Bug or no, we're busy building the future in the present - in retrosuburbia, via platform coops, through social infrastructure
Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash
No mere expiratory virus is apparently going to stop the flow of great bottom-up initiatives and enterprises flowing into our inbox and social media streams. Here’s a brief trio that you should keep in mind when public space becomes ours again.
What do you call it when Permaculture occupies Aussie Street? Retrosuburbia!
From Australia, it’s a delight to hear about the work and advocacy of David Holmgren, who pioneers the idea of permaculture - deep sustainability in food and nature - at the heart of suburban Oz life. Which he wrote up in a book in 2018 called Retrosuburbia. Here he updates and explains, for the current moment, on his blog:
COVID-19, an invisible agent that barely qualifies as a lifeform, is bringing the most powerful civilisation the world has ever seen to a grinding halt. In three months it may have led to 10 to 20 times greater reduction in greenhouse gas emissions than all the science, talk and technology have done in more than three decades.
A home-based lifestyle of self-reliance, minimal and slow travel does not provide protection against getting a virus as infectious as COVID-19, but it provides a base for social distancing and isolation that is stimulating and healthy rather than a place of detention. This psychological health-giving factor may be more important in these times than the actual level of self-sufficiency achieved in the household economy.
Nevertheless, a veggie garden, chooks [chickens] and fruit trees supplying a larder of home preserves and bulk-purchased food gives a sense of security lacking for most people dependent on 24/7 supermarkets crowded with scared shoppers.
A vibrant and busy household economy, where young and old contribute, provides focus and meaning rather than boredom and pent up frustrations. An ability to connect with nature and animals provides balance to the 24/7 news cycle and social media.
Furthermore, behaviours such as self-provisioning, buying in bulk and minimal travel not only reduce ecological footprint and stimulate household and community economies, they also “flatten the curve” of infection, thus giving the health system the best chance of responding to those in need and reducing the numbers of people desperately dependent on government aid and assistance.
Far from being a survivalist withdrawal from society, permaculture designed self- and collective-reliance at the household level is our best option for a bottom-up response to the multiple crises generated by globalised capitalism. Nearly two decades ago I began to shift my strategic focus to articulating opportunities for in-situ adaption and retrofitting of the built, biological and behavioural fields of the household economy. This culminated in the publication of our bestselling (11,000 copies sold) manual, RetroSuburbia, in February 2018.
In the years before publication, I fretted that the wobbles in the financial system would lead to a crash before the ideas got out there to catalyse the diverse threads of action in permaculture and related networks.
Although the mainstream media has largely ignored the quiet revolution spreading in our suburbs, regional towns and villages, local governments have been supportive of our message with events around the country in which my “Aussie St” permaculture soap opera shows how we survive and thrive in the “second great depression”.
More here. You may also be interested in this free online Permaculture course from PermacultureWomen
Platform Cooperatives are raising their hand aloft at the moment - exactly the sharing tools that you need
We were happy to receive the Platform Cooperatives newsletter this week. We’ve profiled considerably this ethical alternative to the exploitative digital platform service model of Uber, Airbnb, Task Rabbit, etc. And as the existing model of info-capitalism falls over before the Coronavirus, platform coops are - as far as this newsletter goes - coming into their own.
In a month’s time, along with the Mondragon Corporation, the Platform Coop Consortium is launching an online course on platform co-ops.
They’re also currently holding a PCC IDEATHON to respond to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 disaster - how can platform co-ops help people to build democratic workplaces? It’s Friday, April 10 at noon - Zoom room at https://NewSchool.zoom.us/j/672505772
One of 23 organisation, Mirai Mukerjee of the Sewa Federation in India contributed a pre-recorded video at their PCC Circle of Cooperators.
What’s the alternative to Zoom’s under-the-skin-surveillance? Well, there’s http://collective.tools or other instances of Jitsi. These platforms operate in well small groups of 5 or 6, but at scale, they quickly fail. “We have to stop pretending that the cooperative Internet infrastructure is scaled enough to board all the people who are trying to leave the sinking corporate Titanic”, writes the PCC. “We need to build for capacity. Surely, there is much co-op tech infrastructure hidden in plain sight”.
Why Eric Klinenberg Believes Social Infrastructure Will Save the World
What does the American author of Palaces for the People mean by social infrastructure? From City Lab:
Social infrastructure is a set of physical places and organizations that shape our interactions. When social infrastructure is robust, it fosters all kinds of social interactions, helps build relationships, and turns community from a vague, fuzzy concept into a lived experience. When social infrastructure is degraded and neglected, it makes it far more likely that we will grow isolated and be left to fend for ourselves.
I think of social infrastructure as being just as real as the infrastructure for water, food, energy, or transit. It is the material substratum that supports social life. The idea is that the social life we experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s a context for it. It can be supported or undermined by the places where we spend time.
It’s quite literally a thing in the world that we failed to conceive and, because we failed to conceive it, we haven’t seen or recognized the possibilities for building it up. I think people believe that the social glue has come undone, and the level of polarization and divisiveness we are experiencing right now is unsustainable. Now is the crucial moment for starting to think more seriously about how we rebuild some sense of a common purpose…
Social infrastructure involves a number of public facilities as well as private and commercial ones. For instance, the public library: It provides a variety of services and public benefits for people of all ages and stations, regardless of social class, regardless of race or ethnicity, regardless of citizenship status.
They’re amazing institutions that would be kind of inconceivable if we didn’t already have them. It’s hard to imagine this notion that every citizen has a right to their cultural heritage and to access a free place where they can better themselves outside of the market coming from a moment like this.
Childcare centers, athletic fields, schools—these are all part of the social infrastructure as well.