Auto-suffisance

The car — the child of our society.

Each year, Belgians buy at least four times as many new cars as they have new children.

Each year in Belgium some 500 000 new cars are registered, while only about 115 000 new children are added to the population register. [1]

Cars are devouring the space intended for our children, for our existence. The limited space available in Belgium has been subjugated by cars: their spider's web is denser here than anywhere else in Europe. Space in our country is seriously fragmented by roads.[2]

Cars suck up energy and make our society dependent. They consume a quarter of our society's energy, and 80% of the time[3] they produce mostly heat (85%), instead of propelling their own mass (15%). [4]
They make us dependent, because 70% of the oil we consume comes from outside Europe. [5]

Moreover, new cars are becoming heavier and heavier, bigger and more powerful. Belgians in particular have subjected their living space to the dominance of cars, by building as many roads as possible, and their leaders are prepared to continue doing so. However, more and more cars are provoking the human beings who live in town, by pretending that they can follow the humans who want to escape from the town, anywhere, even to the desert, the forests, the waterways, beginning with the pavements in town...

A group of town-dwellers have formed a group called "auto"nomy, and have succeeded in catching a car and transforming it for you — not into a robot, but into a kitchen garden.
The group has won back a few square metres, which will be placed at the service of anyone seeking their own autonomy, through urban gardening, social contacts and a pleasant environment where — who knows? — you might even meet the future father or mother of your future children! [6]

1. ^ Source NIS 2006

2. ^ Belgium has 169 kilometres of road per million inhabitants, compared with 140 km of road per million inhabitants in neighbouring countries.

3. ^ 80% of car journeys take place in town.

4. ^ A combustion engine has an efficiency of just 15% in urban traffic. That means that when you fill the tank up with 50 litres of fuel, only 7.5 litres will be used to move the mass of the car, while the rest will be lost in the form of heat. Source : Goederen en Personenvervoer p185 , Joeri Van Mierlo en Cathy Marcharis, 2005.

5. ^ Source Eurostat 2004.

6. ^ Chance, fate, the stars.