For too long cities have been thought of as surfaces on which the city layer operates, trapping the potential of soil in tarmac and asphalt. One main cause of this layering is the car and its many different destructive emissions and requirements. With the car comes the parking lot, and with the parking lot comes a damaging site of layering with all of its heavy metals, toxins, resistances and groundwater runoffs. An occupation of space that further solidifies a present and future with cars - and without soil.
In this co-creation workshop we will work hands-on with tools of regenerative farming, carpentry, DIY electronics, soil science and further materials in order to collectively address how a parking lot might be remade into a regenerative space for community agriculture and cultivation. The workshop is part of Hofs Lifs’ ongoing proposal to transform a 2030m² parking lot in Växjö city centre to a space for climate neutral, community-centred production of food by the year 2030.
In working with this proposal workshop participants will explore how such a reoccupation and regeneration of space can be made into reality, asking questions such as:
- How can we break the seemingly indestructible bonds of asphalt that bind city life?
- What stories and deep time particles are trapped in this site that existed for 300 years as a space of agriculture and 10 years as space for parking.
- How can we live with 2030m²?
- What kinds of food production can be carried out in 2030m²?
- What might a climate neutral energy source (e.g. 2030 kwh) for such a community space of production look like?
- What possibilities arise in the collective imagining and hands-on making of a post-parking future?
The structure for the day-long workshop is to a) learn more about the space, b) plan and design different possibilities for this post-parking space of cultivation, and c) collectively build a prototype to exhibit in the current parking lot that brings these possibilities to life. Expect soil imaginaries, dig-ins, sit-ins, plant-ins, microscope-ins, training for breaking up tarmac, techniques for regenerating contaminated soil, solar powered servers, cushions and stargazing, community farm infrastructuring and any further tools and ideas participant brings to the occasion for co-creation.
The workshop is lead by researchers working across four projects: Hofs Lifs’ Under Ekarna initiative (https://underekarna.com/2000-m2), LNU Climate Neutral Växjö 2030 (https://lnu.se/en/research/searchresearch/research-projects/project-climate-neutral-vaxjo-2030) and the Swedish Energy Agency funded Regenerative Energy Communities (https://regenerative-energy-communities.org/).
