Sshh, don't mention the population crash

I met Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake (Volksbeving in Dutch) yesterday in Utrecht, for an interview. For those who are not familiar with Pearce: he is one of Britain's leading environmental journalists and authors.

In Peoplequake he exams all aspects of demography. I interviewed him mainly on the future of European cities. There's a population crash coming towards us and we're pioneering it in Western Europe.

The fact that the whole global population will reach a tipping point about midcentury and go into a rapid decline isn't mentioned a lot in the media. Pearce tells me why: "Demographic researchers tend to hush it up. They say it would endanger their funding." The population crash is politically incorrect and even taboo as a topic.

As for Europe, Pearce says: "we will have to redesign the whole concept of cities and make them work for a shrinking, greying population."

The main reason for the continuous drop in fertility is the feminist revolution. Pearce: "Women can now choose between a career and children. Increasingly, espcially in countries like Italy and Germany, they go for their careers. Our main goal should be to complete the feminist revolution with adequate facilities that make it possible for women to combine career and children and an attitude that makes it possible that both partners share parents' responsibilities."

Fred Pearce compares the differences between Italy and the Nordic countries. "In Scandinavia these theings have been taken care of. Fertility in the Nordic countries is down only to 1.8 child. This allows for a gradual and copable decline in population. In Italy it's 1.3 child - a catastrophe. You can imagine what this will mean for the sustainability of cities in the long run."

Photo update Dresden

I've just created a series of photos of my recent trip to eastern Germany. I made a Dresden series first, on Flickr. Use the tag Baba Reizen. There's a lot more to this city than its magnificent baroque centre. Check it out.

Stalin built this city

The city of Eisenhüttenstadt ('steel factory city') in the eastern German state of Brandenburg is a strange anachronism. Stalin had it built in the early 50's for the blast furnace workers. A perfect workers' paradise in, well, Stalinist style.

There was no economic reason to have a blast furnace there other than to make a political statement. The furnace cannot run on the brown coal from the region - the cokes had (and have) to be imported from elsewhere. This makes Eisenhüttenstadt (or Stalinstadt as it was once called) a cathedral in the desert.

Ever since the wall is gone, the area is subject to the market economy. Out of the 56.000 inhabitants, only 30.000 remain. The others have gone to get a job somewhere in the west with some future perspective.

The old Stalinist blocks of flats have been restored in a wonderful way. The outside city rings of former soviet style flats are all being demolished and the people move closer to the old centre.

The future of Eisenhüttenstadt may well be that of a shrinking open air museum city, a relic of a different time and age. The city has an interesting museum of everyday GDR life and internet companies sell Ostalgia-products online to communist retro collectors around the world.

They may have been weird times to have lived in, but they make great stories. And out of great stories you could make a new living.

136 places missing and the land is still moving

Just came back from an awesome trip to eastern Germany. The Lausitz region on the German-Polish border is full of stories. Ever since 1924 up to 136 villages and towns have been demolished to make way for brown coal quarries. It started in the Third Reich, went on in communist times and is expected to continue to at least 2030.

The only difference is: in the former GDR you got a notice on your frontdoor saying you have to be out by Monday next. Now, Vattenfall - the giant Swedish energy producer - compensates people for the loss of their homes. Like the town of Horno that fought 30 years against its obliteration from the Lausitz map. They lost. Then they could rebuild their village in the same manner some 20 miles further on, on the outskirts of the town of Forst. What arose there is Neu Horno (new Horno). It is so perfect it looks like the towns my daughter used to construct in The Sims computer game.

At the same time Vattenfall quarries the land for brown coal, creating lunar landscapes everywhere. When the mining stops, these giant craters get turned into articifical lakes for recreation. There will be 23 of them, connected thru canals.

The landscape changes all the time and towns and villages will keep disappearing. It is a difficult thing for the inhabitants: they are economically dependent on an employer who pays for their salaries and demolishes their houses at the same time.

Never doubt that a small group of committed people

Lately I've been combining my work on cities with a process of dialogue tables throughout my university in Arnhem, The Netherlands. We talk about professional culture and our passion for teaching. It was just a new way of doing things. Now, after a few months of dialogue sessions at lunchtime, it is not only the staff that is taking part, but also management, hr and even the board. What I see is that, slowly, the dialogue - introduced to think about the space we have as professionals - is becoming the space. The dialogue ís the change.

So, I thought, why not start a dialogue in your city? So often when I speak about urban creativity at conferences, the creativity seems to end once the conference is over. Mostly the conferences themselves aren't even creative. They are only about creativity. It's just cities talking to other cities. It's like looking at a powerpoint on how to swim.

I invited Peter Senge to my university a few years ago. He gave a presentation for 400 people at our city music hall and made everyone sit around tables and go into dialogue. You know what happened? Many people got angry. They just wanted to look at a managementguru to tell them what to do the next day when they got to the office.

But if you want change and you are not prepared to sit around a table with 3 or 4 others and look eachother in the face, you don't want change. If you want change, real change in your city, you let your people start dialogue tables. Just start with a few and then train the people at your table to become dialogue leaders. And so on.

I know there are cities where they did this. And it is the test. If you want real change, you better start doing things with the people, instead of for the people. 'You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all of the people all the time'. Now, if a small group can really get this thing going, who knows where it will end. Quote Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Turning malls into greenhouses

Here's a great story. In the US, they are turning partly empty shopping malls into (sub)urban greenhouses. Now this what I call innovation. Growing organic veggies in malls and selling them on the spot. Read the original story on Cleveland's Galleria Mall here: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/02/galleria_has_gardens_now.html.

The people who started the Gardens Under Glass project in Cleveland are thinking of bringing in urban gardeners, starting an education centre and inviting sustainable producers.

Real estate experts predict the decline of the 'single use environment', like the shopping mall. This initiative is turning malls into multi use environments. Great idea

Studiereis Berlijn voor beleidsmakers

Berlijn: identiteit als wapen in de stedenstrijd

Overal in de wereld concurreren steden met elkaar om bewoners, bedrijven, bezoekers en bollebozen. Om als stad aantrekkelijk te zijn, is je identiteit belangrijker dan ooit. Iedere stad dient te kijken naar zijn eigen, onderscheidende identiteit waarmee het kan concurreren. Maar, waar kijk je dan naar in een stad? Hoe ontdek je wat een stad uniek maakt? En, tenslotte: hoe bepaal je vervolgens wat jouw stad uniek maakt?

Berlijn is drie dagen lang onze casus, inspiratiebron, laboratorium en werkplaats. Bij thuiskomst heb je scherpere inzichten en kun je betere keuzes maken in de positionering van je eigen stad of streek.

Deze studiereis wordt georganiseerd vanuit de Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen. Voor meer informatie, neem contact op met Roy van Dalm: 06 - 53 53 72 87 of mail: roy.van.dalm@inter.nl.net of roy.vandalm@han.nl