The last issue of Volume magazine (www.volumeproject.org) of this year will be devoted to the topic of Sustainability. In our understanding this term has been corrupted by a cocktail of conservative ideology and the capitalist market. We at Volume decided to organise a series of research workshops to come to a better understanding of the role of design and arts in a responsible future for our cities.

The issue’s title, as for now, is ‘After Zero’. Since a sustainable society is often understood as a society of zero emission or carbon neutrality, we decided to ask ourselves: what happens after this zero emission phase is reached? What are the theoretical guidelines and interesting practices for designing a sustainable city? We think that the experiences of those who work in places such as Detroit or New Orleans are in the process of finding answers to these questions. As these places offer a radically different case study on what a normal urban condition is, namely a condition which is not only determined by capitalist development incentives, but rather a kind of post-capitalist condition with a different set of ethics. One of the issues on the table, according to us, is therefore the relation between ethics and sustainability, providing the topic for an internal seminar at the Van Abbemuseum, under the conceptual banner of the Heartland project.

The workshop will be held on the 22nd of September, 2008 at the Van Abbemuseum from 2 pm to 5pm. We have invited both creative practitioners as well as individuals working more theoretically with these issues to attend. As a possible outcome of the workshop we are hoping to compile a glossary made up of words and images relating to sustainability (ethically, artistically and spatially as some examples).

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Lately I’ve been driving around in different parts of town, getting more and more confident behind the wheel, but when I first started out two months ago I would stick strictly to the high school parking lot behind my house. During the evening and on the weekend this particular lot would mostly be empty and provide suitable training ground. On Sunday evenings, it would also become the gathering place of two local car clubs; Aggressive Levelz and Good Times. The latter being a group of friends devoted to lowrider cars and culture.

A lowrider is a car or truck with a modified, sometimes hydraulic, suspension system so that it can ride as low to the ground as possible: ‘Bajito y Suavecito’ (Low and Slow). Rooted in the Chicano community of Los Angeles in the 1940s, lowriding has become a flourishing subculture throughout the US and includes a multitude of forms and styles.

Salvador ‘Chavo’ Figueroa with his radical hopper: a ‘83 Cutlass Supreme, modified so it can hop 80 inches in the air.

As an outlet for self-expression and ethnic pride, many lowriders spend lots of time, money and skill on perfecting their vehicles, and some have also integrated lowriding into family life.

Jaqueline, Alejandro, Guisela, Alejandro Jr,  Jocelyn Villasenor and their ‘82 Cadillac Coupe De Ville.

Clockwise: Gilberto ‘Potente’, Gilberto Jr, Maria, Alondra Diaz and their ‘48 Chevrolet Fleetline. Rick with his ‘93 Fleetwood Cadillac. Francisco, Checo and Angel Vallejo with ‘El Cotorro’ (the Parrot). Edgar ‘Cholo’ Becerra with his ‘90 Lincoln Town Car.

Besides representing in Los Angeles and Detroit, Good Times Car Club also has chapters in San Diego, Colorado, Milwaukee, New Jersey and Florida-amongst other places-and one overseas: in China.

One of the most spectacular alternate scenarios (non-imagined) is actually taking place in an area called the Dequindre Cut; a long stretch of abandoned railroad tracks. Not used since the mid 1980’s, it has been taken over by tall weeds, graffiti, birds, pheasants, and the occasional human inhabitant with a tent or self-made shelter. Going down into the Dequindre Cut used to be quite thrilling, like being on a subterranean safari, or entering The Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, when the regular world is left behind and suddenly everything turns a magnificent green.

Dequindre Cut, Detroit – 2007

In less than a year however the Dequindre Cut has been transformed into a two-way bike path, complete with on and off ramps, like those used to enter a freeway. Also included are security poles with which you can call the police, and a yet to be completed grassy area with benches.

Dequindre Cut, Detroit – 2008

Although common elsewhere, a bike path in the Motor City seemed an extremely unlikely scenario when I first visited Detroit in 2001. But inspired by the success stories of ‘Rails to Trails’ programs in many other American cities, Detroit is now also turning some of its disused industrial infrastructure into places for leisure and bicycles.

1. Introduction - 2 Freedoms: Kerouac’s and Lowndes’

My friend and I used to joke about the magic can of beans cooked on a fire under the stars on the side of the road. Somehow, like in On The Road by Jack Kerouac, such moments emanate with wonder, expansive possibillity. Sitting there, maybe on a log or piece of concrete, looking out at the night - each time I drove cross-country I would look out (at a rest-stop in North Carolina, the park in Grand Junction, Colorado). But the joke is, after all, it’s just a can of beans - ha ha.

“America, that is the name of my unhappiness,” Kerouac wrote in Visions of Cody. It is this precise mix of promise and disappointment that marks the Heartland.

I’ve been to the Heartland in Western Massachusetts, Upstate New York, and two hours drive north of Los Angeles. But the Heartland is not just the non-urban, non-suburban, because the meanest ghetto of St. Louis Missouri (where the libraries closed and they even stopped collecting garbage for a while due to a lack of funds) - that too is the heartland. As is the Wal-Mart parking lot in Wyoming.

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