Creating Sustainable Futures for Southwestern Cities: The ProtoCity Approach in the Ciudad Juarez, Mexico/El Paso, Texas Metroplex - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 554

Urban eco-industrial intervention

Organic
solid waste Air/water Air/food Processing heating

Vertical water
treatment

Vertical food
production

Multi use solar
vertical drier

High rate
composting

FIGURE 31.14
Ecoindustrial interventions at the intensive urban scale using vertically integrated, metabolically connected,
industrial clusters used to economically support large space frame columns for the proposed ecoBalanced
urban portions of El Paso.

currency. At the personal level, wearable data retrieving enables the individual to receive
positive or negative feedback resulting in many levels of conscious behavior (Figure 31.15).
With “Similar to other activity we reward behavior that facilitates disease prevention
with the understanding that responsible completion of cycles, such as the water cycle,
prevents water born disease (see Figure 31.8). Figure 31.16 places this into the same sort of
cybernetic feedback diagrams that we used for the City of Austin.
We find compelling precedent using our protoScoping survey strategy for the concept of
alternative currency systems in operating economic systems at somewhat the same scale as
our own city. Examples abound such as one developed by Ralph Borsodi in the 1930s called
BerkShares in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, now available in five denominations,
accepted at more than 350 area businesses, and now reaching nearly 2.7 million bills in cir-
culation since 2006 making it the largest alternative currency network in the United States. 8
Other domestic alternative currency systems include Ithaca Hours of Ithaca, New York;
Detroit Cheers in Michigan; and Humboldt Community Currency and Dillo Dollar in
Austin, Texas. In Curitiba, Brazil the mass transit use is rewarded through a token-based
currency connecting organic food producers to waste recyclers to mass transit.
E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful suggests that these currency systems create “good
work” by supporting businesses that cater to local services, organically grown food, a range
of natural healing and health care methods and recycling. 9 As Mara Ortenburger explains,

It is legal to print and circulate an alternative currency as long as it looks different than
a U.S. dollar and using it is voluntary. Doing so can kick-start a sluggish regional econ-
omy by boosting sales of local goods and services. Because it cannot be spent at chain
stores or online shops, it stays in the community instead of disappearing to out-of-area
banks and corporate coffers. In addition, the nonprofit that manages the currency can
issue loans and grants to community groups. 10