housing is not just houses. part 1
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Housing is not justhouses
An Integrated vision based onrecognition of territory and
negotiation
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Introduction
When Johnny strand, first told me, in front of all
SDD1 group Write a book I thought that he was
teasing me. Then I recalled his particular pedagogy
and the way he makes you accept tough tasks and
long walks in his already famous intense courses and
study visits. In fact so was it, and when he told me
again to do so, I knew that this was a real issue that I
was going to assume.
The text is written in English as this is the originallanguage of the HDM course at Lund and because I
devote it to many men and women from nations and
countries manly from Africa and Asia where
colonization from XV to XX centuries was not able to
leave to most of the people a decent way of living in
harmony with their climate, their resources and their
culture, but this language as its colonization heritage.
Colonisation has not ended with XX century; actually
it looks like it has adopted a new form with the so
called globalization which I found it excellent as it
deals with communication between nations in real
1 SDD stands for Shelter Design and Development, a
Housing Development and Management (HDM) program atLund University, granted by the Swedish InternationalDevelopment Agency (Sida). Johnny strand is also HDMDirector. The particular group is SDD Spring 2007 course.
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time, access to products and economies from all over
the world for every body common good.
It seems rather democratic and pretty acceptable that
each person on the face of earth shall have the chance
to experience the excitement of knowledge and
history expertise even at the instant events that aretaking place2. This unique phenomenon in our history,
joined to the huge capacity to backup information,
may be the perfect tools to stop inequity and bring fair
opportunities for all.
The incredible speed of changes has not reached
housing the same way trade and communications have
done. To build, yet, has an opposite connotation from
information or communication, it is done to last. And
with the rest of artistic expressions reveal the cultural
state of a society at each epoch. This particular
heritage of nations becomes the starting point of
identity and many global initiatives pledge for its
conservation and restoration.
Since XIX century, housing in cities became a
quantitative matter. Qualitative aspects were set aside
as well as traditional know-how practices were
dropped favouring the number of shelters for the
2This generation had the chance to see in direct TV the 9-11disaster.
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newly raised hand labour class, crucial for
industrialisation. At that time mankind and dwellers
were not quite aware and concerned with pollution or
harmful practices. Nowadays we are aware of it and
as thoughtful and conscious beings we must look for a
healthy and sustainable housing for everyone.
From conservation to health: RSS3, Chagas
disease Santander experience, CINTROP-
UIS4, M.D. Victor Angulo.
In 1997 I knew about some tropical diseases,
particularly malaria and dengue, but I didnt know a
word about Chagas disease5, when I was invited by
Red de Solidaridad Social, RSS to make some
recommendations about a Chagas disease controlstrategy based on housing improvement. I didnt
imagine that this consult was going to turn over my
professional career. The particular case came from a
research study of Dr. Victor Manuel Angulo Silva,
3Red de Solidaridad Social, Colombian Presidential agencyin charge of managing the subsidy programmes of nationcreated at presidential period 1994-1998.4The Centro de Investigaciones en enfermedades tropicalesde la Universidad Industrial de Santander, founded byVctor Manuel Angulo in 1991..
5In 1909, Carlos Chagas discovered and described theaetiology and the vectorial domestic transmission of
American trypanosomiasis. He also called it: The povertydisease.
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Director of Cintrop-UIS. The particular study was
essaying four different strategies for Chagas disease
control: three of them based on insecticides and the
fourth dealing with housing improvement. As the
WHO6 funds to finance the essay were not enough to
finance the dwelling improvement, Dr Angulo
involved Santander Governor and six Mayors from
endemic municipalities in addressing their housing
improving subsidised projects, currently administrated
by the presidential office RSS. As Dr Angulos
proposal was rather innovative, RSS charge me to
make some recommendations about Housing
improvement for Chagas disease control, because
current actions of housing contractors were to torn
down rural houses (or worst, to leave them upstanding
in risk conditions able for domiciliation of the vector)
and replace them with the repetition of a typical
design of a two bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and
a corridor of about 40 sqm total built area, without
considering the built patrimony of the families, or to
improve the house by adding a new bedroom and
upgrading the bathroom and the kitchen leaving the
rest of the dwelling in risk conditions for Chagas
disease transmission. My former Architectural
Conservation speciality, lead me to find out that over
6WHO, United Nations World Health Organisation
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19,000 sqm were going to be torn down, generating a
severe damage to vernacular architecture and the
destruction of cultural roots of places.
This first experience and the particular success of my
proposals for changes for an integral vision for
actions from government, academic and communityactors; intra and peri domicile analysis of dwellings;
total upgrading instead of partial interventions and to
make increase the amount of housing subsidy, from
USD 1,200 to 1,800 for each dwelling (512 units in
six municipalities). Then the following nomination of
this experience by Colombian Health Ministry to Best
Practices contest at Dubai in 19997; the following
edition of an integrating protocol of the National
Chagas Disease Control Programme and the NationalRural Subsidy Housing Programme for INS8in 2000;
convinced me about the creation of Cesos Corporation
as a Non-for profit organisation, on September 25,
2003 with the following social mission: To promote
health and general welfare of communities in
harmony with environment, by means of the study,
promotion and execution of investigations and
projects in the fields of Physical Sciences, Human
7http://www.bestpractices.org/database/bp_display_best_practice.php?best_practice_id=9548 INS: Instituto Nacional de Salud, National Health Institute
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Sciences and Arts. Then as a new NGO, Cesos
developed for the INS in 2004 a social participatory
strategy for Dengue disease sustainable control,
involving new approaches leading to an efficient
social an environmental management system for
municipalities. We have also prepared and held
conferences and congresses, presented lectures,
supported small women rural organizations and
solved consulting on Social Housing Quality. This
expertise is Cesos main strength as well as its board
and closer volunteer collaborators. The corporation
integrates working teams depending on the purpose of
the project to be executed from a large Data Base of
professionals. Each project has a Responsible director
and an Administrative manager that become vocals at
the Board.
From health to housing: Casanare, Ministry
of Housing, Environment and Territory,
SDD.
The former activity brought me some popularity
among Health functionaries. I was invited by Dr Juan
Manuel Naranjo, who was occupying the Public
Health Direction for Casanare department invitedCesos to organize a congress about housing
improvement for Chagas disease control.
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Casanare is a large department (44.640 sqkm) located
at the east of the country in the Orinochean natural
region with huge oil and natural gas reserves, its
population in 2005 Census was of 133.226 inhabitants
that compared with 1993 Census figure of 161.440
shows us the general emigrational phenomena to
larger cities. Two percent of population is native and
live in 10 reserved areas that occupy 3,3% of territory
with dramatic livelihood conditions due to
acculturation from a nomad way of living in their
extended vernacular territory of the Orinochean plains
to a restricted territory where they are pushed to
become farmers instead of semi-nomad hunters
gatherers, forced to live in colonisation dwelling
schemes offered by the government agencies, that are
neglected as they dont respond, for example, to their
traditional separation of sanitary services from the
cooking utility, or to the use of zinc metal tiles that
doesnt offer bioclimatic protection to shelter
compared to traditional palm roofs, much less
expensive as they are easy available in the region and
incredibly efficient to keep comfortable temperatures
inside dwellings in hot tropical climates.
Then, I was invited to develop part of a consultationfor the Ministry of Housing, Environment and
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Territory9, about shelter quality standards. This
allowed me to visit several social housing projects
across the country verifying sadly the extremely bad
quality of urbanism, building and habitability
conditions in most of the cases. I could corroborate
the lack of participation of the final user in the
planning and execution of these projects, not even in
the recognition of the family composition to
determinate the size and characteristics of the
dwelling, much less in the adaptation to biological,
cultural or climatic local conditions. In our diverse
country it appeared as we have reached an ideal
unique prototype present in all climates, cultures and
local conditions.
With this precedent information I was accepted toShelter Design & Development course at HDM in
Lund University where I could develop and present
the project: Healthy and Sustainable Habitat in
Colombia. Integrated Housing in Rural and Urban
Areas of Small Municipalities. This is a
demonstrative project of a protocol to create The
National Health and Sustainable Habitat Programme
in Colombia. It justifies and describes a process that
9 Consultora para la formulacin de guas de asistenciatcnica a entidades territoriales para proyectos de Viviendade Inters Social-VIS y sobre estndares de calidad de VIS
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starts developing a Geographical Information System
(GIS) tool by which the municipal authorities and the
communities, with support of academic institutions
are able to recognize their identity, their territory and
establish agreements to address urban land, wealth
and development in the small municipalities
throughout the country.
Towards a systemic and holistic vision.
The task then is to introduce a new way to harmonise
housing to environment through a systemic and
holistic integrated way to approach to territories and
communities, which is the reason of this book that I
wish to present to people involved in social housing.
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PART ONE
1. Identity
Perhaps you may have found yourself in the middle of
a crowd where you dont know anybody, but you feel
safe because people are like you somehow. Certainly,you will share some interest about the meeting, or you
might dress similarly, probably you speak the same
language, and many people are alike you. Identity is a
security factor that allows you to act freely and
comfortably, opposite to a different situation where
you do not recognize elements from your background.
On this other pole, when you walk through a
neighbourhood where the buildings are so similar that
you may say they are all identical, you will not onlybe insecure, you will get lost. This can certainly
happen to you in any of the official social housing
neighbourhoods built in the last decades in Manila,
Mexico, Lima, Bogot, or many other cities with a
large growing rate.
This is the heritage that ideal Renaissance cities and
modern mass housing production left to the actual
city. An urbanism that doesnt replicate landscape
accidents denies topography and fills up waterways. It
struggles against land and gives priority to the straight
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line over organic shapes. Flying across the USA you
can appreciate this, and curiously the organic way
some roads around oil fields are traced, or how rice
terraces were built two thousand years ago, see
pictures 1, 2 and 3.
Picture 1. Rice terraces, Bantad, Philipines
Picture 2. Over Arizona or New Mexico, USA
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Picture 3. Oil drilling, Texas, USA
I dont want to suggest that land cannot be managed,
what I want to emphasize is that we must not scarf the
planet. The consequences of the non-identification
with terrain are well known and are a cause of many
of the wrongly called natural disasters. So, to builda terrain-comprehensive urban environment is a first
clue to have friendly neighbourhoods humanized
cities and harmonious livelihoods.
The former huge step does not come alone. To reachthis civilized target, deep changes have to be
accomplished, starting by individual ones. It is an
identity recovery issue on individuals that will lead
society to a better urban rich world. This change must
be supported by the current formal educational system
for coming generations, and bred from a non formal
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pedagogic approach for adults and populations that
live in deprived conditions all over the world. Here
urbanism and education touch each other in a
sentence that a young Philippinean from Ifugao told
me, walking through the old rice terraces, they
have given us education, but it was not focused
There stands all the matter: focuses. And then, some
questions arise: Is it a global focus, or an international
one, or a national one, a regional, or a local one? The
answer is yes, to all of them, but within priorities.
Focus shall be defined at first instance individually
then locally, and gradually or concentrically to the
other levels.
There is where education for new generations shall
assume its role to raise kids focused within
themselves and their territories. In the first order the
body and the closest surround, in farther ones the
natural, economical, social, and political environment.
A compulsory Territory Cathedra must be
implemented into formal educational systems from
nursery school to the highest educational levels. But
lets leave this immediate task for future generations
to specialists activity: to introduce changes in
educational national curriculum.; as we have to be
concerned with millions of people all over the world
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living today in jeopardize, on a high degree of
unsatisfactory environment, full of inequity,
segregation, discrimination, degradation, injustice,
lack of secure tenure, among many other inhuman
conditions.
To brake down these unfair conditions it is not only
necessary to teach values, but to deeply inculcate
them in the interior of individuals, in their emotional
feelings to get a truly non rational or automatic
attitude in accordance with them. Thoughts and
actions shall become consciously right, to live
joyfully and well being in common good.
Human rights are written, even officially recognized
by country bylaws but they are not yet culturally
performed. Formative-pedagogic-cultural processes in
informal educational activities of action learning by
creating shall impact for changes on individuals
behaviour for a civil society change leading to a
happy and richer world.
Culture is something particular to each individual and
tacit agreements are done to build it up from personal
and local surround, to global levels. As the
constitutive unit of culture is a personal one,
coherence between what we think or desire, what we
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say and what we do, consents to the consolidation of
collective cultural levels. It is practically impossible
to be happy not being coherent or doing what we
know that is wrong, living in a constant interior
struggle. A clue to evaluate coherence in our lives is
our behaviour towards morals and law. We are
remembered for our acts, words are gone with the
wind, and it is about time to put them in deeds.
Besides its incidence in development, how
convergence of Law, Mores and Culture, influence
housing?
In a convergent situation corruption does not prevail,
the right thing is to build real nice, happy and
healthy dwellings. Actual situation is opposite, as
housing is also a business, forcedly generating profit,
it doesnt matter to act wrong, facilitating
corruption and producing an unhealthy housing
environment with very low living quality.
How can we change this historical gap? For the
change I will propose forward a methodology to
implement communitarian processes towards building
better neighbourhoods and cities where people
identify themselves in a commune by thinking and
acting consciously of each step they take.
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2. The Triple R
An integral comprehension of the Triple R strategy
must be fulfilled because it is the basis of a conscious
behaviour in pro of a healthy and wealthy
environment. This tripod has a logical staging.
In first place conscience is arising about benefits and
urgency ofReduction by opposition of unlimited
growing10. Humankind is getting aware that our
splendid planet is limited to a very fragile spot in the
middle of the cosmos and that many resources are not
being used properly to get a better living for
everybody and that we must reduce or definitively
avoid the use of many products that are harming the
environment and consequently putting in dangerhuman life. As many of these products harmful and
not harmful are still being produced we shall use them
until their last stand, while future industry re
accommodates to pro-life standards.
The second logical step is Reusing which is a practice
that also forwards to diminish the manufacture of
short-life products. To reuse you might need to do
10 Industrialization and post industrialization vowed for
development based on growing. After 1992s earth summitof Rio sustainability concept emerged, nowadays harmony
between parts is prevailing in response to ethics andaesthetics congruity.
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some reparations to keep in function the utility, by
opposition of throwing it away and getting a brand
new one. You can apply this principle even in
housing; as a matter of fact in Chagas disease control
program in Santander, Colombia, we avoid the
demolition of many vernacular houses from poor
people at countryside that were beneficiated with a
housing subsidy for building a new mini house of
40sqm with poor bioclimatic conditions. We got that
government approved that family could use the
subsidys money improving their old house to healthy
conditions, using local and traditional materials in a
typical reusing process.
The third one refers to all the products that dont stand
any other use, these shall get going into a Recycling
process that recovers the raw materials and make
them able to be used in the production of new
products, hopefully pro-life ones.
As there is still a lot of garbage making, recycling has
become a very profitable business in this decade.
Actually the objective is not to recycle or to favour
this new business, but to manufacture only useful
products with a very long profitable life for the raw
materials as they are made out of biodegradable
material.
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2.1. Re-creation
To reinvent and redesign to be able for RRR
To put in deeds RRR, a great creative effort must be
done. It is a diametrical position to change from a
culture of waste towards a systemic, complex and
open economy11. Cultural appropriation of new pro
life habits will overcome in a democratic society in
the measure that new actions entail new benefits. The
reinvention and redesigning of strategies, processes
and products is impositive to politicians,
entrepreneurs, industrial designers, architects, among
all social actors. There are already many conscious
actors. that have introduced into their social mission
the zero emissions concept12. They are pioneers of
this new century task and they envision it as a green
opportunity for business. So, major scientific
developments, based on ethical principles for life
preservation will give common people decent options
for a new way of living far different from waste, as
we will only get or buy what we really need, and
clean production will predominate over dirty one13. It
11 Gunter Pauli, Volver a Adam Smith, Innovar 14, p. 12
12Ibidem, founder and director of Zeri foundation, 1994:Zero emissions Research and Initiatives.13 Sylvain Darnil, Matieu Le Roux, 80 hommes pourchanger le monde, 2005
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is a new economical scope where prevails a practical
logic for life preservation. Artists are also involved,
since the beginning of XX century, Duchamps avant-
garde rhythms of his time with his provoking ready-
mades, questioned the absolutism of crafting, or
Chaplins critical movies to machinism and
Taylorism14in its bad consequence ofusing time and
motion studies simply to extract more work from
employees at less pay.
Contemporary, there are already several artists that
with his constant provoking way to show beyond
reality and question society, shall be our allies to get
to communities. I met a Tarija, Bolivia a wonderful
puppet man, Federico Rocha who has developed a
series of plays engaged with health improvement and
environmental conservation. By his Pedrito and
Mara puppet play for Chagas disease control with
housing improvement, adults while laughing were
shown in the mirror of theatre how irrational was their
domestic behaviour while kids would be able to recall
to their parents about good house holding habits in
14 Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), FrederickWinslow Taylor devised a system he called scientific
management, a form of industrial engineering thatestablished the organization of work as in Ford's assemblyline. He moved management theory from early time-and-motion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.
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their familiar milieu. Artists can support our task in a
lot of manners; Chris Jordans Picture 315 has already
undertaken it.
Picture 3. Chris Jordan, Cell phones #2. Atlanta
2005, 44 x 90
His images are invaluable tools for pedagogical
purposes about raising consciousness among
communities, and to question whether we have to
focus on a number of changes in our consumption
habits and to start a cultural process to reinvent and
redesign.
15Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American MassConsumption: As an American consumer myself, I am inno position to finger wag; but I do know that when wereflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer,our attention can turn inward, and in that space may existthe possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So
my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to akind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the mostcomfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in riskingself-awareness, at least we know that we are awake.
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Changing habits, braking paradigms is a cultural
process based on education through pedagogical
process of learning while doing in a focused way
into the milieu that has not yet been incorporated in
formal educational programs. There is a simple
practice that I propose to pupils in my walking
courses, to explain RRR, the most vivid one is about
the use of paper: If you write or print on the two faces
of the paper instead of one (it is bad seen to present
a homework with the two faces of the sheet printed),
you are reducing in 50% the use of paper, thus half of
the trees needed to make paper will not be felt down.
It is also profitable to keep the paper that has one of
its faces not used, to profit it for a rough draft. This
habit has taken root amply but the concept of what
you are doing is often confused with recycling instead
of simply the reusing one.
2.2. The Balance
Back in year 1999 I recall the day I read Gunter
Paulis enlightening article Volver a Adam Smith16
when I understood thoroughly the RRR strategy. I
hope that, when you read this, most of the world has
done it also. Paulis point, based on Adam Smith 1767theory, is the zero emissions vision. Nowadays, some
16 Gunter Pauli is founder an director of Zeri foundation
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companies have adopted this statement in their
institutional mission17. This is another clue to make
safer and pleasant environments, and above all to
preserve the world for the benefit of future
generations.
Beyond the reduction of garbage, new entrepreneurs
generations ought to be aware that a balanced
behaviour is essentially the only way to avoid global
warming, but they will find out that balance is also a
great deal, economically rewarding, environmentally
friendly and socially accepted. Simultaneous and
numerous actions in this direction can become into
the braking point for preserving future life on our
planet.
As Pauli states, economical science contradicting
Adam Smiths theory, keeps its practice improving
micro economical aspects about management but
leaves aside the fundamentals about the more efficient
17 Herman Miller: Our sustainability goals by the year2020: Zero landfill Zero hazardous waste generation Zero air emissions (VOCs) Zero process water use
100 percent green electrical energy use Company buildings constructed to a minimumLEED Silver certification 100 percent of sales from DfE approved products
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combination of the three economical components
stated by Adams in IIXX century: capital, labour force
and raw materials18. Currently, emphasis is made only
on the first two, neglecting the incorporation of the
last in the equation. As a direct consequence of this
nonsense, a great amount of raw materials become
environmental polluters.
So, a balanced re-creation, where the full use of raw
materials, the proportional valuation of labour hand
with a minimum risk for capital loss, had to be done
in a contemporary conservative thought contrasting to
the theory of endless growing equivalent to
development. The new production and consumption
model to recreate should be able to respond to the
alleviation of the critical conditions of thousands of
millions of people that live overwhelmed by poverty,
lacking elementary resources as clean water, food,
health services, shelter, energy and productive
occupation all over the world.
2.2.1.Capital
Richard S. Fuld jr, former president of Lehman
Brothers declare to the U.S. congress commission that
18 Adam Smiths theory: Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, published 1776
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one of the causes of companys bankruptcy was the
simultaneity of virtual transactions, what put in
evidence that, in fact, there is a large amount of
capital that doesnt really exist. This remind me about
a play game where there is a number of chairs with
one chair less than those of the number of players
who dance around them until music stops and each
one must take a chair obviously leaving one of them
standing. Lehman Bros. didnt have liquidity when
the music stopped. Why? Because that money doesnt
exist as it matches to a speculation of the capital
gambling.
Capital became a purpose instead of an instrument,
new interchange media will arise and in Antanas
Mockus19words: In XXIII century money will exist,
but only in the Museums. So, a truth dimension of
capital function to get sustain of life in the planet
must take place, finding its place as mere tool to
create value for welfare, health and happiness of
mankind.
2.2.2.Labour force
To produce more with less (hand labour), this
popular economical paradigm of XX century has
19 Bogotas Mayor in two period.
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conducted manhood to the unequal situation that 80%
of resources are consumed by 20% of population. It
also has permitted that 20% of people owns 80% of
global wealth. This distorted vision has favoured
increasing productivity and growth as the modern
economical ideal, in disregard of human free and
creative occupation. It has generated added value to
products and returned it to the capital in detriment of
the labourers incomes. This coarse and unbalanced
situation not only uses full employment as an
unreachable task, but it is the main cause of the
existence of such a pollutant and wasteful society. The
industrialized city from its beginnings in IXX century
legitimate the furnishing of sufficient and cheap
labour hand that has been recurrently packed in
shanty towns all over the world20 as an
ineluctable need of having a large inventory of
labourers disposed to work more for less (pay).
Added value to products by account of hand labour is
currently easy to figure out, so that a proportional
welfare of mankind is set up, and in a further appraise
of interchange means, different than money, hopefully
equity will arise. Meanwhile, an intensive use in
20 Term used for the first time around 1953 to designsquatters in Moroq
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complete production cycles of raw materials may
generate plenty of occupation for many people.
2.2.3.Raw materials
Finally, due to climate change, the use of the third
component of the equation is driving to collapse thewhole system, the irrational use and abuse of natural
raw materials. Our mother earth is been exhausted by
the unconscious exploitation of natural resources over
the last two centuries. To waste them as if they were
unlimited is carrying us to a self destruction in a very
short term. There are still running all over the planet
many industrial processes that merely 10% of raw
material is spent while the remaining 90% is wasted
to the sewers or directly poured into the waterstreams21. It is about time to reconsider these shaming
activities that harsh environment and replacing them
through systemic processes able to use the residual
materials from one industry as raw material for
another one. Human activities are boosting carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases concentrations
in the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The result is
rising global temperatures and an unstable climate
that threatens humans, economies, and ecosystems.
21Gunter Pauli, ibidem p. 31
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3. More urban, more rich
Parodying Gran Tannerfeldt and Per Ljung book:
More urban less poor (an introduction to urban
development and management) my proposal leads
about how people can become richer instead of just
less poor. I strongly oppose to the ineluctability of this
sad human condition of poverty. It is overwhelming to
listen to the reports that 60.000 million tons of food is
thrown to the garbage just in the United States of
America, additional 6.000 thousand tons in GreatBritain have the same destiny annually. This shows us
that hunger reasons far differ from poverty or lack of
food and recall us the unbalanced and non
proportional conditions of urban development, which
follows the wicked system that nowadays prevails.
The concentration off huge populations in few urban
cities only favours massive consumption industries
whose enormous benefits grow proportionally to the
inutility and futility of what it is produced and to thefact that free hand labour mobility is restricted to
these gigantic centres, contradicting the angular stone
of free market as Adam Smith quoted.
Megalopolis at service of the accumulation of capital
are perhaps the worst historical human mistake that is
jeopardizing life on earth by its effects on
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environment as the main source of greenhouse gases
and its expected impacts on an unstable climate22
The urgency of Mitigation: Policies and behaviours
designed to reduce greenhouse gases and increase
carbon sinks.
To end poverty by the creation of value, aXXI century global goal.
22 Climate Change Reference Guide, WorldwatchInstitute ,2009