Dr David Goeury, Sorbonne University

Oasis societies have established multi-millennia microclimates in contexts of extreme aridity and heat, through the implementation of urban planning that combines dense housing and intensive agriculture. They allied themselves with singular plants and developed complex technologies mobilizing local resources. Oasis agri-urban systems are based on interlocking circular economies linking construction and agriculture, while also acting as relays for the great land-based trade routes. These oasis societies have been progressively disqualified in favor of an industrial-urban metabolism based on fossil fuels and the mobilization of materials from all over the world. Yet these industrial-urban metabolisms are incapable of establishing livable microclimates. On the contrary, they generate high levels of local air, water and soil pollution. They also generate enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. Today’s urgent need to adapt large cities means that hypothetical technological solutions appear incapable of reducing global warming. On the other hand, oasis metabolism is proving to be a source of palaeoinnovation – the possibility of drawing inspiration from past innovations to define a liveable future. We’ll be looking at two ways of establishing new, sustainable agri-urban metabolisms: the reuse of treated wastewater and eco-construction. We’ll show how it’s possible to move away from industrial logics linking extractivism and waste demultiplication and set up looping logics instead.