Envisioning a Post-Waste Future in Pittsburgh
This article is Part 4 of a series of articles (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here) about mapping and designing transitions in waste management in Pittsburgh as part of the Transition Design Seminar at Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
The objective of our team’s work in the Transition Design Seminar is to research and design for transitions in waste management in Pittsburgh. In previous project phases, we mapped the complexity or “wickedness” of this problem, studied the dynamics of stakeholders connected to the problem, and developed a multi-level historical perspective on the problem’s evolution.
The work done in this fourth phase of our Transition Design Seminar project centered on the Visions for Transition area of practice within the Transition Design Framework. In order to inform and support any future design interventions, our team first worked to extend the problem frame of waste management into Pittsburgh’s distant future, develop a vision of a positive future, and then think critically about how we and Pittsburgh might get there.
To that end, our team has developed a narrative vision for a possible future of Pittsburgh, or Diondega*: A future city where waste as we know it is irrelevant, giving way to new ways of being and relating.
Our Vision: Pittsburgh 2075 “Return to Diondega”
by Sian Sheu
In the post-waste Diondega of 2075, school children listen in awe as teachers tell stories of the city’s past: stories from a foreign-sounding place in 2021, then called Pittsburgh, where corporations reigned and humans became sick from destroying the Earth, and from a distant yet more familiar Diondega of 1200, where humans cared for each other and all the Earth’s natural beings.
“Waste” as understood in 2021 is now a foreign concept taught to younger generations as a cautionary tale. In 2045, the last garbage dump closed down; nowadays, all things, materials, and goods are passed circularly through communities. Technologies for small-scale, sustainable manufacturing have completely eliminated new plastics and other disposables, and there is little-to-no demand for newly manufactured goods.
On a household level, individuals and families undertake personal responsibility for managing the disposal of resources, which they do through repurposing materials or practices that nourish the Earth, such as composting. Households have the autonomy and capacity to be largely self-sufficient, while community ties provide resource exchanges and a communal safety net. Daily life looks dramatically different than that of 2021. Freed from the tyranny of an economy driven purely by capitalist growth, people no longer work for the abstract concept of money to survive. Instead, they work towards supporting individual and community needs that tangibly address shared challenges of caring for place. Without an economy driven by capitalism, socioeconomic stratification based on income, race, and class are irrelevant with people working towards shared goals with dignity and respect.
Great strides have been made in growing a Diondega that cares for and supports all human and nonhuman needs. First, true political representation was given to marginalized communities, which then led to representation for future generations and nonhumans, creating decision-making processes that are equitable and sustainable. Local lands, including the large swaths of land that once housed garbage dumps, have been returned to Indigenous ownership to be cared for and farmed sustainably. At last, government leaders recognize the connection between healthy environments and healthy people. The elimination of waste ended environmental health problems created by drinking unclean water and breathing toxic air. Zip code, race, and income are no longer determinants of lifespan, happiness, and health.
Like in years past, Diondega’s pride remains the three rivers that run through the city. Following the corporate waste ban of 2022, Diondega’s waterways experienced a complete revitalization. Free from corporate dumping and pollution, Diondega residents began caring for their rivers and restoring them to spaces of natural abundance and recreation. Species unseen since the early days of human occupation have returned to the riverways, existing in harmony with human visitors who come to connect with the nonhuman world and drink directly from the streams.
Cities across the region, country, and world look to Diondega as a model for sustainability and self-sufficiency as the movement towards cosmopolitan localism spreads worldwide. After the devastating worldwide wildfires of 2030, global leaders woke up to the urgency of addressing the environmental crisis. They looked to wisdom from those who have successfully coexisted alongside the natural world for millennia and came to terms with the broken system of global capitalism. Regions are becoming increasingly self-sufficient; without a dependency on external resources, global conflict for minerals, oils, and other goods has disappeared. Local ideologies are shared and celebrated, ending western dominance and giving rise to the pluriverse.
In the year 2075, humans are not completely free from want and waste but they are liberated from the trap of viewing the world around them as one to consume and dominate. Life no longer centers on the next iPhone release or how the stock market will perform next week, giving way to a more relational, intentional, and giving way of life.
Vision at Different Scales
In order to develop our vision of a post-waste Diondega in 2075, our team drew out and linked fragments of visions across multiple spatial scales toward a positive future in which the wicked problem of waste management has been addressed and fully mitigated in Pittsburgh. Our graphic below shows fragments of the vision at household, neighborhood, regional and global scales that are in conversation with the “Return to Diondega” narrative above.
Developing a Transition Pathway
Part I: Assessing the Present
As our team mentally geared up to travel on a transition pathway toward Diondega 2075, we team paused to take stock of the present realities of waste management and the socio-technical paradigm in which this wicked problem exists. Following the guidance of the Transition Design Seminar assignment, our team considered which aspects of the present situation we would choose to carry along, which aspects we wish to leave behind, which pieces we could use as kick-off fuel, and which pieces might form a constellation of positive north stars.
For example, we’d choose to leave behind the “throwaway” or “single-use” mindset of the present, we see composting and creative re-use as fruitful places of positive disruption and we take inspiration from Pittsburgh institutions like Center for Creative Re-use and Construction Junction as present fragments of a positive future worth transitioning toward.
PartII: Back-Casting and Milestones
With the vision and present established, a backcasting approach was then used to construct a transition pathway toward Pittsburgh’s post-waste future with strategic milestones envisioned. The backcasting approach is a relevant Futures technique in Transition Design as it can allow designers to free themselves from the linear, forecasting approach to change that dominates most change discourse today, as Simon Bibri writes about in applying backcasting to “strategic smart city sustainable development” (2018).
Short Range Milestones (5–10 years out)
The focus in the next 5 years draws inspiration from the Roadmap to Zero Waste Plan where there is a strict policy on dumping waste and polluting land and rivers in Pittsburgh. The general mindset shifts towards community level engagement of waste management. This starts with composting, sorting and reusing materials such that everything has a purpose. This way, Pittsburgh does not have to seek other avenues to dispose waste.
There is emphasis on reselling, re-using and repairing rather than buying or creating anything fully new, flea markets are in vogue 5 years from now.
Medium Range (25–35 years out)
The next 25 years sees the reinstating of the idea of traditional community knowledge and practices using alternative, sustainable materials. This process is facilitated by knowledge and resource sharing between countries and discovering new ways to manage waste. Landfills are converted to nature preserves and the role of technology is to help solve existing problems in contrary to creating new solutions.
Long Term Milestones (50–60 years out)
A future where there are attempts to undo the aftermath of capitalism and where the idea of a pluriverse thrives. An equitable future that revolves around the concept of Permaculture and circular industrial practices where waste is seen as an input. Through these processes, no unwanted solids or harmful residues are generated.
The future sees all stakeholders coming together in acknowledgement of each others’ presence and perspectives. Respect and power is conferred to non human representatives in order to make this world an equitable place to live in.
Inspirations for our visions and back-casting
Creating compelling visions for a future in which a wicked problem has been resolved requires cultivation of a new designerly imagination. Our team had to work to break free of years of practice in linear, forecasting mindsets.
To aid this kind of imagining, we drew inspiration generally from a few pieces of course reading which exhibited how back-casting and futuring can give life to visions of change. Those pieces were “A Pandemic in Retrospect — Looking Back on the Coronavirus From 2050” by Fritjof Capra and Hazel Henderson, as well as Rebecca Solnit’s piece on mutual aid in the times of COVID-19.
Additionally, we drew some inspiration from this video by The Leap, The Intercept and Naomi Klein as it shows the power of positive future visioning toward transition pathways
To draw specific inspiration for positive future visions in waste management, our team drew inspiration from success stories outside of the United States.
One such source was the story of San Pedro La Laguna in Guatemala, a community that has tackled a major problem with plastic pollution in the past 5 years. The author Lola Mendez writes,
By restoring and preserving the natural beauty of the lake, San Pedro La Laguna has attracted more tourists. Tourism is the largest economy in San Pedro La Laguna — visits to the town increased by 40 percent in 2018. Travelers are also prohibited from using plastic bags, straws, and styrofoam containers in the town.
We also drew inspiration from the story of Kamikatsu, a town in Japan that has become “nearly zero waste.” The article in business insider about the town’s transition notes that the process of mindset and habit change did not occur overnight:
It took time for residents to adjust to the tedious task of washing, sorting, and bringing their trash to the town’s sorting center. […] The process is now routine.
Process Reflections
As mentioned above, our team initially found the back-casting approach to developing transition pathways to be challenging and non-intuitive. We initially ignored the guidance of the assignment template, jumping into milestones before we had a future vision. Uh oh!
Thanks to some conversations with Terry Irwin, we re-focused our efforts on first developing a compelling future vision. We started to dream big, freed of the requirement to explain how the problem is solved, to instead focus on what a world without the problem would feel like or look like.
Next Steps
Equipped with a strong sense of the problem’s dynamics as well as a thoughtful transition pathway, our team can next begin to design and propose interventions to positively disrupt the waste management status quo in Pittsburgh.
Sources
- *Diondega is a representation of the Seneca word for the place now known as Pittsburgh.
- Bibri, Simon. “Backcasting in futures studies: a synthesized scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development” European Journal of Futures Research, 2018.
