The right to be slow

Fighting the accelerating climate crisis by rescaling the pace

We live fast

The early twentieth century brought to us the futurist manifestos, the forerunners of globalization and promoters of the iconic veneration of dynamism symbolized by the car, the idolized symbol of speed. By articulating the movement, the Futurists were exalting and idealizing speed, which was visible in the deformation of images, substantially opposed to the trend of Cubism, which was concerned with the perception of slow time, mediated by observation.

Today we can affirm that we are the descendants of the 20th-century concept of speed that, more or less consciously, we practice in our daily lives.

There is a clear link between the lifestyle of the twenty-first century man and the worrying condition of the Planet: we enact a consumption of resources that does not allow for their regeneration, which is leading to the weakening of Earth’s resilience, ecosystem destruction and loss of precious biodiversity, to name a few. Mindful eyes cannot help but notice the triggers of such a rush to growth, known today as the “Great Acceleration.”

The Great Acceleration

Words like growth, increase and recovery reassure us. Associated with an individual, they are usually acknowledged as comforting features of his or her growth. The same association can be made when talking about the State, which is where the bias of language that has accompanied the wild economic growth and the myth of the Gross Domestic Product, a symbol of competition among the more developed (or, better said, “faster”) nations, manifests itself.

The “Great Acceleration” summarizes a large portion of socioeconomic and environmental factors undergoing a huge upward push, commonly referred to the paradigm of speed, indeed an acceleration.

“We live accelerated“-said sociologist and political scientist Hartmunt Rosa (2015)- enduring the outdated thought of “slowness,” commonly and wrongly associated with laziness and unwillingness, for which a fundamental contextualization and appreciation in a world whose essence and glory are based on realization times of tens of thousands of years, is lost.

Figura 1: W. Steffen, et al., « The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration »

The fuel of speed: fossil fuels

Demographic and economic growth, urban sprawl, consumerism and wealth levels have a shared denominator: fossil fuels. These ancient substances, of which humans have proven to be the greediest animals, are non-renewable resources, and, therefore, subject to depletion. They belong to the soil ecosystem services whose role is seriously endangered by component impoverishment.

Just as from the inside of a building it is difficult to perceive its spaces and edges, it is equally challenging for us proponents-users of the Great Acceleration to understand its implications a priori. Beginning from this thesis, the effort to reverse its predictions is aimed at rethinking the current model of development, to break out of the now static and anachronistic patterns offered by business as usual.

Since the 1970s we have been living in a condition of debt to the Earth, the so-called overshooting: the result of a system built on the triad of production, consumption and waste, to which it is essential to respond as soon as possible with a revision of rhythms (see also: Ecosystems and Society. Assumptions for sustainable thinking).

VenTo – countering the climate crisis on two wheels

Rethinking mobility is something that has been attempted for years in a sustainable way, with electric vehicles or hydrogen engines, yet always from the perspective of an accelerated life, desperately chasing growth, uncontrolled and unsustainable (see also: Car Sharing: how to reinvent the way of traveling).

The VenTo Project springs up thanks to a new vision. Born in 2010 at the Milan Polytechnic, it is a proposal for a restart and has the form of a tourist bikeway that aims to connect Venice to Turin, to the shout of ” cycling is a political act!”

The project’s authors claim that VenTo is “meant to be a major bicycle highway to move large flows of cyclo tourists in both directions. Therefore, instead of a highway, we like to call it a ‘bicycle-tourist ridge,’ a light infrastructure, at least 3.5 meters wide, uninterrupted, safe, and dedicated to cyclists and pedestrians.”

The already existing and crowded transalpine cycle paths that ensure the movement of many, suggest small arrangements that make this project, though part of a unique, extensive parterre: in the 705 km of the route’s unfolding, areas equipped for resting have been identified in the small towns crossed by the itinerary. This is an expedient that would bring small towns back to life thanks to the tourist crossing and would take advantage of what is already there and equipped with services, eliminating a further land consumption; all the above combined with a substantial reduction in costs.

The safety of citizen-cyclists also contributes to the aims of the Project: the separation of traffic is meant to symbolize the idea of a different public city, where pedestrians and cyclists are no longer optional entities, but rather leading figures, promoters of an idea of mobility that allows people to perceive and respect the rhythms of their surroundings, pushing toward a sustainable development.

Marianna Cisotto

Graduated in Environmental Sciences and student of Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari. Passionate about the environment, innovation and communication.