There is nothing more dangerous than trying to make the world a better place. Banksy

Measuring the Social welfare has always been a hard task for planners especially when the people are to be involved in the decision making. This research has started from the macro-scale of reading about societies, governance approaches, and the link between both. After a deep research about the city of Barcelona and its districts, a disruptive program has been activated to retrofit Sant Adrià de Besòs.
SW18 is the next planning generation.

Redefining Reality
In order to determine the social welfare of a society, and justify the credibility of our formula, it is vital that we test our discovery on an existing society. The strategy was that we determine the social welfare of a society, compare the results to the data defining the image of this society, and later try to determine how our formula can be a source of change and improvement for the society. In our case, we mapped Barcelona City in terms of resources and existing facilities, applied the formula to measure the social welfare and the results were shocking. In the following chapter, we are mapping a set of facilities in Barcelona; showing how the city markets its districts according to the facilities and resources they have. Later, another set of maps defined by the Formula’s indices: Education, health, unemployment, ecological footprint indices.

Case Study: Sant Adrià de Besòs

The Inputs
Following the Bottom-up approach, we researched about the variable inputs that define the structure of the society and its problems. The idea was to create a grasshopper definition that receives live data, filters them through the formula in order to raise the social welfare index. The inputs are divided into three categories:
i. The Input of the People
ii. The existing program that was initiated to retrofit the
area
iii. The program we propose based on disruptive
innovation.

i. The Input of the People

 ii. The Existing Program

There are 77 centers in La Mina Area initiated by the Generalitate Barcelona to retrofit the area.the project has started since the year 2001 and development projects are still in progress.
The themes of these centers range between 8 categories: Adminstrative, Cultural, Sports, Training, Leisure, Health, Social,and Job Orientations. The active centers are: The Library, The police station, The culture Center, the sports center, and the schools. 250 million Euros have been spent on retrofitting La Mina area, between the years 2001 and 2010, yet the social welfare is still very low and people still have the same complains as they had 10 years ago.

Case Study: Sant Adrià de Besòs
Disruptive Innovation

Zero has no power if it was not backed u with a power factor. Disruptive innovation is the power of our program. Now is the time to make the change, to be disruptive, to break the taboo. It is not about how much money we spend, it is about how people are involved in the decision making.

The Business Plan
By definition, a disruptive innovation is an innovation that unsettles an existing market and value network displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market. In today’s economies disruptive innovation is more than ever seen as a chance to outperform existing competition. What organizations have to acknowledge is that disruptive (non-linear) changes will happen – both if they are on- board or not. Embracing disruption enables organizations to control potential risks and to grow even in highly competitive environments. This phenomenon is no longer the exception; it’s becoming the rule as category incumbents are swept aside by new entrants.

As a result, organizations should ask themselves: Should a new idea change the way you do things – or should it change the things you do? Having said that, one can only ask, what if this can be applied on societies to enhance their social welfare?
What if we translate existing functional/ innovative ideas in economy and technology into strategies to invigorate a society? In contrast to disruptive innovation, a sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value networks but rather only make existing ones evolve with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other’s sustaining improvements. In such a case, the similarities between markets and societies are very obvious. How many proposals can one operate in a society in order to admit the need for something different? Today’s social ‘landscapes’ are more dynamic, fast-paced and resilient than ever before. Most planners however, aren’t prepared for the challenges of leading through prolonged periods of uncertainty about the results of the disruptive innovation. Further, most programs are set-up in an aim to incentivize outlook and visibility, hence rewarding predictability and control, for example, opposite criteria of what is required to lead during disruptive times. Planning for increasing the social welfare and the implementation of proven programs/ models is not anymore an excuse for ‘stagnancy’ of societies today’s planners are increasingly becoming tomorrow’s followers.

Today, there are 19 countries with very high risk of social unrest according to a study by the Economist Intelligence unit.

Is the top-down governance including the society in its policy formulation?
WE THINK NOT…

We understand that the global discussion must move beyond market incentives and governmental sanctions, codes and standards.
In order to address the triple threat of economic crisis, energy security, and climate change, we must rethink human nature itself and redefine the meaning of the human journey.

So how is the society performing on the level of economy, ecology and social equity statuses?

The quality of education in Spain ranks 4th from below in the EU and highest dropout rate from schools. On the other hand, scientific production in Barcelona was ranked 10th in the world, and 21.6% of the Spanish innovative companies are Catalan.

On the level of energy, Spain has the 5th highest consumption rate in EU, whereby 26% of which go to houses, and only 4% of the produced energy is renewable.

In order to find the relations and the common variables forming the society, we decided to measure social welfare with a formula.
According to our research, the components: health, education, ecological footprint and employment had critical conditions in Barcelona and were drastically modifying the relations. We therefore considered them as the ingredients of the formula.

Because not every aspect revolves around money, and because people are the drivers of change on the level of economy, ecology, and geopolitics, we used an unconventional index: TIME.

After this formula we start to ask ourselvs what if we could increase education, or how about we could improve ecological foot print, how this changes will affect the formula results in our matrix.

After all this we start to think in a community that will introduces viruses to the people, spreading knowledge.

LymphoCity is a pilot project based on sharing, investing in talents, empathy and technology. The manifesto of this city is based on re-measuring the four pillars of the formula. For education, Self organized learning system will be the scheme’s foundation. For health, the basis are efficiency and just through controlling daily habits and consumptions through urban farming. The loop effect in consumption reducing, refurbishing, recycling…results in higher efficiency. For ecology, 3D printing medicine and customized mobility. In economy, product service capital and redistribution markets results in the consumers loosing the urge of ownership and trust will make the system successful through reputation capitals, which are the social capital in Lymphocity. This will also result in higher investments and less wealth gaps.

‘There is nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place’ Banksy

So the idea of our community is not actually a Utopia which is usually idealistic and unrealistic, rather take the essence of innovation in the societies and try to mold our own. This allows the evolution of this community with time and needs of its inhabitants, Innovation is a progressive phenomena.

 Wall graffitti by local artist (gypsies) in the streets of Sacromonte, Spain

The program of the lymphoCity is based on 5 cells: Living cell, balance cell, management cell, learning cell and producing cells.

Watch video here: https://vimeo.com/91720593

This is a short story about a typical day in Lymphocity                                                                                              ”Yesterday I was invited to LymphoCity. So I parked my car outside and grabbed a bicycle to enter. First impression I had was how fun the environment is; people were reading in gardens, children were playing, exhibitions outdoors, music, harmonious with nature, was inspiring everybody. So I met my friend next to the basketball court and we went for lunch in the common room. There, everybody was preparing their food which they harvested from the urban farms in the morning. We had our vegetarian meal and went for a tour. The education cell was next to his private bedroom and next to it was the research lab where he was downloading the recipe for his afternoon medicine. Later, his son joined us and told us about his knowledge hub self organized experience along with a group of his mates. Then his phone rang to alarm him that his energy consumption at his room was exceeding limit. The alarm was sent by the management tower that was right behind us…”