C O N T E X T 1 2 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 2 3 Two reclaimed turnstiles at Starbucks at Pride Park The reinstalled clock at Pride Park The gates to theVictoria Ground (Photo: Bill Klemperer) The Baseball Ground’s Lionel Pickering entrance a former owner of the club. The clock from the Osmaston End of the Baseball Ground was installed at Pride Park in 2009. The 273 Synchronous Timepiece was made in 1968 by the influential local clockmaker Smith of Derby, which for over 150 years has been responsible for numerous church and public clocks. And in a strange juxtaposition of local distinctiveness and global identity, two reclaimed Baseball Ground turnstiles flank the entrance to Starbucks at Pride Park. Elsewhere, the gates to the Victoria Ground, formerly home of Stoke City Football Club, have found a wellguarded home, having been moved to Knutton, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Discourses of opportunity Dennis Rodwell writes: ‘Sustainability and the City: Global Policy Dialogue’, a two-day event in March, was hosted and sponsored by the British Council and the University of Edinburgh. Its purpose was to open an extended interdisciplinary conversation about the future of cities, unconditioned by established models and the prevailing sense of doom. What if we understand the city as an opportunity, not a threat? Can we imagine a new urban paradigm to replace the industrial and modernist models that surround us? What can the developed and emerging worlds learn from each other? In many respects the event provided an antidote to the expressions of environmental and economic limits that characterised the BEFS congress in Edinburgh last September (see ‘Valuing Places: why, what and how?’, Context 123, March 2012). RichardWilliams, professor of contemporary visual cultures at the University of Edinburgh and initiator of the dialogue, noted that the pervasive but ill-defined concept of sustainability was colouring all debates. Economic growth, for example, was no longer considered necessarily advisable or desirable, and discussion on the subject was becoming polarised.Yet, as F Scott Fitzgerald is quoted as saying: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function’. Sue Parnell, professor at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, argued that urban theory and practice required radical reform in order to address today’s challenges, coupled with the application of universal values. The challenges for sustainability were increasingly urban, yet current global debates lacked urban specificity in relation to key issues such as energy, water and the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Parnell described modernism as a ubiquitous and evil force in Africa’s urban development, identifying equity in the redistribution of land as a key issue of governance. ‘Smart cities’ needed also to be ‘just cities’ in order to address the needs of the weakest and most vulnerable. One of the provisional conclusions of this dialogue was that a loss of confidence in the future is closing our eyes to realities and opportunities. The distribution of resources is a far more serious problem than their expiration. Natural limits are variable, resources are being continuously discovered, and scientific inquiry is not finite.We have moved from the age of enlightenment through the industrial revolution to the age of intelligence. AustinWilliams, director of the Future Cities Project, proffered that sustainability as currently articulated was simply a philosophy of risk aversion: ‘It imposes limits, is misanthropic and miserable’. Previous attempts to define limits – whether to the world’s population or to economic growth – had all proved wrong. Carbon dioxide had become a problem, and yet it was the sine qua non of plant life. Humans were said to be the problem, yet they were an unlimited creative resource. Williams contested the pretensions of environmental activists to moral high ground, and the arrogance of developed countries seeking to tell emerging economies: ‘We’ve had it; it hasn’t worked out; therefore you shouldn’t have it’. The notion of selling a doom-ridden future simply did not work. Sustainability was a vital concept to keep, but a
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