IN-PERSON London. Section B

Abstract

The generous city is an alternative frame for the handling of materials in urban contexts, in order to overcome the conceptual and practical limitations of the waste management paradigm. It centres on the development of systems to collectively identify and realise the value of excess materials to the benefit of local communities, organisations and businesses. For the purposes of this definition, excess materials are those goods and objects that still retain potential value but are: – discarded after being used, – broken or considered unfit, obsolete, or otherwise inadequate, or – kept unused for any other reasons. The concept of the generous city engages critically with the way contemporary societies organise, understand and reproduce themselves. It assumes that, for the foreseeable future, humanity will keep manufacturing more goods than it can use at any given point. Such excess materials deserve urgent attention, not only for their environmental impact vis-à-vis their potential concrete applications, but also for their significance as symbols and signals of wasteful practices of global capitalism. In other words: the concept of generous cities challenges the assumption that all waste should be immediately sent to recycling by an industrial-minded logistics operation. It does so by designing systems rooted on conviviality, collective care and regenerative design.