SIX PROPOSITIONS
The city of social ecology is rooted in care.
Care is in the act of tending relations with others, human and non-human. It is mutual, and it is permanently active. Care involves energy and commitment. Care involves all acts of conservation and maintenance, formal and informal, ingrained in our daily lives.
The city of social ecology strives for pleasure.
Pleasure evokes change and strives for freedom. Pleasure invites us to move, open, and grow. It invites us to connect with feelings of joy and satisfaction as individuals and collectives, engaging in acts of love to build joyful spaces for democratic participation and radical engagement.
The city of social ecology cultivates friction.
Friction is the essence of cohabitation. It is conflict and negotiation. It is relational and generative, and it implies connection. It is tended by many hands; it makes us vulnerable and able to cultivate common grounds. It moves us out of stagnation. It is painful and transformative.
The city of social ecology breathes with its territory.
Its energy comes from the soil, air and underground currents. It invites us to get our hands on the ground, forage, touch and sense its messiness. It blooms and gets rotten. It is porous, and our built world is part of it, but not all there is—holding spaces for all lives to grow lusciously.
The city of social ecology feeds kinship.
Feeds networks beyond our kind. Feeds interdependence. It is the city where multispecies relations flourish. It is the spaces where all beings exercise embodied being together—holding space to share different realities, spending energy and time learning together, working together, being together.
The city of social ecology hosts breakdown.
Acknowledging breakdown opens the possibility of thinking and acting on hidden dynamics, processes, and powers. The breaking is generative and productive; it opens space for repair, improvisation and adaptation. Breaking our current ways of living holds the opportunity to make space for those without a voice, human and non-human.