The Suzuki Foundation awarded a bronze medal to the organizers of the Vancouver Olympic Games for emphasizing, at one and the same time, the importance of and the inadequacy of their efforts to reduce the ecological footprint of the Games. The Foundation, however, only considered the physical environment, and it evaluated an isolated event without taking into account the domino effect of this event on the notion of sport everywhere else in the world. And it is this notion that weighs the most in the global scale. For example, several days before the opening of the Games, we learned that the region of Magog, Quebec, had decided to increase the size of its sports centre, as it might have done 50 years ago: “The Memphremagog regional sport centre project” says the press release, “will involve the addition of two gyms, a training room for wrestlers (a palestra), a semi-Olympic size pool, a dance studio, development of a synthetic soccer and football field, as well as the retrofitting of the weight room.” Everything will happen inside, and if we have to play outside, it will be under a synthetic sun!

We know however that between 1992 and 2004, while sports centres of this kind continued to spring up across Canada, the percentage of adults participating in sports dropped from 45 to 28 percent. We also know that when people do physical activity, their preference is for outside activities, like walking, gardening, and bicycling. Now the region of Magog is the perfect spot for taking up these kinds of activities. The authorities in the secondary school, where the new sports centre will be located, certainly don’t dissuade young people from taking advantage of the mountains, the forest, and the lakes in the area to devote themselves to open air sports they will continue to do all their lives. Nevertheless, the emphasis is clearly being placed on indoor sports, borrowing from the philosophy of professional sport and the Olympic Games, a phenomenon reflected in and encouraged by local media. Nature has long since been abandoned to wealthy families that have cottages in the area.

The time has come when a different model should be proposed for sports and physical activity in general. This other model is that of sustainable sport. Elsewhere on this site, you will find a short essay on this notion of sport. Here we present its five primary characteristics:

(1) Sustainable sport respects the rules of sustainable development, notably by giving priority to outdoor sport over indoor sports, with their concomitant higher energy costs.

(2) They can be practised throughout a whole lifetime, and they are better for health than performance sports. Walking, cross-country skiing, swimming, bicycling, and non-competitive team sports are all good examples.

(3) They fit into a gentler vision of the body and the world, centred not on the desire to dominate one another through the exercise of a will of iron, but on the pleasure linked to natural and spontaneous exercise, a pleasure doubled by the joy of being in contact with the beauty of nature and one’s friends at the same time.

(4) They reinforce the feeling of belonging to the universe, to nature, to the community, whereas performance sports – which are also sports spectacles and sports propaganda – by these very characteristics only reinforce the sense of belonging to the nation-state.

(5) They are an invitation to coherence, extended to all those who have sustainable development at heart. What good does it do to eat only foods that are in season or that come from less than 100 kilometres away if we multiply the number of kilometres we travel in the car to get to this or that indoor stadium?

In 1961, I was invited to assist in the rebuilding of the city of Concepción, Chile, in the aftermath of an earthquake that had recently struck the region. I was 19 years old and very sure of myself. I was one of the two Canadian delegates to an international congress of students being held there. Someone had the bright idea of holding it in a city that had been the site of a disaster, and of combining the conference with a work camp. Every participant thus had the opportunity to perform concrete acts of solidarity before and after participating in discussions on the future of the planet—or rather the future of humanity—for, at that time, mankind’s future and destiny were not linked to those of its habitat. In principle, we were supposed to argue endlessly in the morning and work in the afternoon. I say “in principle” because, right from the start, it was evident that there would be no crowd on the reconstruction site. Only six of the some 200 participants had brought work clothes – the two Canadians, the two Americans, and the two West Germans.

Fidel Castro had just come to power in Cuba, generating tremendous hope among students, a great majority of whom were already communist. The glorious future of a socialist utopia was just around the corner and, while waiting for it to arrive, the marxist students described contemptuously, as a microsolution, swinging the sickle and hammer on the work site. Fidel’s emulators didn’t seem to be able to imitate him except for his interminable speeches. The unreality of the theories that were presented as macrosolutions for the future reached such a height that I made this note in my journal: “Chile will be the cemetery of communism in Latin America.”

Even the small houses being constructed with international aid money exuded a kind of Soviet dreariness; at the same time, their arrangement on bare ground reminded one of the bungalows that were being constructed in Canada, from St. John’s to Vancouver, using the same rectangular model. The trip inoculated me, at one and the same time, against communism and international development.

By contrast, one memory I hold dear is that of a shack, barely six metres by two metres, located in the heart of one of the poorest barrios in Santiago. The Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld who lived there had succeeded in giving it a soul by arranging, with impeccable taste, the few pieces of furniture and other objects they possessed. I can still see the bike propped vertically against the orange tree in the tiny yard. All their neighbours had to do to achieve these same primary conditions for happiness: life and beauty, was to share in the brothers’ inspiration. Inspiration transforms the humblest of shelters into poems and, in its absence, masterpieces of design are nothing but cold and spacious prisons.

This memory helped me to understand Dany Laferrière’s (winner of the Medicis Prize 2009) words to a representative of Emergency Architects (EA), who had declared that we had to move very fast and be extremely practical about rebuilding Haiti. “No,” replied Leferrière, the Quebecois writer of Haitian origin, “Culture will save Haiti.” People must absolutely be provided with temporary shelter, but the universal solidarity we are now witnessing allows room for hope that even this shelter might be beautiful.

How might inspiration, the most significant element of resilience, manifest itself in such circumstances? The Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld in Chile convinced me of one thing. Since the international aid required by a devastated country, in this instance Haiti, cannot be given to the people directly, it must be routed through those foreign intermediaries that have the deepest roots among the people, and by members of the diaspora who have maintained organic links with their country of origin. This is the best rule to follow in searching out solid leaders and initiatives and, in turn, in providing them with the support they need. The most effective foreign aid is that which rewards the foremost, unplanned successes, not that which multiplies opportunities to spend blindly, nor that which is conveyed via technocratic and political channels. It takes time to discover these unplanned, “spontaneous” successes and to observe their rhythm and cycles, and donors —countries, international institutions, foundations, etc. —must stagger their contributions over a lengthy period. My friends at L’Arche and at PLAN know more about these issues than I do. I defer to them on this point, so as to return, in conclusion, to the question of beauty, and of life which expresses itself in beauty.

Two models for Haiti: Medellin and Kampala

Medellin
Medellin? How could such a city, refuge of the drug cartels, be considered a source of inspiration for other cities? In 1991, the homicide rate there was 381 per 100,000 inhabitants, for a total of 6,300 for the year (the city then had a little less than 2,000,000 inhabitants). By 2007, the rate had fallen to 26 per 100,000 inhabitants – a ninety percent (90%) reduction.

During this time, Sergio Fajardo, a university mathematics professor, surrounded by active citizens as well as architect and designer friends, had the good idea of running for mayor, with campaign ideas such as these: “The most beautiful for the most humble”! “From poverty to beauty!” Medellin incluyente! “Toward preventative justice!” “A place for microcredit!” From 2004 to 2007, Fajardo was mayor of Medellin. Today, he is a candidate for the presidency of Colombia, having launched his campaign by publishing a book about his achievements in Medellin: del miedo a la esperanza (From Fear to Hope). Anyone interested in global innovation, that is to say, in social innovation linked organically to other forms of innovation—cultural, economic, ecological—would do well to learn Spanish just to be able to read this book.

Even though it seems a bit simplistic at first glance, a bit too inspired by behaviourism, Sergio Fajardo’s methods have proved effective: Reduce your crime rate and the municipality will beautify your neighbourhood by, for example, building a park library—a beautiful building surrounded by green space, a gathering place for people as well as for books and computers. “We believe,” says the director of one of the parks, “That we are able to learn better when we are part of a community.”

Kampala
Forty percent (40%) of the 1,200,000 inhabitants of Uganda’s capital city, Kampala, live in extreme poverty. Long ago, they began to practice urban agriculture—illegally. Finally, making a virtue of necessity, in 2005, the municipality decided to legalize the practice. By that time, urban agriculture, including raising poultry, was already producing forty percent (40%) of Kampala’s food supply. Not only has this proportion increased since 2005, but since Kampala was the first city in this region of Africa to legalize urban agriculture, it has attracted the attention of funding organizations, such as the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), an organization of the Canadian government. In Kampala, IDRC is now piloting “Τhe Kampala City Focus” project, directed at “building a sustainable, cohesive community through waste recycling and agro-enterprise.” Here, as in Medellin, successful, unplanned achievements have been sought out and support provided to those who came up with the ideas.

For example, Jean D’Aragon, director of the project, noticed someone in Kampala who was drying banana peels and feeding them to his chickens. Analysis demonstrated that the dried banana peels provided food for poultry that was as nourishing as corn, but much less costly. Around Kampala, as in many parts of Haiti, there are deforested hills that encourage flooding and push waste from the city, including banana peels, down into the valley beds. Jean D’Aragon’s team is trying to solve this problem by building on the promising initiatives of residents. Dried banana peels reduce the quantity of waste, create jobs, and reinforce local solidarity, because instead of throwing banana peels into the valley, people are delighted to give them to their ingenious neighbour.

We could discuss hundreds of initiatives of this kind currently being realized around the world—more than enough to help Haitians make good choices. Thanks to the Utne Reader, to the architectural magazine, Bomb, and to the periodical, Momentum, from the University of Minnesota which sent us off on the trail of Medellin and Kampala.

Note:
Between 2007 and 2009, the homicide rate in Medellin rose again to 62 per 100,000. The highest homicide rates in 2009 were those of Juarez in Mexico, 119 per 100,000; Caracas, 94 per 100,000; Cali, 73 per 100,000; and New Orleans, 69 per 100,000. In Canada, the 2008 homicide rate was 2.5 per 100,000 in Vancouver, 1.9 per 100,000 in Toronto, and 1.3 per 100,000 in Montreal. Source: Columbia Reports

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7626-study-places-medellin-and-cali-among-the-most-violent-cities-in-the-world.html