Energy and Equity by Ivan Illich

Artwork by Michelangelo Beilli

Milan, 15 December 2020

 

Energy and equity first appeared on Le Monde in 1973, since there the whole debate about transportation systems is changed. I would like to share a trip I did reading the book. Illich mainly criticised the effects of the fast transportation on the large scale: ghettoization of the peripherical urban areas, iniquity of opportunities between who is able to afford a high-speed ticket and who is not and, during his philosophical dissertation, he proposes the bike as the most sustainable transportation system with the only cost of 0.75kCal/km, the human power.

During the reading my mind has come back to the semester I spent last year abroad in Xi’An, northern China. This city is central to the history of the country, it is a walled city that preserved some of the most important historical monuments. People in Xi’an loves their history, they perfectly know where they are from, they still use the monuments thanks to the new functions built around: commercial galleries, high-tech parks, shopping districts and attractions. Walking is mandatory, the space is that big that you are forced to walk at least 6.000 steps/day. Public transportation is the most efficient way to move, cars are always in traffic jams. Metro lines brings you around the city without the possibility to look around and projecting you in slightly always the same environment, even changing districts. The corners in the streets recall one another and the bike has been substituted by electrical motorbikes which runs crazily on the sidewalks. But, in the end, people love to meet each other, the lower communities are the places where you can find social help for the elderlies, small farmers market and sometimes art galleries.

Equity has been one of the purposes of communism, I see.

Now I’m back home, in Italy. I close my eyes and I focus on my memories.

I remember a purple sky,

With the only exception of the low-rise community buildings.

I remember a street market,

With the philosophical surveillance of an artist.

I remember a street,

With cars running fast,

Then another,

Where you are able to have a break at the food market on the sidewalk.

Then I started to imagine if Illich’s though would be misunderstood,

And I fund myself in a careless infinite city,

Where buildings are all the same,

Where people run fast with their bicycle,

Where the solitude of a small ancient house attracted the attention of a man with his bike. 

The rest of the past meet each other to think about the present.

I wish you a good voyage through the picture, following the three quotes inspired me.

“Beyond a certain speed, motorized vehicles create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all and shrink them for only a few. A new dirt road through the wilderness brings the city within view, but not within reach, of most Brazilian subsistence farmers. The new expressway expands Chicago, but it sucks those who are well-wheeled away from a downtown that decays into a ghetto.”

 

“Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.”

 

“In addition, the bicycle requires little space. Eighteen can be parked in place of a car, thirty can be moved into the space devoured by a single car. To get 40,000 people across a bridge in an hour, it takes three lanes of a certain width for automated trains, four for buses, twelve for cars, and just two lanes for cars. 40,000 people go from one end to the other pedaling bicycles.”

 

Pictures:

001_Beilin district, Xi’An, October 2019

002_Xi’An Ke ji da xue, November 2019

003_Beilin district, Xi’An, March 2019

004_Xi’An Ke ji da xue, December 2019

Dream:

005_Rendering

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My point of view

Sustainability has become a brand, mass society has swallowed up images and characters that, speaking of sensitivity, arouse the most diverse reactions, beliefs, and misunderstanding. Illich wrote a text that generated contradictions and questions in me, is it really possible to resolve a more sustainable future by giving up fast travel? I think that architecture today provides solutions for the most varied needs that reflect the sensitivity placed on the subject. The rediscovery of the place close to him, reachable at a human speed of 0.75kcal / km, however, is a topic as topical as possible. The recent pandemic and the lockdown have forced us to know what we have in the place where we live and perhaps from this reflection a more sustainable current of thought can arise that guides us towards greater attention to the protection of our health, together with that of the planet.

Michelangelo Beilli for Architecture BookClub Mantova