system
based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality
and
cooperation of production, consumption and education; the
fulfillment
of the idea "from each according to his ability, to each
according
to his needs".
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The
Garden City
"As
the famous magnet diagram shows, Howard wanted to combine the
attractions
of urban life (employment, intensity of civic life) with
those
of the countryside (abundance of cheap land, natural beauty),
thus
ameliorating the shortcomings of both.
Howard's
scheme was aimed at appropriating the appreciation of land
values
for the municipality and residents themselves. The proceedings
would
make it possible to both repay the long-term debt of the initial
loan
with added interest, to construct and maintain municipal
infrastructure
and to build up a local welfare state consisting of old
age
pensions and insurance. In this way, incrementally, and through
cooperative
means, the land would become the property of the
municipality
and inhabitants themselves. During this process, the
control
of the municipality would be progressively handed down to the
inhabitants,
in what was almost a form of direct democracy. In
Howard's
eyes, this was the path to peaceful reform as referenced in
his
book’s first title: an incremental way of bringing all the land
under
municipal ownership.
Thus
the Garden City as proposed by Howard was one part political
utopia,
one part feasibility study."
*
Merijn Oudenampsen, in 'The Cook, the Farmer, His Wife and Their
Neighbour',
Marjetica Potrc and Wilde Westen (Lucia Babina, Reinder
Bakker,
Hester van Dijk, Sylvain Hartenberg, Merijn Oudenampsen, Eva
Pfannes,
Henriette Waal), edited and published by Wilde Westen,
printed
by Dijkman, Amsterdam, 2010.
Ebenezer
Howard is known for his publication Garden Cities of
To-morrow
(1898), the description of a utopian city in which people
live
harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in
the
founding of the garden city movement.
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