David Barrie

Citizen participation at the heart of Government

The Washington Post reports that Kate Jacobs Stanton, a business development executive at Google is to join the Obama administration as "director of citizen participation". Jump for joy!

Her appointment comes in the same week as U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a speech to the New Local Government Network in London that

as our communities are being battered by a local storm that is vast and seems far from our control, it is ever more important that local people are empowered within their own local communities to lead our response to the downturn.

Stanton's role in the White House is a great opportunity to advance the use of digital media in support of the cause of local identity, expression and confidence.  

So let's hope that her brief is about participation, not distributing media releases or co-opting public opinion. 

For as Bob Pearson, Vice President Communities and Conversation at Dell said [subscription required] in a recent edition of the London Financial Times: 

Social media is much more than getting out there and having conversations. It transforms a business if you use it correctly.

Thanks to Emma Mulqueeny and Mitch Sava for the story.  Image courtesy of klipomaniaco.

Urban Farming: not a load of old bananas

Last November, the city of Detroit introduced a Neighborhood Stabilization Plan, a $47m plan to accelerate renewal of the housing market in areas most severely impacted by foreclosure and abandonment. 

A key element of the plan is alternative use of land - and as Bloomberg reports, Detroit is already one step ahead as: 

close to six barren acres of an estimated 17,000 have already been turned into 500 ``mini- farms,'' demonstrating the lengths to which planners will go to make land productive.

One 'farm' is Birdtown Community Garden, where private land and vacant city lots were turned in to a place for growing food: 

Over here in the U.K., foreclosure is growing but not on the same scale as in the United States and the national social security system is a key safety net.

But recession is putting pressure on housing market renewal, private sector finance of renewal and the boss of the national urban renewal organization has now acknowledged that we need to find new ways of financing urban renewal.

In other words, if we don't innovate fast, the country is to be scarred with more and more of this:

 
Empty land.

And more and more of this:

Empty shops.

Three weeks ago, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would bring forward £10billion of spending planned for public works such as school and hospital repairs, environmental projects and IT schemes to provide employment.

In November, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced a 45% tax rate on earnings over £150,000 from 2011.

What are those "environmental projects"?

What's to be the return on public investment for those in the new higher tax bracket?

Increased use of land for food production - a local boost to local foodie culture - seems a practical, political no-brainer.

I mean how irresistable is this image of a food growing site in an Italian city?

As opposed to this....

....a manicured stretch of barren English housing estate.

But there's an additional thought.

For the last year, I have been running a programme of advice to house-builders and providers of social housing on how to meet U.K. Government targets on climate change.

At an event last week, Brian Mark of Fulcrum Consulting made it clear that a key route to delivering viable carbon-efficient housing is to super-size development and introduce community energy systems.

And Peter Walker of EcoCentroGen decribed releasing capital to support the additional cost of low carbon and renewable infrastructure by applying a rent to the present and future provision of energy to development sites.

What if a significant proportion of the land on which a development is to sit were given over to food production and you could project a yield of fruit and veg that promised residents a considerable saving on their weekly food budget?

What if against that saving - as well as utilisation of the site's waste - you charged rent for use of the land - but not two groats and a shilling - but say £600.00/year/plot?

What if you bundled this with other services that could be 'rentalised', such as broadband provision?

Now this is no recipe for turning England in to Chianti - and any way why should we? - but this does start to become a route to seeing urban agriculture as less of a shampoo-free, urban eco-hugger zone, and more about bundled services that extract new value from land.

Do this on a city-wide scale - especially in places where there is a surplus of land laying derelict and with next to nil value - and doesn't it start to turn urban farming in to something way more than touchy feeley bananas?

Doom Fashion by Vuitton

Last month, Andy Bond, the Chief Executive of UK food and clothing superstore Asda said:

We are moving into an area of the frivolous being unacceptable and the frugal being cool.

Now Bond may have been thinking of his share options - not just consumer trends - but similar messages are emerging all over the place.

At Dazed Digital, there's Sunshine Caulkner (15), a new devotee of 1940s evacuee style in a picture by Michael Thomas Jones:

 
And Sunshine thinks

There’s definitely some satisfaction to be found in making a meal out of some leeks, some potatoes, some stale bread and a cup of water, or knitting a scarf and wearing it until it falls apart.

Over at Dwell, there's an appointment to view metals broker S.J. Sherbanuk's house in Blue Mountains, northwest of Toronto:

 
New steel and concrete is faux-bodged(not) together with used I-beams and recycled hardwood to create what's called

a dream home...of irregularly shaped "sheds".

Now all of this is starting to make the Saltersgill allotment gardens in Middlesbrough, North East England that Debra Solomon of Culiblog and me visited back in 2007 look way ahead of the curve.

 
And turn Sid, the owner of one allotment, in to an important early adopter.

 
But more than that.

For as the market capitalisation of banks has shrunk from $8,540bn in August 2007 to $3,586bn in January 2009, frugal 1940s-House culture has definitely seeped in to the culture. 

Know why I know?

Because Louis Vuitton is now promoting pre-Fall 2009 and showing...

...Pop-socks!

Welcome to the frugal world of Doom.

With more Vuitton at Spintos Guru here. More houses made from trash at luxury realtor International Listings here. And an application form for Saltersgill Allotments here.

Photography: Old Money Wanted by shpank. Sunshine Caulkner courtesy of DazedDigital.com. Scrap House by Lorne Bridgman.  

1 small lesson for organisations about supporting network innovation

Two organisations in the U.K. - the Royal Society of Arts and NESTA - are carrying out research in to how people can innovate in networks, rather than either on their own or simply with the person the other side of the waste basket.

In another part of the park, J.D. Stanley at Cisco has been working hard for several years on Digital Swarming: or how to combine inputs from people, machines and other data sources, digitize them and place them on to networks. 

All of this work falls in to the category of trying to understand how people can create, collaborate and share new ideas across dispersed places and spaces.

It's exciting, important and without a doubt what matters in a world in which the connectedness of people, information and technology is all-pervasive. But is there something missing?

Sometimes, animals don't relate but share stuff and copy one another.

At other times, states or experiences change by accident or projection.

In other words, some relationships form on the basis of what writer and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry once called sympathetic vibration and saw in the behaviour of a violin:

The A string of a violin is designed to vibrate most readily at about 440 vibrations per second: the note A. If that same note is played loudly not on the violin but near it, the A string may hum in sympathy.

Put another way, what may matter in networked innovation is not just mechanics or structure, but also tone - a tone that's set not just by trust but also momentum, and the design of a stage upon which people feel able and want to perform.

Image of Eliasson installation courtesy of Anna Maria Leon, horses by grandylion, window reflection by lux fecit.

Bernard Madoff and the cult of access

This is a velvet rope:

 
And this is Bernard Madoff, the financier recently arrested in the United States for an alleged $50bn investment fraud:

 

In the Wall Street Journal, there's the inevitable interactive graphic on the network that Madoff exploited to help him on his way.

But more impressive - and hilarious - is the quote from fund manager Fabio Savoldelli in a recent edition of the London Financial Times:

Dealing with him was all about getting behind the velvet rope to get in to a downmarket bar.

Now how many people do you know like that?

Could you eat an elephant?

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik remembered the trauma of Barbar the Elephant's loss of his parents and the need to up sticks from the wild and make his fortune in the big city. :(

Barbar was a key moment in us granting the elephant human qualities, sentimentalizing the wild and providing zoos and fun parks dramatic license to present staged realities of the wild.

And the entertainment that surrounds the elephant is unforgettable: Colonel Hathi in the film of The Jungle Book. Dumbo. And the fantasy of elephant tea parties.

The stock of elephants may be falling in West, Central and East Africa and the conservation movement working hard to save them but now in some parts of Southern Africa, there is a problem of too many animals and in some places elephant culling and the animal's meat is back on the menu. 

In a programme that will be shown on Channel 4 Television in the U.K. next week, two of England's most original, environmentally-conscious chefs - Fergus Henderson and Jeremy Lee - challenge their and our food taboos.

Fergus and Jeremy attempt to eat their way up the ladder of animals considered taboo for consumption in the U.K. but part of the diet of other cultures. They travel the world. One place they visit is the Kalahari Desert in Namibia at the time of an elephant hunt. I directed the documentary. 

The population of elephants in Southern Africa is now increasing due to conservation and the changing course of water supply across the continent.

In countries like Namibia, villagers and elephants compete for water and vegetation and stories are legion of attacks and killings of humans by the animal. 

Because of conservation, regulation of hunting and food price inflation, there are often shortages of meat to eat in the country.

And in need of investment, Namibia makes a market in the professional licensed hunting of elephants.

At $30,000 upwards a pop, wealthy Europeans and Americans visit the country in the summer to hunt for 'trophy' meat. Once the animal is killed and the hunters taken their 'prize' - be it the animal's feet or head - villagers are invited to cut up the carcass and share the meat.

All of this is done in the name of ecotourism, "sustainable population management" and villagers love the taste of elephant meat. 

In a landmark decision last year, the South African government lifted the moratorium on elephant culling in the Kruger National Park.

I couldn't eat an elephant. But plenty do.

What interests me more is that while in one culture, an animal is mythologized; in another, people happily kill and eat the thing.

Now there's nothing either shocking or surprising about that - except that liberal right-on-ness says that today we should eat real food and celebrate authentic, local and seasonal food culture. And eating elephant in Namibia appears to be all of these values writ large. 

Authenticity is a huge currency of popular modern culture. 

There's the honesty and integrity of Obama.

A limitless diet of TV shows on extreme eating, tribal living and meddling with lost tribes - i.e. Discovery Channel +1, 2 and +36.

And in an age of frugality, supermarket shelves are filling with offal and foodie culture is going gooey at the thought of eating food down on the farm.

To almost all of us, eating elephant is an authentic step too far. (as is dog - see my earlier post)

It transgresses taste, cultural preferences and personal style.

But doesn't Namibian relish for elephant start to make our commitment to 'real', 'local' and 'authentic' food look like a load of old parochial chic?

Image of dead elephant courtesy of Abby's Mom.