A very beautiful place to live

Ok.. I have to, again, point out what it's all about. Went to a presentation today about the "Eco-City" Masdar, a so so presentation about it I have to say. Not many in the audience, but A LOT of good questions about it.

Masdar is a city 20 minutes (by car) from Abu Dhabi that will be completly without cars. A high-tech city. 40 000 inhabitans AND 50 000 commuters. "Low use of water" and "the only building with a surplus of energy will be built here" (ok.. check this out first).

Sustainable? Yes- in energy coverage maybe?. What about social, (more) ecological or economical? I don't think we can make this all around the world. Do you? The problems that we have are huge, and how to get energy is not about this. Ok. Good to have a center on that- we can implement it some over the world. BUT a sustainable community is not about investment in high-tech. It is about human connections. Todays post at A very beautiful place, says it better than me.

One of the questions in today's seminar was about the food; "how to get food to the place, can it be grown there?" answer; "it requires too much water" and another "what about the waste?" answer; "we will make biogas".

So..
we have problems still;
what about human waste? urin and feces
what about food production?
what about water(level)?
what about building houses for poor?
how to make people thrive?
feel safe?

most of the questions above, fit together in the sustainable development, but not in the concept of a "sustainable city". And to see the difference in those two is the way of see the future.

What do we expect from the society?
Can everyone be "successful" (e.i, can we have a world without poor and in a same time a growing pop. of people who gets richer and richer?)

What do more parks do for a society, like more benches, more places to be for "free"? I've heard exampels from different sources that says that our cities boring appearance without greens, without places to sit down, is because it collect the people we don't want to see in the city. But, hey, they are in the city anyway, but somewhere else. Isn't it time to build a city for everyone? A future for everybody? Build societies instead of cities. Connect every 'stupid' human being. Because this is how we are.. a lot of different people. People does not disappear just because we can't see them.

-- so I'm here at the science festival week here in Gothenburg. A lot of interesting events, but even here you can see a trend of things that I guess is investment in some sort of business. I am sorry if I am so negative but all this give me a thought to a very cute, attractive young woman in the Ecocity World Summit in Istanbul that told me about her plans to make an ecocity in Estonia, and she told me in the end that it was "only for the businesses". And I just wonder how can wellbeing be about "just businesses". It's about life, and life is priceless.

So again- what do we expect from life?

Film from Eco-Unit