Urbánika and the climate-positive bus

Agenda

1. TL;DR: Climate positive bus?
2. Architectural plans, render, and the climate-positive devices,
3. Budget,
4. The self-management course,
5. The LATAM tour: an opportunity for your regen project to gain adoption, feedback, or partnerships
6. We are looking for you!

1. TL;DR: Climate-positive bus

As Urbánika will travel 40 cities across 20 countries with a 12 meter long bus, we want to make the most positive impact we can kilometer by kilometer and city by city.

How? While outside is the school area, the whole interior design has closed cycles where waste is turned into ingredients for another process.

Thanks to the help of highly committed architects and engineers, we are able to carry in the bus ecotech that turn:

Grey waters into clean water to wash dishes, cloths, take a shower, and even drink it! 💧 Organic waste into biogas to cook! and fertilizer to gift or sell 🌻 Solar energy into electricity 🌞 Cooking oil into fuel for the bus! 🚌

We have three goals with this climate-positive transformation:

1. Show that regenerative practices can be achieved without sacrificing lifestyle,
2. Inspire construction professionals, neighbors, municipal authorities, and business people to make the shift!,
3. Facilitate the shift through: a. sharing the blueprints of the bus and the tech installed, b. giving immersive tours within the bus, c. offering "Do It Yourself/Together" workshops to implement some of these practices / technologies.

If you aren't reading anything else, please read only this: We are driving over 10,000 Km, visiting 40 cities in 20 countries. Imagine the mindset change that can be achieved when decision makers from these places get to know that...

by using cooking oil during our trip we are preventing ~600,000 liters of water from being polluted... how would they re-design their cities to include recycled cooking oil as an alternative fuel?

by turning our organic waste (~803kg/year) into cooking gas, we are avoiding the pollution of soil and water, easing the recycling process of non-organic solid waste, and producing energy that could be sold...how could cities, offices, restaurants, and neighborhoods take advantage of this practice?

by turning gray waters into clean water we can reuse 70% of it instead of wasting it!

We hope that this bus inspires the actual building of SolarPunk Cities. We need your help to make it happen, we are very close and now we have a team that shares this same passion and vision.

2. Architectural plans, render, and the climate-positive devices,

Take a look at the overall design of bus!

Since GG18, we have been tirelessly working on building the plan of the bus, and looking for architects and engineers that were aligned and motivated with the challenge of converting our DINA 1993.

The path was not straightforward, but after many trials and errors, we are incredibly happy to share that Carlos and Mariana from 9 Viento Arquitectos are now part of Urbánika’s team!

This incredible couple came like a ray of sunshine and has conquered our hearts with their motivation and proactiveness - nothing is impossible, and since day 1 they have been working with all their passion and knowledge in making Urbanika’s bus a reality.

Important: the architectural blueprint is licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal and available to be downloaded and used by anyone worldwide. You can access it at our Github here.

The drawings show the climate-positive specifications, hope you like them! Although the designs are not yet final, we are proud of the achievements up to date.

If you want to see an example from another adventurer that went from Canada to Argentina employing only used cooking oil, check this video:

https://youtu.be/0i8kz2r2xNw?t=169

We have contacted him, and also, we have found a Mexican-made system that does the same!! yeiih!!

Wanna see more? Check our Twitter, by the time you are reading this, you might see some other updates!

3. Budget

The architects and engineers have given us a total budget of $32K USD. This budget covers the entire climate-positive transformation. The remaining budget we have from GGBeta and GG18 after buying the bus and paying the architects is about $10K, that budget is enough to cover the start of the transformation works, which most likely will begin by the end of this GG19.

However, to finish the transformation we need another $22K. Please, consider supporting us to help reach this budget!

4. The self-management course

This long bus adventure has a purpose - to spread Urbánika’s course directly where people are.

We want to see emerge a mycelia of self-managed cities, and that will only happen if the units of a city (the neighborhoods) and its change makers (municipal councils, universities, activist orgs and businesses) learn and experience peer governance, commoning, and the use of open-source web3 tech.

Urbánika's course on self-management is being developed. We have an additional grant only for this at the Web3 and Community round. If you are able to help us there too, we will be very grateful.

A bit of encouraging context:

A couple of weeks ago, a big real estate group from Querétaro, México contacted us. They've built 200 condominiums (that hold from 250 to 2500 houses each). They want to decentralize the decision-making of these (neighborhood management is not their business, but building houses) and they want our help!

We expect to start the LATAM tour with good reviews and recommendations from all these people! Wish us luck, and support us if it's in your possibilities, please!

5. The LATAM tour: our vision to accelerate the adoption and improvement of regen and open source initiatives

As you know, we are visiting 40 cities in 20 countries. We are staying about 1-3 months per place, that means, about 5 years of tour.

The LATAM Tour is a traveling fest with workshops, demo days, conferences, job fair, music, food, movies, and art. All related to coordination improvement, open source tech, SolarPunk narratives, postCapitalist patterns, ReFi examples, metacrisis awareness, DAO onboarding, and artivism.

If you... developed ReFi or open source solutions, produced educational and inspiring content to tackle the metacrisis, have job offerings or anything that adds value to society...

then contact us! We'll love to work together in delivering real value where it is most impactful.

6. We are looking for you!

1. wanna join? We are looking for team members to join in facilitating the emergence of self-managed, autonomous, and regenerative cities.

If you love urban design, LARP or boardgame design, self-management, public relations, learning experiences, ruby on rails, or web3 development, pls contact us! your help is meaningful and well appreciated.

2. wanna support? If it's in your possibilities, pls consider donating 0.0089 ETH.

The dream of realizing the first-ever postCapitalist traveling school that is also a climate-positive showroom is happening. Your donation will greatly help us reach the goal.

3. wanna ask us something?

Tune into the SolarPunk Guild's Gitcoin Community Radio, we’ll be talking about the trip, the eco-technologies we are using, the challenges ahead, and the LATAM tour!