Growth is a historical accident. Our planet is limited. For some reason the world’s population has skyrocketed, but now experts in demography say it will stabilize. Of course it will stabilize. And when that moment comes, we will have to rethink the economic system in order to make it healthy but without growth. The number of people and the planet’s resources will be definite, so growth is hard to imagine. On the other hand, no organism, no living being – and we can consider humanity as one large living being – grows constantly. All living beings follow a curve of growth that eventually stabilizes. If we project ourselves into the future, we would see that demographic and economic growths were almost stationary for thousands of years, then they accelerated suddenly and drastically for an actually very short period of time, and finally they settled down and stabilized. Still speaking of the future, we hope that they stabilize softly and that society manages to adapt without a vertical crisis. If they do not stabilize softly, they will stabilize dramatically. We are here to talk about how we can intelligently avoid that they stabilize dramatically and ensure that they stabilize softly.
10.09.2007,
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Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano where he is Director of Unit of Research Design and Innovation for Sustainability and coordinator of the Doctorate in Industrial Design.
He has been Director of the Domus Academy in Milano, Chair Professor of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and visiting lecturer at the Tohoku University in Japan and at the Wuxi Universtiy, In China. In the 2006 he has been nominated Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts at The New School of New York.
His works are based on strategic design and design for sustainability, with a focus on the scenario building and solution development. His last international research is: CCSL, Creative Communities for Sustainable
Lifestyles, a project promoted by the Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles, within the United Nations 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (usually called Marrakech Process) that investgates the topic of grass roots innovaton for sustainability in China, India and Brazil.
Some relevant results of his recent research activities have been edited in the books:: Manzini, E., Jegou, F., Sustainable everyday, Edizioni Ambiente, Milano, 2003, Leong B.D., Manzini, E (2006) Design Vision : a Sustainable Way of Living in China, Ningnan Publishing House Ltd., China and in several papers (some of them can be found in: http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/manzini/)
