To whom does an object belong, once it becomes the personal property of a consumer and is then discarded? For what reason has the municipality organized a raid on informal waste collectors? Does garbage belong to the finder, or is everything abandoned on the streets considered state property? Does the former owner of an item also have the privilege of owning itas garbage? Whenathoughtful citizen collects discarded newspapers from her building and takes them to a paper factory,should we consider her a thief?
The tedious and everlasting processes that transform villages into towns, towns into cities, and cities into metropolises, as the population grows and density increases, have for centuries sheltered the newcomer, provided for the increasing needs of original inhabitant, and supported the emergence of increasingly personalized lines of work. The industrial developments and resurgent capitalismof recent years have changed the quality of consumed products and promoted an increase in their quantity. The discovery that the consumed object does not actually complete its life, but can be reused, enabled the emergence of the recycling/recovery market. With the breakdown in ecological equilibrium and the depletion of the world’s natural resource reserves, this market, hence “waste”, is becoming increasingly valuable. Furthermore, this value is of considerable substance, especially considering the irresolvable conflicts experienced by legal and illegal systems that aim to generate revenue from waste.

However, none of this can enter the general public consciousness due to the consumption policies of the capitalist order. The consumer is no longer concerned with the stages of production and recycling implemented on their behalf. The contemporary economic system makes the source and destination of the object unimportant; within this process, individuals are reduced to mere “consumers,” performing the only act remaining in their control at an increasing rate. After the moment of consumption, the object is without origin, trapped in eternity, as if it had disappeared. But, in fact, it changes form, re-enters consumption processes, and radiates value through the path determined by sociopolitical and economic systems. Similar to our alienation of waste, those who collect and separate the waste are also alienated. In terms of the ecological philosophy on which the recycling is based, recognizing the conditions of these people who are forced to be society’s other, making their demands for humane living and working conditions heard, and re-integrating them into the sociopolitical system within equitable circumstances, are inescapable.
The parallels between the “consumption object–waste” and “consumption–collector” dualities are intriguing. Despite the fact that these individuals are identified as street collectors and constitute not only the most important but also the most suffering elements of the unauthorized system, and despite the fact that their place as a community within the urban ecosystem is crucial, they are condemned to a state of invisibility. In fact, as much as the consumer lacks awareness of the collector, the collector does not complain about this state of invisibility either. Interestingly enough, the system sustains itself only in this way.

Waste cycle and Turkey:
The traditional disposal of waste in the sea was replaced in 1953 with uncontrolled disposal;in 1995, controlled disposal.[1] Currently, controlled disposal areas are developed in terms of minimizing their damaging effect on natural environments. In recent years, Turkish policy began to be influenced by the newly recognized value of waste as a commodity through worldwide recycling practices, emerging as a response to ecological damage. Therefore, new technological and economic arrangements have been introduced, oriented towards reducing the quantity of waste disposed in controlled areas and recovering as much waste as possible. Keeping in mind influential EU criteria and potentials for revenue extraction, the government has begun various pilot recycling practices. As a result, first illegal collectors and then the municipality became involved in the waste market. In metropolitan municipalities, the collection and recycling of all sorts of waste is under the authority of the Office of Environment Protection and Waste Management, within the Environment Protection and Control Administration. In local municipalities, this task is carried out by the Office of Environment Protection and Sanitary Works. Rather than by the municipality itself, the collection and recycling processes are carried out by authorized institutions and licensed transportation companies and recycling facilities within the regulatory framework determined by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. [2]
As much as these bureaucratic rearrangements could be seen as progress, they also placed in an “illegal” position the independent individuals who survived on this task under various qualifications (without a legal title) since the 1930s. Rather than replacing systems previously created by these people once and for all, the new systems created by the municipalities were annexed to the market and generated a duality. These systems can be labelled as formal and informal systems; the formal is, by nature, easier to examine and explain, whereas the informal system is more problematic in terms of its social, economic, and political aspects, more resistant totechnical analysis. Between these two, a phenomenon has arisen, with structural complexities comparable to the formal system but not governed by written laws. As a part of the EU project, the aim is to liquidate this dual structure and formalize the whole process.

Formal system:
Briefly, the system works this way: [3] municipality vehicles collect and transfer mixed garbage (wet and dry) from residences and institutionsto waste transfer stations. Transfer stations are the units created to reduce transportation costs and traffic density by preventing the direct transportation of waste to recycling, compost and disposal facilities located in the outskirts of the city. The locations of waste transfer stations are determined by the zoning specified in the Ministry of Environment’s solid waste master plan (KAAP). Zoning is specified with references to geographical location, topography, road conditions, economic transportation distance and population ratio of the region. In addition, the research carried out by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality on the annual amount of quality (packaged/recyclable) waste produced by different regions shows the density of the collection system needed in each region. The analysis of annual filling capacity and garbage collection vehicles, on the other hand, reveals the effectiveness of current plans.
The mixed waste stored in transfer stations is compressed in large bins and transported (on highcargo-capacity, heavy vehicles) to main disposal fields. Here, the waste is separated, and each kind is processed differently. Organic wastes are separated and recycled into a high hydration-capacity material with a rich organic value, called compost, which constitutes the main content of fertilizers. Plastic, meanwhile, is recycled in two different ways. The first produces a fuel from waste (RDF), later sold to cement factories, which operate with very high temperatures. The second produces granules, sold to plastic manufacturers for reuse. The remaining waste that cannot be recycled is transferred to a disposal facility. At this stage, energy is produced from the gas emanating from the waste (methane), the water leaking from the waste is purified and directed into the sewage system, and finally, any remaining waste with zero recycling value is transported to controlled storage fields where its damage to nature is minimized. Medical waste, on the other hand, is collected from the source, transferred directly to medical waste incineration facilities located near disposal facilities, and incinerated. Citizens who would like to found facilities and operate in the field of packaging waste collection, separation and recycling can file an application for the Ministry enclosing all plans, projects, reports, technical data, explanations and other documents, and their process of authorisation is initiated by local municipalities. Packaging waste is collected periodically from residences and institutions in pilot regions. In non-pilot regions, it is collected from various institutions periodically in case of demand and from residences irregularly, again in case of demand. Packaging waste is sold directly to licensed recycling facilities.

Informal system:
The results of the research performed by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry’s KAAP indicate that “individual collectors and scrap dealers buy used packaging waste from storage facilities and businesses, or they collect it from the streets and waste containers.” This is the most common method in Turkey. It is estimated that the waste recycled by street collectors constitutes 10% of urban solid waste and 25 to 30% of recyclable solid waste. Although this type of recycling is not sanitary and legal, it persists due to the fact that the related groups are very wellorganized. The total capacity of the material recycling facilities operated by municipalities in Turkey is250,000 tons per year;nevertheless, these facilities operate at a volume as low as 30,000 tons per year. The amount recycled by municipalities is significantly low compared to that from street collectors.”
Despite the fact that there are no trade unions for collectors and few platforms on which they can make their voice heard, entities such as Ankara Recycling Association (founded in 2005) and KATIK (Recycling Workers Newspaper) actively workto protect collectors’ rights. However, the conflict with the municipality still continues. As the collectors play hide and seek with the municipality, they also make enormous contributions in the recycling of solid waste under difficult conditions.
As findings from our observations indicate, the system is composed of four or five elements and operates approximately as follows: collectors store separated packaging waste, collected from the streets or institutions with which they have verbal agreements, in indoor depots rented together by several collectors. After two or three days, thissolid waste is transferred to larger depots under the supervision of the first mediator. These are half-closed depots with certain technical equipment such as scales, separation bands, and compressors. Metals are taken to melting shops, while plastic goods are taken to shredders. Plastic, metal and paper waste are bought in kilograms, separated and compressed. Next, they are loaded in trucks and taken to a second or even a third mediator to be sold, again by the kilogram, to recycling firms. As we arrive at the final bidder, the system has now become formal; on paper, the firms appear as the collectors, and the commodity can be sold to factories with an invoice.
Ankara Recycling Association’s report at the Bogota Conference (2008) indicates that there are approximately 200,000 solid waste collectors in Turkey, half of them located in Istanbul.Waste collectors tend to come from immigrant, minority or other marginal groups, from all age ranges, and are predominantly male; they generally start the job as seasonal workers, then continue regularly. They usually live in shantytowns near high-status neighborhoods, where quality waste is discarded.

Endnote:
All of this information comes from the research we carried out in 2009. One must keep in mind that systems never stay constant in Turkey, a country changing at an accelerating speed every day. Apart from this, the research area, Tarlabaşı, is currently being demolished as a part of a top-down urban transformation project, and a large part of the aforementioned economic elements (middle and main depots, houses of collectors) are disappearing from the neigborhood; hence, the system is under transformation.

[1] Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Directorate of Waste Management Annual Report, October 2006
[2] The names of government agencies and the system’s operation mode mentioned herein is obtained according to data of 2009.
[3] Eylem Akçay, 2008

In the midst of this recession, we are bombarded with facts and figures of decreased growth and rapid declines. We are repeatedly reminded that growth is our only salvation. Anything else would mean financial meltdown, literally the end of all things good. But let us consider a possibility where this is not the case.
Still•ness (adjective) — a dynamic and innovative culture that is not based on growth. It can be understood as a sustainable and inclusive society. A still society is a society that has left behind the more negative connotations of the notion of growth, and has established post-expansion, post-depletion and post-exploitation values and practices. These values and practices may already be present.

Markets, finance, and economics make up the frame through which most of humankind looks at the world. Within this world of surplus exchange, growth is all that is holy. Even the Papal authority would bemoan a slowing in its flock’s growth. We have come to this point of luxury, dependency, and polarisation through the pursuit of constant and ever accelerated growth. Certainly, no one would say that times have not been flush. Yet can this same growth, this modern paradigm, continue or even sustain itself? This frame has led to undeniably amoral activities in the past, and now humankind has led the world into an uncertain future. So the quick answer is, “No.” In 1972, the Club of Rome stated that there is a limit to growth, and we seem to be creeping ever closer to that limit. Though growth has been and continues to be the dominating paradigm of the modern condition, there must be an alternative paradigm. Since 1972, statements have been made, and thoughts visualised, hinting at an imagined world beyond the growth paradigm. None have been able to provide a truly alternative future—one that is no longer pinned to growths or shrinkages. This is why we propose “Still” as an alternative paradigm, and when applied, the Still City.

Every city is an agglomeration of contradictions, dynamics, and imagination. The development of the modern city has been thoroughly inspired and (one could even say) created by the emergence of the growth paradigm. When the giants of industrial capital began to tumble and rust away, however, the city itself started showing signs of a nascent alternative. In the case of Detroit, amongst a plethora of other mono-industrial cities, shrinkage was the term of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yet these frames cater neither to the economic and demographic realities we see today, nor to those predicted by the Club of Rome in 1972. The city has become the home for the majority of humankind, and the cities that continue to swell to immense size are far more complicated than the shrinking cities of coal production or the auto industry. The Still City, in itself, represents the complexity inherent in the megalopolis of today and tomorrow. Though the growing population continues to urbanise, there will inevitably come a limit. Understanding this limit, and what that limit means for social transformation and cultural formation, reveals the intricacy of this alternative paradigm.

There are cities all around the world that exhibit tendencies of the Still City, from New York with its aging economy to Hong Kong with its physical limits to horizontal urban expansion. However, no city presents a better example at the moment than Tokyo. In some ways the Still City’s muse, it exhibits the main signifiers of being in Stillness: its economy has seen little to no growth over the last two decades, its rate of population increase has come nearly to a halt, and its urban development seems to have reached its outer limits—what we call the maximum sprawl size, determined by the basic idea that no one wants to commute to work for more hours than they are able to work.

Imagine a greater metropolitan area of 13,555.56 square kilometres with a population of 35.6 million. Or, more succinctly, visualise the great grey blimp, as seen from space when looking at the eastern coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu. However, Tokyo is not only a muse for the Still City because it exhibits the basic elements of a state of stillness. Rather, Tokyo inspires because it fundamentally complicates the idea of stillness. When one looks at Tokyo there are two images, two faces that vie for attention—the macro-state of stillness exemplified by post-growth and post-development and the micro-state of stillness that shows a unique vibrancy, dynamism and contradiction. What does it mean? Where can it take us?

When you put this Still City under the microscope, you see exactly what a city is—a bustling network of individuals and environment relating and sometimes working intimately together. It is far more organic than programmed, more Metabolist than data-aggregated. In fact, the city consists not of statistical spreadsheets but of the collection of each individual’s interaction with another, with infrastructure, with the air, and even with the self on a daily basis. Thus we may say that, though Tokyo is huge, at times overwhelmingly so, it is also small, at times even miniature. The foundation of its economy is comprised of small- to medium-sized business. Political change erupts with collective social trauma, and individual imaginations dominate the streetscape—even if most houses are picked from catalogues. The Still City is thus not actually “still”; the stillness of the city is in its relation to growth. Stillness, in effect, demonstrates the very impotence of growth, which can only be seen playing out on a macro-scale.

It is clear that there is no real need for the continuous explosive growth demanded by today’s market and capital system. Considering what a city is, we have been programmed to think that a city is only the physical icon of mass production and technological innovation, the increased consumer luxuries of high-end fashion brands and fast cars, or even the acquisition of larger living spaces beyond what is necessary. This is the city of growth; its antecedent and only alternative is the city of desperation, best associated with urban scenes from nations ravaged by hunger or war. In order to even begin to imagine a viable future city, our first task is to disassociate the city from growth, even if it was begotten by it. With Tokyo as an example, the Still City presents such an alternative; now we must push forth and begin imagining, fantasising, and creating this new condition. It is no longer about, bigger, faster and cheaper. We must collectively weave new narratives that look at our present so that we may have a more individual, sustained and real future.

Monnik is a cultural research collective made up of the independent practices of Edwin Gardner, Christiaan Fruneaux and Vincent Schipper, who have just launched the Still City Project with an international workshop in Tokyo looking for signs of what the Still City could mean

A leap into a global future beyond local post-industrial conditions, alongside Eindhoven design firm Lucas Maassen & Sons.
The new frontiers for contemporary design, those which establish our states of being, have relocated. Change is inevitable and necessary, as free producers set their sights on further and further limits.

Struggles in classes
The design firm Lucas Maassen & Sons engages with the world from its basis in Eindhoven, a city that has proclaimed itself to be the “smartest region in the world”—a city that has renamed itself as “Brainport”. Eindhoven was essentially built upon the rise of Philips, the international electronics giant, in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, and it became established during the era of consumerism.
Eindhoven is a typical “Western” post-industrial city. In the 20th century, many people were drawn to Eindhoven by the job opportunities at Philips. The first influx consisted of nearby farmers unable to maintain their small farms, followed by former workers from the eastern Netherlands’ textile industry, labourers from Spanish, and, after 1970, an increasing amount of Turkish and Moroccan workers. The people that gave rise to this industrial city were primarily of rural descent and minimally educated. Therefore, the old population of the city is solidly working-class, living up to the motto, “Stop talking, get to work.”
At present, this working-class population is either unemployed, working in office jobs, or retired. Meanwhile, their sons and daughters have enjoyed the fruits of education and a welfare-oriented economy. They are able to enjoy the typical Eindhoven education, such as the Technical University (developed under Philips), or even the elitist Design Academy Eindhoven—more than anything, for those who would rather “start talking”.

New kid’s concepts
In a way, Lucas Maassen is one of these children. His parents moved to Eindhoven from a small nearby village in the early 1970s, as his father took on an architecture professorship at the Technical University. Maassen, who in turn attended the Design Academy, developed a conceptual mind and a keen awareness for new opportunities in modes of production, technical methods, and the quality of manufactured outcomes. He graduated in the early 2000s, shortly after the first wave of “Dutch Design” icons—including Hella Jongerius, Richard Hutten and Piet Hein Eek—inspired by the Design Academy’s artistic leadership of Gijs Bakker and Li Edelkoort.
Maassen was trained to appropriate conceptual thinking as a means to produce the applied anew. But what was there to apply? Why would he design another chair? Instead of producing new chairs, he started to conceptualise chairs that, through irony, would reflect upon the entire neoliberal industry and the rise of design–art as a token of high-culture. Often using a strategy known in the art world as “over-Identification”_, he applied extremes within his one-offs—extremes in size (Nano Chair), in value (Sitting Gold), in reproduction (Script Chair) and in other parameters.[1]

Towards new statuses
Although post-industrial dogmas are still vibrant, as recognised in Eindhoven’s profile, the actual economic viability of creating a post-industrial form of production is arguable. There may indeed be knowledge in town, but there is little available production capacity beyond a few rather frivolous 3D printers and several exclusive fields of craft. Furthermore, for now and the foreseeable future, the real Eindhoven population is unable to buy these products at a level that would substantially support the design sector in line with its education. In other words, the actual market for “design” as knowledge-based production is very much exclusive and limited.[2] Even more, in the aftermath of the post-industrial era, the push towards the new has become questionable.
The inevitable conclusion is that the “Western” economies have reached their maximum, and can no longer be protected with the protectionism and financial dominance that gave the “West” its post-colonial dominance. Progressive people in Eindhoven, as in other post-industrial areas in the “West”, are now reconsidering the means of production.

Another turn
In this context, Maassen’s practice has taken another turn. Over-identifying the sphere of the chair’s capacity does not seem to enhance the vitality of design or infect design thinking; therefore, he has begun to play upon the realm of production, exploring the foundations of its current post-industrial mode. In this sphere, Maassen again applies over-Identification in multiple ways. For example, in Sitting Gold, he proposes a business model that defines value on the basis of material rather than on the basis of cultural meaning and authorship. This model allows decadent Westerners to transfer their wealth in euros (money earned in the consumer societies of the late 20th century) into the more fundamental, solid value of pure gold by purchasing a one-kilogram golden chair. Apart from the value of gold, authorship becomes an added value: as a designed object it becomes even more costly. The more golden chairs are sold, the more valuable the price of gold becomes. Therefore, this model is based on authorship of the circulation of gold in the form of the best design object—the chair. This model pushes the limits of entrepreneurship in the aftermath of the decadence of the neoliberal order.
A second model undermines this order culturally. While the gold model over-identifies the capacity of a financial order to sustain itself purely on the basis of market values, this second example over-identifies the actual conditions supporting the economic feasibility of the underlying production climate—the conditions of labour. The “west” (and the Dutch in particular) have conducted a rather culturally arrogant position towards ecological friendliness, labour conditions and labour wages. While leftist political ideologues make their plea for morals and ethics, the real consumer and producer could not care less. As globalisation equalises the economic terms of production and consumption, the ideologies put forth must adapt to another reality, one with painful implications for the ideological consciousness of production in the “west”. Here, Maassen’s over-Identification strikes again, this time through the establishment of Lucas Maassen & Sons—a company wherein design authorship becomes both democratic and ostensibly exploitative via the employment of his children, who work up to three hours a week in his design factory (the maximum allowed by child labour laws).
In the end, the over-identifying projects of Maassen are rather performative gestures questioning the means, manners and modes of design production as an economic sum in a changing world, deriving from the local yet simultaneously aware of the global.

[1] “Instead of succumbing to society’s pathetic demand for small creative acts, artists should over-identify with the ruling, post-historical order and take the latter’s immanent laws to their most extreme, dystopian consequences”, according to the back cover of BAVO’s Cultural Activism Today: The Art of Over-Identification.
[2] Even more so as the public support via governmental subsidies, infecting new thinking and production, are very much downgraded.

*Freek Lomme is a curator and writer, director of Onomatopee projects and occasional ghostwriter as a critical follower of Lucas Maassen (and Sons).

In emerging economies around the world, hundreds of millions of small-scale producers are currently making valuable goods. However, these producers cannot access the worldwide consumer demand for their unique, low-cost, largely handmade products because they, like over 70% of the world’s population, are living and working on the other side of the digital divide, unable to benefit from the innovation and economic opportunities provided by the Internet.

Women, who account for over 70% of the world’s poor, also make up the majority of these small-scale producers. Over 85% of women in sub-Saharan Africa are self-employed in the informal economy. Many turn to the production of crafts and handmade goods to earn or supplement meagre incomes. Their sales, however, are limited to the local economy, with inconsistent demand and high personal costs for transportation and marketing of their goods. From another perspective, however, the costly and inaccessible export supply for developing world goods is fertile ground for disruptive innovation that could open up this enormous untapped market of high-quality goods to the global marketplace.

Emerging economies hold a leading position in the craft sector, accounting for 60% of global export of creative goods. However, despite the developing world’s share of production, individual craftspeople have no direct access to this worldwide consumer demand. Most imported goods today are mediated by middlemen and costly logistics. The complex multi-stage supply chain for global goods requires mass production and cheap inputs to sustain profits. In the conventional market arrangement, the economies of scale are difficult to achieve without wholesale aggregation; therefore, the sector is dominated by powerful intermediaries supplied by larger factories. Vendors see the potential in selling their goods abroad, but every step strips away potential profit for the vendor and funnels money away from the local economy and towards self-interested international agents with facilities of a sufficient size to compete in the conventional market for creative goods.

Due to this costly, complex supply chain, international consumers pay up to 20 times the cost of production, and artisan-vendors receive only a fraction of the profit that could be earned if they had the tools and opportunity to competitively enter the global marketplace as independent entrepreneurs, often from a lack of computer hardware, personal Internet access, and appropriate visibility in an international forum.

Still, these producers are not without resources: what they do have access to are mobile phones—there are 5.2 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, and in Africa over 75% of the population has one. In emerging economies, the roughly 17% Internet penetration pales in comparison to 80% mobile phone penetration; in countries like Kenya, there are 2000 mobile phone users for every Internet user. This condition, unusual by Western standards, has catalysed novel forms of societal production in such fields as daily news: Liberia’s Alfred Sirleaf has for several years used his mobile phone network to distribute his Daily Talk news updates to followers without an Internet connection. If the same could be done for the goods trade—if the boundaries of the web economy would expand to include the ubiquitous mobile phone—artisans could gain direct access to international consumers online and open up a new marketplace of high-quality, handmade goods to a new audience.

Yet this hypothetical situation is already being put into practice by such initiatives as Sasa Africa, an e-commerce platform that connects offline artisans to online consumers using a simple mobile phone, giving small-scale producers and entrepreneurs the tools to participate in international trade through a proprietary mobile technology. Artisans use an SMS-based query system to create personal online storefronts, which can then be accessed directly by global consumers. This revolutionises the traditional top-down supply chain into a flexible peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange. Sasa’s second innovation is facilitated payment and delivery, transferring international credit purchases into mobile money and using product-tracking to assure the consumer of the security of their purchases.

Traditional e-commerce platforms such as eBay and Etsy have operated, at least initially, on the premise that sellers and buyers fit into the same socioeconomic bracket, that real trading could take place between peers (in multiple senses of the world). Interestingly enough, what once was an innovative business model has begun to resemble, more and more, the conventional marketplace, with large-scale vendors that can store and ship huge volumes of stock. Meanwhile, examples like Sasa hew far closer to the original ethos of this commercial mode, leveraging existing communication technology and infrastructure to pioneer a new marketplace. With increasing participation at both ends, such approaches to international trade have enormous potential to evolve the way that money and goods are exchanged, generating significant savings and diverse options for consumers, and removing the barriers to economic opportunities and profits for artisans who previously had limited agency in the matter.

When talking about changing the world, an increasingly mainstream notion posits that the economy is a good place to start. When talking about changing the economy, furthermore, it is no longer an “insider” idea to begin with our monetary regimes. From this point onwards, two basic strategies are being pursued. One is to figure out the problem with the way money is created and distributed today, and to lobby for smarter ways to do so (that is, through monetary reforms). This approach promises massive positive impact and widespread instantaneous changes for all walks of life. Another strategy, confronting headfirst the vested interests of the establishment and suitable for both pro- and anti-political temperaments, is to redesign our approach to money and economy altogether. This means building new monetary subsystems at the fringes of current feasibility and allowing them to grow into viable alternatives that cannot be predicted from inside the box. Such initiatives find a common ground in engineering completely new currencies, subsumed by the terms complementary and community.

To many this remains just an idealistic endeavour that will never be normative, or something that could only be of use in the face of sheer crisis or complete collapse of our financial systems. Indeed, historical instances of such non-national, non-legal tender currencies have always sprung up in times of crisis. Oft-cited examples arose in the United States and Europe during the 20th century’s Great Depression, in Argentina’s economic meltdown at the turn of the millennium, and currently in Greece.
In recent decades, however, these ideas have coalesced in an emerging academic discipline and global movement. After the 1970s oil crises spurred local groups to seek more economic resilience, LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes) became a widespread currency-format to complement such efforts. Soon after, the idea of time-banking (members accounting for each other’s services on an equal basis, hour by hour) followed in the footsteps of LETS systems and achieved global spread, particularly in the inter-sector and social domain. In the early 2000s, local initiatives reinvigorated the ideas of economics maverick Silvio Gesell (1862-1930) and created local and regional currencies based on and backed by legal tender, but with anti-hoarding rules that aimed to create more local demand by increasing the circulation rate of the currency. The Chiemgauer currency, a landmark example of this model in southern Germany, will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2013; it has inspired several similar currencies in the U.K. and U.S. Some of these initiatives are now making headway into the next generation of currency models, in terms of technology and stakeholder engagement. London’s Brixton Pound was the first such currency to enable users to pay by text message, reducing cashless transaction costs for small traders. The recently launched Bristol Pound was the first to garner strong support from the local council and credit union from its inception. As one of his first acts in office, the newly elected mayor announced that he would receive his salary in Bristol Pounds.
Often overseen in this regard, another strand of currencies caters directly to the needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises by providing them with lines of credit usable with all participating businesses. The nationwide Swiss currency WIR was created during the Great Depression; 70 years later, it serves a community of over 60,000 businesses (over 16% of all enterprises). Dozens of such business-to-business currency networks operate around the world, trading locally, nationally and even internationally. In the last few years, interest in these innovations has grown from public entities, mostly municipalities and local governments, that realise the potential of these technologies to engage their constituencies in meaningful ways, deliver public services more effectively and efficiently, and put local value (rather than increasing debt burdens) towards future development.
For all their circumstantial specificities, the common threads between these different models make them strong contenders as transformative tools. Participation is always voluntary. Users only adopt them when they perceive a clear benefit. And, unlike conventional monetary regimes, complementary currencies tap into a highly diverse set of values: the benefits can be individual or collective, they can be economic, social or environmental, and they can be freely determined by their initiators but also must resonate with the users in all possible facets of interaction. In this regard, complementary currencies are in a constant system of checks and balances; they must evolve and adapt quickly in response to user behaviour.
The involvement of different stakeholders and the employment of new connective technologies support and enables these currencies to create new value, support our personal values in any community in which they are applied—whether locally, regionally, sectorially, virtually or even globally.

Leander Bindewald, MSc MA, works on complementary currencies for the New Economics Foundation (nef). With an academic record in neurobiology, philosophy and economics, he has been interested in currencies as a “social technology of transformative collaboration” since graduation. Having worked and lived in all five corners of the world, he is now based in London working for nef, the oldest and most influential think-and-do-tank in alternative economics (www.neweconomics.org). nef has supported the development and spread of different currency models for nearly twenty years; their recent effort is an international and cross-sectorial collaboration project that will launch a host of pilot currencies and resource material on currencies over the next two years: www.communitycurrenciesinaction.eu

Guest edited by Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen(UNFOLD) the 9th issue of the New City Raeder is out on the streets of Istanbul! The issue contributors are Leander Bindewald, Gwendolyn Floyd, Erdem Üngür, Işık Gülkaynak, Freek Lomme and Vincent Schipper. Check the map to the right or enter the article for a list of locations.

List of New City Reader locations: Bilgi University Communications Faculty, Yeditepe University Communications Faculty, Doğuş University Art and Design Faculty, Aydın University Fine Arts Faculty, Maltepe University Architecture and Fine Arts Faculties, Kadir Has University Fine Arts Faculty, Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts Faculty, Işık University Fine Arts Faculty, Yıldız Technical University Architecture Faculty, Yıldız Technical University Art and Design Faculty, İstanbul Technical University, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty, Urban Cafe, DEPO / Tütün Deposu, ODA Kule, İKSV Building, İstanbul Modern Library, Salt Galata, Salt Beyoğlu, French Culture Center, İstanbul Moda Academy, TMMOB İstanbul Chamber of Architects

Özlem Yalım Özkaraoğlu who has been the Director of Istanbul Design Biennial since 2010, will continue to contribute to the biennial as consultant and a member of the Istanbul Design Biennial Advisory Board, while pursuing her own projects in the field of design. Deniz Ova, who has worked for İKSV since 2007, has been appointed as the new director of the biennial.

Born in Germany, Stuttgart, Deniz Ova graduated from the University of Stuttgart in Political Science and Linguistics. After working as an assistant director in several theatre productions at the Stuttgart State and City Theatre, she started to work for the management and organisation of festival events in Stuttgart. Her first hospitality management was during the Şimdi Stuttgart festival in 2005 which brought her in touch with the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV). In 2007 she moved to Istanbul to lead the international projects department of İKSV and since then she has developed and organised the festivals and events of İKSV in European cities. (Co-productions for the 400th anniversary celebrations of diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and Turkey, 2012; Şimdi Now Sweden and Denmark, 2011; Anna Lindh Foundation Head of Network Turkey co-coordination and events; Spot On: Turkey Now, Vienna 2009; Turkey at one Glance. Excerpts from Life and Culture, Vienna 2008, the Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honour, Turkey Department of Music and Performing Arts, 2008). Besides the festivals she coordinates the Pavilion of Turkey at the Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and the artist residency studio “Turquie” at Cite International des Arts. In 2009 Deniz Ova was appointed to write with Görgün Taner and Deniz Unsal a critical report on the Arts and Culture scene in Amsterdam following the nomination of Görgün Taner as Art Advisor for the Amsterdam City Council. Deniz Ova, Director of International Projects in İKSV since 2010 has been appointed as the director of the Istanbul Design Biennial in 2013.

Graduated from METU Department of Industrial Design, Özlem Yalım Özkaraoğlu has worked in Bursa for 6 years in her own design and architecture company as director. She worked as “design and project manager” in modular exhibition and design company in Akın Nalça/Terminal between 2001 and 2003, and as the project director of a design center project between 2003-2004. In 2004, she started to work as a freelancer as a design consultant. She took part in leading design activities and projects, both local and global. (ADesign fair, IDW competition jury, Frankfurt Tendence Lifestyle – ”design from east to west” exhibition, Marketingist design exhibitions, İMMİB – İTO – AYSAD design competitions, NTV – Turk Mucit ‘Turkish Inventor’ competition, various design and trend seminars and exhibitions) She founded “d.o.T. designers of Turkey” in the beginning of 2005 in order to support the promotion and marketing potential of Turkish designers globally. Between 2005 and 2007, she undertook the creative idea, concept design and activity management of “FESORIENT, International Ethnic Design Lifestyle and Fashion Festival”. The designer also created and presented OBJECULT and AQUAGALATA projects, which are registered on her name; and worked as the creative director of TRENDSHOW 2007 event. In order to continue on with her work in the corporate field, she worked full-time as “director of product development” and “director of design and brand” at KOLEKSİYON MOBİLYA (furniture) for 2 years. Özkaraoğlu was on the “The Most Creative 50 Turks” list prepared by the Turkishtime magazine in both 2011 and 2012.

The first edition of Istanbul Design Biennial organised by İKSV and co-sponsored by Eren Holding, Koray Group of Companies, Vestel and VitrA was visited by 44,600 people. Together with its parallel events and exhibitions, Istanbul Design Biennial met an audience of approximately 115,000 viewers.

The conceptual framework of the second edition of Istanbul Design Biennial which will take place from 18 October to 14 December 2014 will be announced at a press meeting to be held in November 2013.

How to make your own New City Reader by Kazys Varnelis

Instructions
1. Identify a city.
2. Identify the newspaper most crucial to that city. What is its format (such as tabloid or broadsheet) or a type of newspaper (a free weekly paper on cultural events, a free newspaper devoted to classifieds for sex workers, government newspaper, a newspaper that exists for purely legal purpos-es such as to announce marriages, name changes, and the formation of corporations?)? Examine the format of the newspaper and identify a strategy by which it could be appropriated for hanging throughout the city. How will language work? Can your paper be published in English? If not, how will you reach out beyond your local milieu? Decide how the paper will appear on the Web.
3. Secure funding. Anticipate that you will fall short. That’s what your own pocket is for. Secure sites for hanging the paper. Closely examine local laws that might impact its public display, and most importantly if organized crime controls the display of posted materials in your city. Find an editorial staff, a press, and individuals willing to post the paper in public.
4. Decide how your paper will be published. Should it be composed of a series of sections (e.g. politics, sports, weather, culture?) or should it come out weekly. Assign editors for individual sections or issues. Develop a repeatable workflow by which issue editors will propose their topic to you, solicit articles from contributors, and pass these to your editorial team for editing and layout. This is a newspaper. Deadlines matter. Everything will be last minute and endlessly in crisis.
5. Launch.

In Love We Trash by Basurama
Bienali, is an inflatable bubble monster made out of plastics discarded during the installation of the Istanbul 2012 Design Biennial. Its size and shape came out of the amount of plastics available at the venue. The same techniques and materials used to package and wrap pieces at the Biennial, were used to build Bienali. Taking care of waste is an act of love that transforms it into something desir-able instead of deplorable. Bienali allows an easy visualization of the amount of plastic waste used to transport the installations that are on display and reflects on the concept of trash, care and reuse.

Instructions (refrain from doing it at home)
1. Take all the plastic bags you find in your house.
2. Cut the handles and two of the borders and deploy the bag as a flag (or a piece of cloth).
3. Join the pieces with tape and build a new and huge plastic bag.
4. Make a tube with the leftovers.
5. Leave a hole in the huge plastic bag in order to introduce the tube.
6. Connect the fan to the tube.
7. Inflate.

Design Demographics Turkey by Superpool
Design Demographics is a data visualization project that assesses the scale and involvement of Turkey’s design community in the production and regulation of Turkey’s built environment. The broader design community is under scrutiny in this exercise, including architects, landscape architects, urban planners, industrial designers, interior designers, and graphic designers. Archi-tecture, in particular, will serve as a primary test case due to the availability of information about the profession.

Instructions
1. Think of something you would like to know more about, for example the number of architects in each city in Turkey or the locations of the street bazaars in Istanbul…
2. Think of institutions, agencies or companies that could have the answer to your question.
3. Check their websites. If you find consistent and complete information, proceed to Step 13.
4. If their websites are not helpful, write an email with your request for information. Explain why you need their support.
5. Call the next day, to check if they have received your request. Hope they share the information with you at this point. If yes proceed to 13, if not continue to 6.
6. You might have been requested to write an official petition. Prepare it; send a fax and a hardcopy.
7. Call the next day, to check if they have received your request. Hope they share the information with you at this point. If yes proceed to 13, if not continue to 8.
8. Think of someone in your network who works or knows the institution you are contacting. Call him / her and ask for their support.
9 If the institution is in your city or close-by, go there and ask for help face to face. Take your petition, the name of your ‘inside contact’ with you.
10. Say you are willing to wait all day, but would really like to have the data you need.
11. Hope they share the information with you at this point. If yes proceed to 13, if not continue to 6.
12. You can decide to give up or keep trying. It is after all, a matter of how much time you have. Hopefully you will make it to step 13 before your deadline.
13. If you have the data, you can visualize it on a map, or as a diagram. Clarity is very important.
14. Make it pretty.

Open Source Architecture by Walter Nicolino / Carlo Ratti

Instructions
1. Visit Opensource Architecture on Wikipedia: this page was created in mid-2011 and has received contributions from hundreds of users, each suggesting ideas or projects that can be shared and edited by a large community.
2. If something does not convince you or you have ideas to add, edit the page and include your contribution, to be edited and expanded on by other users. You don’t need to be an architect or engineer: each of us, every day, can make a change to the architecture around us.
3. Now that you have helped to write the Manifesto, your ideas will be explored by the installation for Adhocracy. Every day at the Galata Greek School, a vertical plotter rewrites on an empty wall the Manifesto taken from the Wikipedia page. And every evening, deletes it in order to start over and over again.
4. The design of the plotter, and the program that controls it, have all been developed with open source software. By accessing the online community of Arduino and Processing, you can quickly learn how to make something similar thanks to the vast shared knowledge. At the end of the exhibition Adhocracy, the plans will be shared by the designers of the installation, together with the script that makes it all happen.

Ad-hoc Library by Pelin Tan / Ethel Baraona Pohl
Ordinarily, we believe that knowledge is very close to us, sometimes we think knowledge is attainable and stable. Or we walk near it but don’t realize its movement and reflection. It is a kind of movement and a journey. It is personal but collective. It is boundless. It is emotional. In some cases it is a total, unstoppable experience. It exists and moves trans-locally. It is a representation. It is not presentable. Makes you feel alone as a singularity. Makes you feel near to something. Makes you feel like the Other. It is filled with space and love. You feel you are near even if it is always far away. The mobile archive presents our trans-local production of knowledge. Realities, objects, ideas, fly in the air that you can catch and reproduce. The Ad-hoc library intends to be part of the swarm intelligence of the city: it moves, expanding knowledge wherever it is taken, but never alone. Always with people.

Instructions
1. Work together with more people: the designer of the device, the content curators, the authors, the readers.
2. Select the kind of contents, books, fanzines you want to share.
3. Select a topic, share it, discuss it, listen what people want to read.
4. Think on which places, which public spaces to take it.
5. Ask citizens to participate, to take out the chairs and start reading.
6. From time to time, make a book-club, a speaker’s corner, an activity helpful to spread knowledge.
7. Simply enjoy.

New City Reader at Urbanrise Workshop- Athens

Occupy for a Self-Shaped City by Lorenza Baroncelli
La Bodega is the only occupied space in Colombia. Inhabited by unpredictable and traditionally hidden subjectivities, it is a disputed space in the pre-existing urban fabric of Bogotá that hosts instances and projects experimenting new models for the city. The story of La Bodega demonstrates how the experience of occupation is possible and replicable; it is the story of its inhabitants and illuminates how occupation can spark more than urban transformation, becoming an opportunity for change and growth of single individuals. It’s also the story of the abandoned buildings in the center of Bogotá, and how they can be re-opened and transformed.

Five instructions to occupy a building
1. Search an abandoned building in a part of your town that you consider interesting.
2. Make a first visit (possibly overnight) to check the condition of the building and verify at the land registry who is the owner of the building.
3. Change the lock of the door a few days before you come in and never admit to have changed it.
4. Set a date and move inside (it is your decision to publicize it or not), and be extremely careful not to let the police enter.
5. Use the space to intercept the changing needs in the area and use your creativity to invent unexpected and innovative solutions. Don’t shut yourself in the building but look, learn and nurture the energies in the territory. Tell the people you interact with that they can do the same.

Open Structures by Thomas Lomme
The OS (OpenStructures) project explores the possibility of a modular construction model where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid. It initiates a kind of collaborative MECCANO? To which everybody can contribute parts, components and structures. It hereby envisions a new standard for sustainable design that facilitates the re-use of parts and components and allows us to build things together.
The OS ecosystem is built up according the Wikipedia model, where different people all contribute to a bigger thing (rather than each building their own thing) with this difference that in the OS system people don’t contribute articles, but parts.

Instructions
Everybody who wants can contribute to the OS project by adding their own modular parts or structures on to the OS parts database.
1. Draw an Open Structures (OS) grid. The OS grid is built up out of 4x4cm squares. The borders of these squares mark the cutting lines, its diagonals mark the assembly points and its enclosed inner circles define common diameters. (for more info go to openstructures.net > how-to manual > OS grid)
2. Design and produce a part from the OS grid. In order for these new parts to be compatible with the existing ones they need to be designed from the OS grid (also see: ‘How to apply the OS grid?’). And because all resulting designs are conceived as interdependent, dynamic puzzles, they should be designed for disassembly.
To streamline this design process a number of common design guidelines have been developed. These are rules of thumb that need to be considered while designing any OS part or structure.
3. Upload and trade your part on the OS database
Once parts are designed and produced they can be uploaded on to the online OS database (www.openstructures.net).
This database is the digital marketplace for all parts and structures that were created by applying the OS grid. It also serves as a central sharing point for the whole OS community. All part designs can be up- or downloaded in order to be discussed, reviewed, ranked, copy/pasted and traded among its users. This vivid exchange of parts will allow the parent structures to adapt, expand or shrink according to current needs. It will also stimulate continuous upgrades over time through a phased interchange of parts.

Ik Zoek Asiel. How to Seek Asylum in the Netherlands by Ben Landau
The plight of an asylum seeker in a foreign country is intensified by reduced access to credible information. Future immigrants rely on a rumor mill fuelled by family and friends, encountering ex-aggerated anecdotes and hearsay. This experience lies in stark contrast to the way citizens of the developed world plan their vacations, using up-to-date facts from the Internet, newspapers and travel guides. Ik zoek asiel negotiates this patchwork of official statements and first-hand experiences in the form of a collective commons guide to seeking asylum in the Netherlands. The content of the guide, taken from a range of sources, can be updated online, then printed and handed out by activists and immigrants. Ik zoek asiel synthesizes the advantages of digital collaboration and access, physical publication, and social networks of distribution.

Instructions
1 To take part in this project, go to www.ikzoekasiel.net
2 Follow the link to the pdf through dropbox or issuu. Print it off in a booklet form.
3 Give or send it to someone who will find it useful or share the internet link. Through online or printed medium, we can share information about the immigration procedures and experiences of asylum seekers in the Netherlands.

How to start your own Stratigraphic Manufactury, Unfold
Unfold Design Studio in collaboration with Jonathan Keep (UK), Eran Gal-Or (Israel) and Mustafa Canyurt (Turkey)
In Stratigraphic Manufactury, Unfold explores methods of manufacturing and distributing design in the dawning era of digital production. Stratigraphic Manufactury is a new model for the distribution and digital manufacturing of porcelain, which includes local small manufacturing units that are globally connected. One that embraces local production variations and influences.”

Instructions
1. Build yourself an open source 3D printer, find the plans for example at reprap.org
2. Hack your 3D printer so that it can print ceramics, follow the free instructions on unfoldfab.com.
3. Get in touch with Unfold to discuss using their digital blueprints for a Stratigraphic Manufactury in your home town.
4. Print an inventory of Unfold’s Stratigraphic designs, use your local clay, colors or glazes.
5. Now we can sell these designs to your local community.
6. There is no step 6. Welcome to the Stratigraphic Manufactury network, a distributed porcelain factory.

How to curate an extemporary show of Yona Friedman in the city of Istanbul by Maurizzio Bortolotti
The following instructions are for building an exhibition of the architect Yona Friedman’s work, regarding two of its main concepts:
1- The idea of the production of architecture/art by people.
2- The idea of art/architecture as unpredictable processes, in which creativity and social communication are connected to each other, enabling inhabitants to dwell and live the contemporary city. Therefore, if art and architecture express an idea of contemporary culture, Yona Friedman’s idea of the production of culture is though participation.

Instructions
1. Find a public passage or a small square.
2. Look around for very simple materials like cardboard, wire or plywood.
3. Look at Yona Friedman’s drawings published on the web (especially from his book Pro domo).
4. Set up a display or show looking at the pictures and using these materials to build unpredictable architecture made by people.
5. Invite street artists to make their interventions inside these unpredictable architectures and you’ll have a Street Museum.

Re-reading Giancarlo De Carlo by Autlab
Who is GDC? Giancarlo De Carlo (1919-2005) is an Italian architect. Why GDC? GDC is member of the Team X, which pretends a new type of architecture, more adaptable to social and environmental conditions. For him the Man is not reduced to an abstract figure or to a set of standard measures but an active figure which has to take part to the decisions that influence his personal life and society.
Re-reading: how? AUTLAB, Collective of Students of the Architecture Faculty of Roma Tre, has adopted the self-formation process as one of the cornerstones of the laboratory: the re-reading of GDC, as he would also had preferred, not accepting his words as dogma but using them as departing points to a deeper reflection upon the complexity of the spatial and social main themes. For AUTLAB, GDC is The Architecture Partisan.

Instructions / Key Concepts
What is Context?
“The architectural process should be based on the existing situations which are much different in every city and in every part of the world. On the other hand Architectural discipline cannot become Authority, that wields its control with external rules on men’s life”.
A Lesson of Urban Planning is an ironic critic of the problems deriving from the stereotyped approach of technicians and experts. The intention is to urge the ordinary man to react to easy authoritarianisms. The revolutionary concept of participation is introduced.
What is Participatory Process?
The Villaggio Matteotti (Terni, Italy) is a neighbourhood built by the Steel Factory for its workers.
GDC accepts the commission for the Villaggio Matteotti only provided that the participatory process within the Steel Factory workers (the future incomers) would take place. GDC and his team organize meetings and exhibitions concerning the design project for the future inhabitants. This process involves the population—the workers—which at the end show a strong acquisition of civic and political awareness about their rights to the Space: in 1974 the Factory Committees request to be involved even in the decisions about the restoration of the working spaces.
What is Bureaucracy?
“Bureaucracy intends to control the organization of space because it is the only social congregation which supports the existence of interrelations between the quality of physical space and the behav-iours of society. Bureaucracy is teased by Processes as a matter of fact that bother it, because they put too many variables at stake, stimulate critique, encourage participation”.
AUTLAB: Natalia Agati, Daniele Burattini, Emanuele Caporrella, Olimpia Fiorentino, Daniele Presutti, Renzo Sgolacchia

How to build your own House in six Steps by Rot Ellen Berg
To Ziya Şanlı, Ece Elbirlik, Cassandra Mehlhorn and all the other warm people we’ve met in Istanbul during our short trip in October of this year. To everyone who needs a shelter, a place to feel at home: how to build your own house, in 6 steps.

Instructions
1. Sign the papers for the purchase of a house that has gone to ruin, or look for a house to tear down. Don’t mind not knowing what you’re getting into.
2. Take enough time to find out what you want or don’t want. This could be the time to look for an architect, make sure you connect with him (or her). Tell him you don’t have the budget, but you do want the space. Hope he still thinks your project is interesting.
3. Call friends and family for help and start by emptying and stripping the house. Tear down all unnecessary inside walls, remove dead pigeons, take out the collapsing roof and the three growing through it. Keep on going, until only the outer walls are standing.
4. Build a house of glass within the old house. This way, sunbeams can fall through the highest window and provide light from the top floor down to the lowest living areas. Choose a new horizontal and vertical layout for your house, ignore the original structures and divisions. By doing so, several windows could serve multiple levels.
5. Choose sustainable materials such as: concrete, wood, flax fibers, curtains of wool, also add a frivolous touch: concrete beams imprinted by grain and gnarl from wooden planks, mirroring chapels, a thinking tower, tiles with added stone pattern… Create playful ‘trompe l’oeil’ effects.
6. Put a 2 ton fire-resistant concrete stove in the middle of the ground floor to get radiant heat in winter. Keep the rest of your house in a state of ‘almost finished’. Move into the house, smile and be happy. Invite friends.
For and behalf of ‘architects de vylder vinck taillieu’. The owners and self builders of the house ‘Rot Ellen Berg’, Belgium, Piet Bodyn & Ellen Meurez

Immanent Testimony by HS Mimarlık
The game of “find-deconstruct-construct” in the context of Adhocracy.

Instructions
Find
1. Choose a space where a public function, action or activity is maintained. In this space, the decisions of form and content should be defined from top to bottom, not the opposite.
2. In this public space, observe how the hierarchical relations between individuals and public are built.
3. Sift through the local and global scale structures of the spacial interpretations of this function. Try to find the traces/sanctions of this hierarchy in the public life or in the process of the individual’s self realization in this space.
Deconstruct
4. Identify three directly related actors of the space:
a- Person(s) who has designed the space.
b- A social scientist who is expert on the function of the space.
c- An Individual(s) who use the space and has the capacity to make a critical analysis of it.
Prepare questions for the actors. Interview them. Record the interviews in order to be shown in your exhibition.
5. Your inferences from these interviews should determine the concept of the space you will design to exhibit your work. See your curator in order to choose the conceptually suitable space in the exhibition hall.