What makes us change our routines and behavior in everyday life?We know it is smart to recycle our waste, but still quite many I know only have one dust bin under their kitchen sink, when one could have one each for plastic, or-ganic waste, paper, batteries, metal/glass, etc.We know driving to work in our car alone is very bad for air quality. We can even see the direct impact it has to our en-vironment here in Bergen in wintertime, and still we do it.

P. Bourdieu describes people as results of their environment from when they grew up. This environment decides how we look at our surroundings as adults. “What you learn without language (action) is hard to unlearn with language (theory)”.

So, maybe a mix of good role models and regulations is needed to change our hab-its and lower our lifes carbon footprint? Or maybe we need to see a more accu-rate and direct result of our lifestyle in our closest environment, f ex having the waste plant just around the corner from where we live?

The Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa puts it like this;

”Let´s take the example of mixing fac-

tories and housing which would normally be prohibited by functional town-planning theories. Ordinarily a factory should be located far away from housing, but I think that only by living with the factory can we control its pollution. If we needed a big atomic power station we should build one right in the center of Tokyo. There you can see it and feel its output and only then does it really come into people’s consciousness. Under these conditions we might be able to control what’s going on around us and take action concerning such things as power stations. This is the basic idea of symbiosis – the very antith-esis of Functionalism.”

What Kurokawa is implying, relates to the theory of virtue ethics; we act according to how the world is presented to us.(Mathias Kemton on “Architecture as a philosoph-ical contribution to sustainability”)

Would we reuse and recycle more, and would we consume and buy less if our waste were processed in our neighbor-hood?

As an architect and a planner I am think-ing my contribution can be to design accessible environments to make it easier for people to live easier lifes. Good space to move in when going to school, work, gym, band practice, sunbathing,

shopping, clubbing etc. Short way to the light rail, good bike lanes, accessible pe-destrian paths etc.

Making it more time-consuming to use the car rather than going by bike, public transportation or walk.

Mixed neighborhoods with workspace, shops, schools, kindergartens, parks and a large variety in apartment size and standard can be strategic solutions to at-tract people to live their everyday life lo-cally, and to live there for a longer time, which again can strengthen the neighbor-hoods in a positive way.

But the subject of changing our habits and the awareness of the results of our action has a strong political aspect.

About habits and the resistance to change them...

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

Moving from being part of nature to opposing itHjalmar Hegge has, as a philosopher, worked with the western cultures under-standing of nature in a historical perspec-tive. His understanding of history builds upon the assumption that visual cultural changes must be seen in relation to cul-tural changes in awareness.

” (...) det som først og fremst forandrer seg i utviklingens løp, er menneskenes bevissthet, deres oppfattelsesmåter, tanker og forestillinger. De ytre forhold-ene må altså sees i lys av denne foran-dringen, og ikke omvendt.”

(eng:”what primarily changes in the run of development, is the consciousness of men, and their perception of ways, thoughts and ideas. The external con-ditions must therefore be considered in light of this change, and not vice versa”)

Hegges main thesis can therefore be read like this: the influence of mechanics on our world vision, developed during the renaissance, can be seen as a main cause or origin of the environmental problems we see today. He points out that already in Ancient Greece one had the technical knowledge to see the industrial revolu-tion, but because of their world vision and their relation to nature this never happened.The Greeks looked upon the world and

their place in it as a complex system. Na-ture was ideal. To intervene to much in natures systems was called “hybris”, an expression of arrogance (overmot).(freely translated from the text “Bærekraft og verdisyn – Arki-tektur som grunnlag for en miljøetikk”, Universitetet i Bergen, våren 2009 by Mathias Kempton)

Through the Middle Ages and entering our time our relation to nature changed.A perception and separation of human as subject on one side and nature as object on the other rises, nature has become an object under mans domination.

The mentality has changed from a quali-tative to a quantitative perspective, a process of which the world is gradually abstracted away from the human senso-ry and mental experience, into scientific abstract analytical terms which becomes the “true” verifiable world. What is in na-ture becomes true only by their assets percepted by man. Smell and color is not a part of the object it self, f ex a tree, but

is a result of our sense of the tree. The real objective world is tasteless, without smell or color.By disconnecting the human sensory ex-perience to the relation to nature it put man on the outside of nature, and the world. From being a part of the system we have now placed ourselves opposed to our environment.What we have generated and experienced our selves is what we relate best to. We experience and see the whole picture through small parts, and relate the small parts to the bigger picture. Presented to us in everyday life they become a part of our reality and our values, and form the basis of our way of life and the choices we make.Based on this distanced and objectified view we have developed on nature, may-be this is also something we need to be-come aware of and change to not become victims of our own mentality.Viewing nature as an equal partner of existence.

photos from the movie “Home”

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

#The role modelsRole models (person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others) can have a strong effect on com-munities today regarding “living green” as the green topic has become a modern trend. Ideas and practices can spread out like rhizomatic structures.After Bourdieu´s theory of learning by doing (or having seen someone do it) they have a strong impact on changing the way we do things.

Recipes of disaster:One year without oilJohn Webster the director of the movie “One year without oil” tells us;

“Billy Wilder once said; “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you”.

When I began making the film in the spring of 2005 I knew that climate change, for most people, was a subject too awful to think about. If they were going to sit through the film I would make, they had to be given a few laughs.Eventually I decided to focus the film on why it is so hard for people to change, even when we know we have to. I put myself and my family as the central char-acters in the film - we would change; we

would go on an oil diet.

Inadvertently, I had made a film about the relationship between a man and a woman, about those little power strug-gles that tug and pull within the family, and about balancing security with change, ideals with practicalities.”

Resilience leaderRob Hopkins leads a vibrant new move-ment of towns and cities that utilize lo-cal cooperation and interdependence to shrink their ecological footprints. In the face of climate change he developed the concept of Transition Initiatives -- com-munities that produce their own goods and services, curb the need for transpor-tation and take other measures to pre-pare for a post-oil future. While Transition shares certain principles with greenness and sustainability, it is a deeper vision concerned with re-imagining our future in a self-sufficient way and building resil-iency.Transforming theory to action, Hopkins is also the cofounder and a resident of the first Transition Initiative in the UK, in Totnes, Devon. As he refuses to fly, it is from his home in Totnes that he offers help to hundreds of similar communities that have sprung up around the world, in part through his blog, transitionculture.org

Hopkins, who is trained in ecological de-sign, wrote the principal work on the sub-ject, Transition Handbook: From Oil De-pendency to Local Resilience, a 12-step manual for a post carbon future.

#The community-the “others”The opponent one can say to the role models is the community. In good and bad manner for the environment.The collective knowledge, habits and opinions is a challenging force to work with. “What the others say” can be a good and bad property to use in the name of new green life. Community pressure on individuals is an ancient phenomenon and have helped changed and inhibited communities and societies forever and still do.Who will be the stronger shaper of atti-tude and action for the future remains to se in history.But development of the collective knowl-edge takes place all the time, at least now when spreading information in the media and internet, and the globalization of the world.More people know more of the same in-formation throughout the world. Neglect can become more difficult as the poorer countries also become more aware and educated.

Four shapers of perception

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

#The mediaMagazines, newspapers, television, radio and the world wide web feeds us every day with large amounts of information and contradicting facts.The media will always talk in large words to try to get our attention to sell their sto-ry, but also those who scream the highest or sounds more clever will always win the attention of the media. How does this af-fect us dealing with this subject that need our attention so urgent (at least if we are going to green gas emissions with 80% by 2050)?If emotion is the most important force in life how do we connect it to reason?And if emotion is the strongest force have we gone numb from all the cold facts and turned off the empathy andconnection to our environment?

#The governmentThis institution of society will often be the driving force in a community to make changes simply because it has the pos-sibility to work out suggestions to regula-tion and laws that every member of the community will have to obey.The weakness is of course that the mem-bers of the government and their staff is required to possess the right knowledge, and unless they are a majority govern-ment in many cases they will have to compromise unless opponents agree on the same targets.

Through the Norwegian Government we also have an institution, the Norwegian Housing Bank (Husbanken) that works somehow as a political role model.Since 1946 this organization has worked to support and develop new ideals regard-ing housing and quality of life regarding this sector.In the beginning it concerned quality of housing for families and supported devel-opment of this according to those days standards they had developed. Later it has supported projects with good outdoor environments (green area, playgrounds, etc). Universal design or design for all has been an important issue. The Hous-ing Bank has participated in developing pilot projects of high value for the com-mon interest and high standards through the projects to have its financial support. Pilestredet Park is one example of a proj-ect developed with high standard regard-ing recycling/ waste management, heat-ing, outdoor environment, etc.

The new ZEB project (ZeroEmissions-Building, based in Trondheim/NTNU) is another pilot project with support from among others the Housing Bank that work to develop housing projects that test out new technologies and methods to create a building mass that gives a negative gas emission equation through the whole lifespan of the buildings (pro-duction, transport, building, use/mainte-nance, demolishing).

The worlds greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 50% to 85% 2050 to achieve the goal of average temperature on earth not to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius.On the 17th of February 2010 the gov-ernment of Norway presented the 2020 plan (Klimakur2020) of Norways plan of action to meet these demands.All together 160 suggestions is mentioned in the document.

In one of the rapports they say;

“Need for increased level of knowledge to change behavior(....) underlines that the coherence of green gas emissions, transportation, mobility and behavior is well documented. What seems to be the biggest challenge is to make this knowledge well known among the public and the decision makers/politicians. Only then can it be premise rewarding when people makes their choices and politicians makes their votes.”

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

The accessibility of accessibilityRory Sutherland in his speech on “Life lessons from an ad man” (http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html) he talks about the red-button way of saving; If everyone had a red button at home on our living room wall that works like this; every time you push it you save a little to your pension. Obviously you would save a lot more.Me myself would save a fortune of money by not buying so many books if it I didn´t have access to amazon on my computer.This I think describes the importance of accessibility to change our lifestyle. If it is easy for us to get on the bus or light rail to where we are going, get what we need from the local store, short way to drop of the kids in school before we walk or bike to work etc. Is this the only way?Can it not be expected that we contribute more than to respond to what is right in front of us? Of course knowing WHY we should choose to do it this way instead of the other can be of importance.

The power of oilDo I know the amount of oil I use and the ecological-footprint I leave behind through one year? No.How many in Bergen knows?Probably not so many. Kids in school taught about this? Not enough?Would it change the habits in an aver-

age family to have a “ecological footprint barometer” so that they could see the di-rect impact of the choices they make at all time?

The motivation in money Money do have an effect on us and the way we spend our time. Because time is money we have learned.If it was ridiculously expensive to by pet-rol we would definitely consider it smart to by a car that did not use much, or any of it, or to drop buying a car all together. At least if it was easy to travel and get from A to B without it. And here we touch something of importance; choice and several factors in planning and motiva-tion to change patterns.Another factor is direct impact or conse-quence illustrated in the car-sharing com-pany Zipcar (http://www.zipcar.com). The 100 000 members share 3000 cars and has lowered their average yearly driving distance from 12000 miles to 500. Why? Because, and this is the customers own reflections; the car costs 8-10 USD per hour or 65USD a day. If one wants an ice cream one day one ask one self if it is re-ally worth the twelve to fifteen dollars its going to cost you and maybe one decide to get the ice cream another day when you need the car for errands anyway.Quick response to consequence.

The dedicated or obedient?Pilestredet Park is one of the projects the Norwegian housing Bank has been in-volved in the development of.Approximately 1500 to 2000 people live here, and the average age of the popula-tion is higher compared to the other areas in Oslo (30% 40+). This can indicate that it is well established people who decide to by an apartment in this type of projects. Maybe because the price is higher.When developing the former hospital into a sustainable housing project several fac-es of the process was included to be or-ganized in a sustainable way.Reuse of material on site from buildings demolished and land dug out, waste man-agement, open green areas surrounding the buildings with public access, energy saving systems etc.But good intentions in a project will never be better than the end user of the build-ings so what Statsbygg, the developer, did was to make a contract that under-contracters and people buying the apart-ments had to sign before taking over the property.These contracts contained a number of regulations regarding use, maintenance, waste management etc.

In this way you can say the end user ac-tually by a lifestyle while buying an apart-ment. Choosing to buy a lifestyle one can say.

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

Oil dependency, bad management and politics

photo from the movie “Home”

Many are aware of the car society in America, but feels distant from it here in Norway. Maybe is it very different here, at least in the cities of Norway better reg-ulations has been made over the years not to become totally car-dependent, but unfortunately there are quite many simi-larities.

Suburbia,photo from the movie “Home”

There is hardly any structure less durable after global oil production peaks than the countless and endless American suburbs. The American way of life epitomizes the wasting of cheap energy. To build and live in a sprawling suburb and to be totally dependent on cars is not a good position to be in when heating (or air condition-ing) becomes expensive and when driv-ing a car and maintaining a “thinned-out” infrastructure (electricity, water, roads) becomes prohibitively expensive. But these conditions are not only a result of desires of the population.In USA California there are strict and detailed zoning laws that prohibits com-mercial activities in residential areas (for example neighborhood stores), which means that the nearest supermarket is usually located so far away that any other options than owning and using a car is impossible.

Looking at for example Straume or Apel-tun/ Lagunen area outside the city center of Bergen we find the same tendencies.Large areas for large commercial pro-grammes with large open spaces for park-ing around it, surrounded by large single houses with private gardens. The pedes-trian accessibility to public transportation and shops is poor.

Distances and climatic conditions makes it too easy for too many to use their car for all destinations; work, school, shop-

ping, band practice, workout, even walk-ing the dog! Yes, some people has been observed “walking” their dog by car.

This way we are very little involved with our surrounding conditions, and under-standing something you have little ex-perience with is challenging according to the previously described conditions.

google photo showing Lagunen area outside Bergen center

google photo showing Straume area outside Bergen center

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

Private car and social status?In the local paper Bergens Tidene (BT), there`s been published quite many ar-ticles this winter on the traffic-situation in this city. On the 13th of February (2010) there is an article on the subject of companies rewarding their employees with bonuses when they drive together to work, bike, walk or use collective transportations. It works as a rewarding system by col-lecting bonus points rewarded at the end of the year in a small sum of money. 3 points each way going by bike, 2 points each way by public transportation and 1 point each way for each person joining together in one car. The money in this is not big. But it motivates people the employers tell us; the employees are eager to collect the points.

So maybe it is the competitor in us that needs stimulation to change our habits, and the knowledge of the benefits is less important, or not important at all?Or is there an effect in this that one feel that one cannot end the year not having collected any “points” because it would be embarrassing to see the result and compare to our colleagues and be labeled socially that you “did not give a damn” about the common environment?

The effort is easier to compare when it is measurable and official.

On 18th of February BAF (Bergen Archi-tects Association) goes out to its mem-bers encouraging them to sign a petition of concern regarding the development of Danmarks plass; “Environment, the situation can not withstand an urban development that contributes to in-creased traffic and more air pollution. A deterio-ration of air quality is unacceptable. We do not want the building corridor along the highway to be extended so that the visual contact with the sea is reduced.

Living Conditions Survey in Bergen (2008) concluded that Danmarks Place / Solheim north is one of the worst places you can stay here in town. But HiB students have examined the matter on their own (published in BT 20.aug.2009), and their results came out a little differently. People in the area thrive.

This study tells us that the image the me-dia and various studies gives us of a situ-ation can vary from the experience the people living there have of a place.But this is not surprising, only interesting and challenging when one wants to work with communities and further develop-ment of a situation.Working with knowledge and people, not on assumptions can make a huge differ-ence.

Laura Ve_Social Anthropology Essay_Bergen School of Architecture 2010

Will we change or will we adapt?

Architects and engineers holds an impor-tant role regarding reaching the goal of 50% to 80% reduction in GGE by 2050 as they are involved in the building sector where large amounts of energy potential-ly will be saved in the future.But they also hold the possibility to make some qualified choices for us in advance, before neighborhoods start to grow.

In planning we will be involved and have the possibility to lead the way to better solutions regarding transportation, con-nections, zoning and de-zoning. This will somehow shape our everyday life in the future. But it also gives a possibility to change the way we will see our environ-ment.

Politicians play an important role in this matter as they make decisions regarding all of us and has the regulating possibil-ity to shape our behavior and to finacially state what matters more. But then again politician are people and some know as much about resilience, sustainability and environment as the man on the street, concerned about what caught their atten-tion (by the media). And lets face it; we get the politicians elected that we voted for and often people vote for more egoistic reasons than their grandchildren or nature.Also still many have a very strong belief in the technology as the knight in shining armor.So maybe the questions needs to be

asked among ourselves, and the role models will possibly play a more impor-tant role.

Sustainability as a way of life,by choice or by regulation?

Is this the final question?

“Green” as a trend vs “green life”.

Change of mind, change of scale.

Laura VeSocial Anthropology EssayBergen School of Architecture 2010

Social anthropology essay, DIPLOMA, Bergen School of Architecture 2010_Laura Ve : http://urbandevelopmentbergen.blogspot.com