September 16, 2008
Expert meeting Nr. 2 – VOLUME i.c.w. VAN ABBEMUSEUM
Since a sustainable city is often understood as a society of zero emission or carbon neutrality, we decided to ask ourselves:
What happens AFTER ZERO, when this ideal stage is reached? What are the theoretical guidelines and interesting practices for designing a sustainable city?
We think that the experiences of those who work in shrinking cities or cities in ‘crisis’ are in the process of finding answers to these questions. As these places offer a radically different case study on what a normal urban condition is, namely a condition which is not only determined by capitalist development incentives, but rather a kind of post-capitalist condition with a different logic to produce and a different set of ethics.
One of the issues on the table, providing the topic for an internal seminar at the VAN ABBEMUSEUM, under the conceptual banner of their Heartland project, is therefore the relation between ethics and sustainability. On 22 September 2008 VOLUME will discuss this and more together with Kerstin Niemann, Stephanie Smith, Clare Butcher, Marjetica Potrc, Andrew Herscher, Femke Lutgerink, Joost Janmaat, Gijs van Oenen, Chris Keulemans, Mireille Roddier, José Subero Diaz, Simon Dermout Cramer and Design 99.
The results of the meeting will be featured in this blog, and in VOLUME 18.