Smart cities and their protagonists are strong, and their incentives are high; the cards are stacked in their favor, including the self-logic of technological development. Nevertheless, creative resistance is not futile, as there are strong tail-winds blowing with people and earth, of dignity and inclusion.

Waste avoidance is simply avoiding the production of waste. It is often associated with the terms ‘waste reduction’ or ‘source reduction’, as well as ‘waste minimisation’. As stated in Background to Waste Management, minimisation is at the top of the waste hierarchy, and contrary to popular perception, reducing the amount of waste that is produced can be achieved relatively simply. Slight modifications of procedures and/or altering procurement practices can improve efficiencies in utilising resources, leading to a reduction in the amount of waste produced.

Historically, in Europe the commons was not a major affair. The lands that the lords and abbots set aside for the use of their serfs amounted to not much more than a sop to encourage their continuing subservience. In some areas it played a bigger role than in others, but all over Europe, the peasants were in constant upheaval trying to get out from under the thumb of the landlords. As towns emerged and guilds of skilled craftspeople developed in the early Middle Ages, prospects of more autonomy enticed peasants to the towns.

It may be stretching the historic record to say the guilds offered another world of possibility for the peasants. What we can say is that the growing opposition of workers to the rise of industrial capitalism in the 19th Century looked back several centuries and saw it that way.

The »smart city« is a term widely used to signal an urban environment that re-invents, or »updates«, itself. The smart city not only embodies techno-visions and uses of urban space, but also signals the existence of different perspectives within itself.

In this presentation, we will seek to outline some of these with an outset in »the urban metainterface«. Examples of everyday urban experiences with interfaces are numerous: »TripAdvisor« provides access to restaurants, and other sights that are otherwise not clearly visible in the urban landscape; with »Airbnb«, any apartment in the city holds the invisible potential of a bed and breakfast, etc. In other words »every street corner and every local pub leads a double life« as expressed by Martijn de Waal. The interface is however not just an interface to the city, but is a meta-construction that within itself holds a particular urban gaze. The urban metainterface depends on an ability to capture the user’s behaviors: the more the interface opens up the city – to diverse behaviors and signification – the more it needs to monitor the users and their milieu, and process these data. The more we read, the more we are being read. But what are the aesthetic mechanisms of seeing and walking in the city, whilst being seen and being guided?

He says that it is possible for old cities to be smart with the right interventions, “but when they want to have ‘smart’ they build a new city. What should happen to the city that we have now, should we abandon it? What we try to do is to help people in existing cities, so that in 5 or 10 years those people will build their own smart cities, using their own technology that they developed,” Agbodjinou says.

This course looks at where important materials in products we use every day come from and how these materials can be used more efficiently, longer, and in closed loops. This is the aim of the Circular Economy, but it doesn’t happen on its own. It is the result of choices and strategies by suppliers, designers, businesses, policymakers and all of us as consumers.

In addition to providing many cases of managing materials for sustainability, the course also teaches skills and tools for analyzing circular business models and promotes development of your own ideas to become more involved in the transition to a Circular Economy.

You will learn from expert researchers and practitioners from around Europe as they explain core elements and challenges in the transition to a circular economy over the course of 5 modules:

We are called, as always, to “build a new world in the shell of the old”. The price and fetish of novelty, in ideas as in technical systems, is a blind ahistoricism and wasteful obsolescence that may have gotten us into “this mess” in the first place. Can we come instead in the name of repair and maintenance, and not to make or originate? There is much work to be done, dear readers. Let us begin, again.

Managing waste starts with avoiding waste by repairing products. But often manufacturers’ ‘Technological Protection Measures’ prevent repair.

How can we encourage repair rather than simply the throwing out broken objects and devices?

This pains me to write, but we all have to come to terms with the harsh reality that recycling validates waste and is a placebo to the complex waste crisis we have designed ourselves into. The things you are separating and putting in your recycling bins are probably not being recycled — and there’s a good chance that they are ending up somewhere you never imagined.

Abfall ist keine Substanz, sondern ein Verhältnis. Durch die Geschichte hindurch hatten die Menschen sich in einer überwiegend friedfertigen Beziehung mit ihrem ständigen Begleiter eingerichtet. Seit 100 Jahren jedoch hinterläßt jede Generation der nächsten einen wachsenden Berg von Altlasten. Der Abfall fordert, nachdem er einige Metamorphosen durchlaufen hat, die Fallensteller der Kategorien heraus – Gesetzgeber, Chemie-Ingenieure, Materialwissenschaftler, Marktforscher, Polizisten, Semiotiker, Kunstkritiker. Heute sind wir dabei, die gesamte Infrastruktur der Gesellschaft nach den Erfordernissen des Müll-Systems auszurichten. Was dabei rauskommt, ist allerdings – bestenfalls – eine Verdichtung und Verlagerung. Mit jeder Verdichtung wird der Tödlichkeitsgrad des Mülls erhöht, mit jeder Verlagerung ein weiteres Territorium in Altlast verwandelt. Die Zukunft hat bereits begonnen. Ihre Fragestellung lautet nicht mehr eigentlich: wohin mit dem Müll?, sondern: wohin mit uns? Hat der Müll System oder ist das System der Müll?