PEDAL -> Portobello Transition Town

PORTOBELLO PLAN P?

 

A Radical Vision For Sustainability Through Urban Land Reform

 

Talk given by Justin Kenrick of PEDAL (Portobello Energy Descent and Land Reform Group) at Big Things on the Beach’s first Imagine Portobello Day, Portobello Community Centre, 29^th October 2005

 

[Note of cau­tion: We were not able to pur­sue these ideas for the site due to other comit­ments at the time; but many of the ideas are now bear­ing fruit in other ways]

 

1. A Radical Vision for the Ex-Scottish Power Site?

 

Since pub­lic inquir­ies only allow for tech­nical not community-based objec­tions the developers will doubt­less be able to find a way to meet the tech­nical objec­tions lodged at the pub­lic inquiry and go ahead with a devel­op­ment which will enhance their profits to the det­ri­ment of Portobello.

 

The ini­ti­at­ive for such a vis­ion would have to come from the Portobello com­munity and would have to mobil­ise wide­spread national pop­u­lar sup­port in order to suc­ceed. There is a strong nat­ural justice argu­ment for expand­ing rural land reform so that urban com­munit­ies also gain the right to buy areas of land that are sig­ni­fic­ant to the live­li­hood and well-being of local communities.

 

(a) Historical Precedent: Rural Land Reform

 

The push for rural land reform came hand in hand with the push for par­tic­u­lar rural com­munit­ies to reclaim own­er­ship and their futures (e.g. in Assynt and Eigg). A push for urban land reform could go hand in hand with a com­munity on the ground identi­fy­ing and cam­paign­ing for a bet­ter future. A push for Portobello com­munity right to buy the ex-Scottish Power site would need to involve a change in the law in favour of urban land reform.

 

Rural land Reform suc­ceeded because it tapped into a power­ful pop­u­lar sense that people should be able to con­trol their own des­tinies rather than suf­fer at the whim of absentee landown­ers or profit-makers. Rural land reform suc­ceeded because such com­munit­ies were and are com­mit­ted to ensur­ing the social and eco­lo­gical sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their locality.

 

(b) Vision: Urban Sustainability

 

One pos­sible vis­ion for what could be cre­ated on the site could be an urban eco-village (e.g. Living Alternative Futures) within a broader Centre for Alternative Futures. This could be an edu­ca­tional local, national and inter­na­tional tour­ist attrac­tion like the Centre for Alternative Technology in mid-Wales, or the Eden Project in Cornwall.

 

At the heart of such a Portobello Centre for Alternative Futures (or P-CAF) there could be:

(i)                  Eco-Village: demon­strat­ing liv­ing altern­at­ive futures, including:

·        Exemplary car-free liv­ing urban eco-village, includ­ing social housing

·        Integrated use of solar power, wind power, grey water reed beds and per­ma­cul­ture mar­ket gardens

(ii)                Eco-Livelihoods: demon­strat­ing sus­tain­able live­li­hoods, including:

·    Site for a per­man­ent Farmers Market

·    Recycling centre reshap­ing, reselling items from Seafield dump, etc.

·    Arts, crafts, music and edu­ca­tional centre

(iii)               Eco-Future hands-on exhib­i­tions: demon­strat­ing con­trast­ing altern­at­ive futures (from Sustainable to Extinction depend­ing on the choices we make now).

·        If the site could be expan­ded to include the cur­rent Pitz foot­ball pitches and run down to the burn then this might include:

(i)      A demon­stra­tion small hold­ing or City Farm (using water power), &

(ii)    An indoor exhib­i­tion built around con­nec­tions between Scotland, Scandinavia, etc. It could include a room kept at very low tem­per­at­ures so that a mini­ature ice-covered exhibit of the North Pole and the cur­rent and pos­sible changes occur­ring due to Climate Change could be sim­u­lated. It could appeal to all ages.

 

To put it bluntly (and think­ing of cli­mate change in par­tic­u­lar): unless we can explore and demon­strate viable sus­tain­able urban ways of liv­ing then there is little hope of a future for humans. Paradoxically, our best hope for the intel­li­gent use of the ex-Scottish Power site may lie in wide­spread pub­lic desire for a sus­tain­able urban future to be demon­strably possible.

 

2. Visioning Portobello in 2020?

 

© Peak Oil and The Example of Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan

 

Although the thought of Climate Change often para­lyses people into inac­tion or denial (since we often feel that there is noth­ing we can do as indi­vidu­als about such a global prob­lem) the grow­ing aware­ness that the world’s oil sup­ply is run­ning out can have the oppos­ite effect. Kinsale in Ireland provides an excel­lent example of a town where the com­ing des­cent from peak world oil pro­duc­tion has gal­van­ised the town into plan­ning how they can decrease their depend­ence on oil pro­duc­tion, and increase their abil­ity as a com­munity to rely on renew­able energy, on loc­ally pro­duced food, and on local pro­duc­tion, skills and resources. They have become aware that we need to pre­pare for the rapid reduc­tion in the avail­ab­il­ity of cheap oil by redu­cing our depend­ency on this finite resource. In the UK oil and gas sup­ply 85% of our energy, energy which we rely on to pro­duce, pro­cess and trans­port our food from dis­tant sources to drive-in super­mar­kets. As energy becomes more expens­ive, our food sys­tem will need to revert to local pro­duc­tion and organic (non-oil based pesti­cide) meth­ods, and the eco­nomic sys­tem will need to be rein­ven­ted along sus­tain­able lines. Instead of meas­ur­ing wealth accord­ing to eco­nomic growth (as expressed in our abil­ity to fly away for dis­tant hol­i­days, and to buy cheap food from dis­tant con­tin­ents) we will need to meas­ure our qual­ity of life:

·        by the strength of the com­munit­ies we live in;

·        by the amount of cre­at­ive leis­ure time we have;

·        by our abil­ity to live in a way which pre­serves and improves the social and eco­lo­gical envir­on­ment; and

·        by our invent­ive­ness in mak­ing use of the resources we have to ensure full and sat­is­fy­ing employ­ment and full and sat­is­fy­ing lives for us all. 

 

Ironically, all these pos­it­ive changes needed to take account of Peak Oil are the same ones needed to help slow and stop Climate Change, and instead of try­ing to embark on these changes under the shadow of a night­mar­ish future, we can under­take them col­lect­ively in a way that act­ively increase our qual­ity of life in the present and con­trib­utes an example of what is possible.

 

(d) A Workshop as an Extended Tea Break!

 

The work­shop approach used by the people of Kinsale to come up with a clear 15 year plan to wean them­selves off their depend­ency on oil and gas, and to cre­ate a sus­tain­able future for their com­munity, involved an approach to pub­lic meet­ings based on the assump­tion that the most use­ful part of any meet­ing is the tea break rather than the import­ant speeches by the so-called experts! We would hope to use the same approach, so that the meet­ings to cre­ate an Energy Descent Plan – pos­sibly includ­ing plan­ning a cam­paign to reclaim the ex-Scottish Power site — are not deplet­ing but are ener­gising. That way they can be a chance for people to brain­storm, listen to each other, and come up with cre­at­ive ideas.

 

There will be show­ings of the film ‘The end of Suburbia’ (about the likely con­sequences of Peak Oil) prior to this (see over­leaf for times). At the start of the meet­ing we can col­lect­ively identify the areas we feel will need to be addressed, and then cre­ate a space where people can move freely between small dis­cus­sion groups focus­ing on these themes. In Kinsale some of the themes included: eco­nomy and live­li­hoods, edu­ca­tion, youth and com­munity, tour­ism, trans­port, waste, energy, food, hous­ing, health, mar­ine resources.

 

What we would hope would come out of this would be not simply a plan for the com­munity own­er­ship and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of the area which was going to become a super­store (and also pos­sibly the Pitz site) but a plan that would include the whole of Portobello.

 

Multiple Benefit approach:

Central to the Energy Descent approach is the notion of devel­op­ing areas and pro­jects with multiple-benefits in mind.

For example: Seafront

If the seafront was to become part of a new Bluebelt for Edinburgh then we might want to use rocks and rubble to turn the con­crete seafront into an undu­lat­ing ridge which could be fron­ted on the sea­side by dunes and Marin grass, and covered in grass and a walk and cycle way run­ning along a raised Prom planted with fruit trees and bushes. This green fringe could spread back into open spaces such as the cur­rent play parks (play parks which could then be built on top of it), and it’s height could be reduced where there are flats adja­cent to the prom. This would then provide a way of integ­rat­ing the city with the Forth, provide a much more attract­ive tour­ist and local amen­ity, as well as provid­ing future fruit and if neces­sary the basis for an effect­ive future sea wall.

Another example: Bringing in Expertise

We could invite the extremely suc­cess­ful Centre for Alternative tech­no­logy in Wales and the Eden Project in Cornwall to become cent­rally involved in provid­ing expert­ise to advise the sus­tain­able energy and exhib­i­tion aspects of the sus­tain­able use of the site. This would enable us to bene­fit from their expert­ise, but also give their expert­ise and prac­tical ideas a show­case pres­ence in a city which attracts hun­dreds of thou­sands of inter­na­tional tour­ists every year.

 

Trolleys dashed

Below is an edited let­ter by Stephen Hawkins of the Portobello Campaign against the Superstore in the Guardian: Wednesday June 8^th 2005:

I believe that the super­mar­ket chains have reached sat­ur­a­tion point and that the tide has turned in favour of sup­port for local high streets — where they still exist. Here in Portobello, developers pro­posed a 7,900 sq metre super­store out­side the town centre that would have des­troyed the vital­ity of the exist­ing shop­ping centre. After strong local oppos­i­tion, the devel­op­ment has been refused on appeal. Our fight did not come cheap. We had to raise over £20,000 to pay for expert wit­nesses to present evid­ence to the pub­lic inquiry, but this reflec­ted the total com­mit­ment of the com­munity against the pro­posal. We were also for­tu­nate in hav­ing the sup­port of Friends of the Earth and Joanna Blythman, among oth­ers. Not all com­munit­ies are lucky enough to have the resources to fight, but why should they have to? The answer is that gov­ern­ment policy is so far behind the situ­ation on the ground, and plan­ning strategists have failed to ana­lyse the con­sequences of the super­mar­ket strangle­hold in the US. We need to ensure that we do not repeat their mistakes.

 

3. So, Is Radical Change Possible?

 

When you look for­ward in time, rad­ical change always seems impossible; when you look back, it always appears as though it was inev­it­able - what makes the cre­at­ive dif­fer­ence in the present?

 

You? Me? Us?!