Puddle Jumpers

I’m not sure if there was a Habitat Forum preceding the one in Vancouver or not. In any event, in the 1967, Moshe Safdie (he designed the Vancouver Public Library which was very contraversial design, built in 1994, I think) designed the experimental Habitat dwellings in Montreal. They have become a model for contemporary urban living, and are apparently very nice to live in. I found a good website on them: Habitat ‘67.

Certainly, there are pockets of successful urban living throughout the world, but density brings with it its own problems. Massive Change curated by Bruce Mau, was a very unusual art exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery a few years ago. It skimmed over these problems in an attempt to highlight the benefits of new materials and technologies. The accompanying book’s back jacket reads: “Massive Change is not about the world of design, it’s about the design of the world.” I won’t go into a critique of the exhibit, but I think the book gives a good idea of what it was about, and the overall sense of the show. Everything from toilets to flooring design was covered, even recyclable alternative styrofoam made from potatoes, if memory serves.

Writing about this, thinking of the WUF III forum and Habitat ‘76 has made me question a few things. We must continually ask ourselves, how do we design the environments we inhabit, and how do those designs evolve and change over time? What are we using to design these spaces? What can we do to ensure sustainability of our resources and natural environments over the long term, not just 50 years, but 250 years? That’s a lot to think about, and it’s daunting. But is it so hard? If we make small changes to our lifestyles by modifying some of out habits, we could collectively (through individual action) slow down some of the destructive consequences of our habits. I’m trying to remember to bring my own bags to the grocery store. I’m amazed at how many plastic bags we collect! Is it necessary to get a new plastic bag every time you go shopping? Sometimes I remember to bring a wheeled box I have and I use that instead of bags. I’m really proud of myself when I remember, because I am otherwise a very absent minded person. Eventually, I’d like to remember to keep some fabric bags with me at all times, for those frequent spontaneous trips to the store. It almost seems like my habit that needs modifying isn’t the habit of bringing plastic bags, but the habit of remembering!

Another habit that needs to be broken, that developed societies seem to share, is the habit of producing and accumulating “stuff”. Today I was in a dollar store. It was a very nice dollar store – okay, not a “dollar” store, but a two-dollar store. Everything for $2. It was clean, organized, nicely displayed… but… How many small plastic containers, or plastic binders or plastic toys, or plastic flowers – the list goes on – do we need? Nic-nacs, and home décor, baskets and wreaths, boxes and wrapping paper… on and on it goes. I’d like to know why we can’t make do with what we have. What is it about us that drives us to get the newest and the latest design, colour, material? I’m guilty of this. And when I think about, say, arborite counter tops that make it to the land fill after a home renovation, or maybe it’s old fiberglass insulation, or meters and meters of plastic drop cloths used for painting, I just feel helpless. We’ve created this perpetual motion machine, and that machine is called consumption, and no one wants to interrupt it.

As I sit here writing this, I can hear the traffic outside. We’re several blocks from Columbia Street, a busy, truck congested thoroughfare. It sounds like a freeway. Sometimes you can hear speeding cars revving past, sometimes sirens, most often the sound of semis gearing down or speeding up. It’s like the sound of wind, only amplified, mechanized and unrelenting. I’ve hung chimes out on our balcony, and when they play in the breeze they’re a welcome reprieve from the din of the city. The trains are moving right now, a crow has just called out and the rest of the birds are falling silent in the descending dusk.

I just opened my Massive Change book to the following page. It was a random selection, but very poignant. Here’s what the caption reads: “Personal freedom: The world hasn’t embraced secular democracy, but it has embraced traffic. The radical success of the car has brought about its failure. Personal mobility projects are under way worldwide to deliver maximum freedom with minimal impact.” I’d love to buy a hybrid, or better yet an electric car (made right here in Vancouver: Dynasty Electric Car Corp ).

Well, I’ll keep dreaming, and think of ways to try to reduce my own footprint on the Earth. I’m not successful right now, I know this, and I have a lot of readjusting to do. Maybe you’ll join me? Every small bit helps, some way, some how.

Thanks for reading.

Ingrid

Looking at the puddle and thinking.

So, last year was the WUF III (World Urban Forum) here in Vancouver. For more info on the WUF, here’s a link to their website: WUF III 2006. I went because my second cousin Astrid and her friend Karolina came from Sweden to attend the conference. They both have a degree in environmental engineering, spent some time in Kenya doing research for their graduate thesis and had gotten a bursary from their university to attend the conference. They dragged me along, and I’m really glad for it because it was an amazing and educating experience. I attended talks that ranged from urban planning, poverty, slums, incorporation of art in urban planning, to financing and banking in developing countries. The range of issues was immense, and I felt dizzy from all the information and got a sore back from all the pamphlets and literature I collected over the course of 5 days!

It was so inspiring seeing the sea of humanity (10,000 strong) all congregated at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre (formerly Canada Place). People from all over the world took part in the WUF III, and I was energized and charged feeling a part of the whole in this tapestry of cultures, ethnicities, languages and colour! It was GREAT! I loved it.

On the last day of the forum, I decided to take with me a little clay pendant I had gotten from the Habitat Forum 1976 in Vancouver. I was 10 at the time, and I remember going down to a park (was it Vanier?) with Mom, where there were plenty of things for kids to do and I got all sorts of pamphlets about potential energy alternatives of the future, like wind, solar and wave power, electric cars, sustainable cities and architecture and a harmonious and peaceful future where no one would be without, and where humans would all get along with each other and live harmoniously in their environments, both the natural and constructed. I got colouring books, with pictures of futuristic cars that were fueled up by plugging them into things that looked like light standards, but at the top were solar panels. So, you’d park your car, plug it into the electric fueling stanchion, go shopping along the promenade alongside a wonderful diversity of people, and jump back into your electric car and when you got home you’d park in your garage, plug in and “fuel up” again. A world with no gas, clean air, a healthy Earth, no wars and happy people.

Fast forward 30 years, it’s June, and I’m in Vancouver, a city growing rapidly and the downtown core is busy and noisy with gas powered cars, diesel trucks and a combination of electric and diesel buses. The Skytrain, built 20 years previously (think about it: 10 years after the ’76 Habitat Forum), takes people in and out of Vancouver in an eastwardly direction, and buildings are shooting up like uncontrolled weeds. Vancouver and the Lower Mainland sprawls ever outward in its growth, connected by an assortment of roads on which the gas powered car is the transportation mode of choice. The 2010 Winter Olympics is on its way, construction has begun on a new rapid transit artery down Cambie Street, and a new road leading to Whistler, which will cut through delicate ecosystems on the Eagleridge bluffs that is home to a rare frog (the red-legged frog, I think), is a fore drawn conclusion, despite protests from a small but determined group of environmentalists, mostly West Van residents who are being accused of being rich to excess and wanting to save their beloved trees because they’re worried about property values.

With this backdrop, I decide to take my little pendant with its reminders of a hopeful future with me to the final day of the WUF III. I showed it to Astrid and Karolina, and then to some lovely women at the Sweden booth in the main hall, who insisted I take it up to show Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-Habitat. These women, full of energy, enthusiasm and encouragement, hailed from Africa, and were involved with SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency), and I can’t tell you how inspiring and encouraging they were! And assertive! They practically pushed me out the door and up to the temporary executive offices of UN-Habitat at the VTCC. Karolina came with me and took some pictures which I’ll post. After a great deal of being passed from one office to another, I finally spoke with a secretary, Silvia, who was so interested in showing Mrs. Tibaijuka my pendant, she bent over backwards to get me an audience with her! I was quite confused; I mean, who was I? Ingrid Kroll, a resident of Vancouver, mature student at UBC picking away at my undergrad in Visual Art (of all things) and here I was suddenly so important because of a 30 year old clay pendant! It seemed so strange, but I went with the flow. If they thought it was important, who was I to question that?

So, I had a very brief meeting with Mrs. Tibaijuka. She was gracious and seemed genuinely interested in this little pendant, and I managed to tell her ever so briefly of my experiences as a child in 1976, and how I thought it was important that the next WUF incorporate more children’s activities within the actual forum, as opposed to segregating them as had been done at the current forum. The future belongs to the next generations, and we need them around to remind us of the importance, urgency and reasons for these forums.

Mrs. Tibaijuka shook my hand and thanked me. Karolina was alert and took some pictures of us, and afterwards Silvia also took lots of pictures of me and the pendant. Then she wanted me to show the pendant to her boss, Mr. Wichmann. He was very interested in the pendant, and again I showed it to him and promised to give him pictures of it. I have recently been in contact with him, and it’s really nice to know that this little pendant might trigger something positive. The next WUF is in China, in 2008. Wouldn’t it be great to attend some sessions there?!

So, that’s my brush with the influential and powerful of the world. How influential is still debatable, in my view. After all, I don’t see too many electric cars around, 30 years after Habitat ’76, nor do I see an easy transition to alternative fuels. Plastic bags are ubiquitous, so is the gas powered car. Petroleum and petroleum by-products are the backbone of our global economy, and global it is. From shipping snap peas from China to Canada in February, to outsourcing local directory assistance to the southern States, ours is a burgeoning global economy. Wars against concepts are being fought, and tallies of the Western dead are being kept while the numbers of the Middle Eastern dead are a mystery. There is poverty the world over, just look in your own back yard. Perhaps you don’t notice it, it’s not immediately in your line of vision. But just go down to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver some day, take a look around. Or why not walk down 6th Avenue at 5th Street in New Westminster on a Thursday night at 11pm, and see the man sleeping under a thin comforter in a doorway. I don’t think the influential have the power to fix everything, but my hope is they can fix some of it. As for the rest, it’s up to us, us Average Joes and Josephines to do what we can to work towards a world that my little pendant from Habitat ’76 embodies, which is, to paraphrase Trudeau, a world that is just.

Thanks for reading this.

Ingrid

Pondering the Puddle

These are the inspiring and supportive women I met at the Sweden booth in the main hall at the VTCC. Great memories! I hope they’re all doing well.