What will you work on?
“The Ruralia think tank was created during the 2020 lockdown with the intent of creating and discussing desirable and utopian ideas of future, which we deem urgent and necessary in this age of dystopian visions according to which the future is crowded with imminent and irreversible disasters. Ruralia speaks to us from 2081, a temporal horizon that allows for thinking freely outside the box of any currently existing systems, taking our distances not only in time but also in space by moving outside the cities, where most of what we know has been conceived. From now to 2081, Ruralia will commit to developing and fulfilling possible visions of resilience, survival, rebirth, i.e. prototypes of Third Paradise”.
Cristiano Bianchi, architect and president of the Ruralia association
Welcome to Ruralia
Planet Earth survived 2050, the foreseen date for the start of the collapse, or point of no return, and has found a new balance.
People have started populating abandoned villages and rural areas, creating small communities in which everybody is not only responsible for themselves, but also for the others.
The previous political and economic systems, which had led humanity to the verge of disintegration and irreversible disaster, have been defeated. New movements have been born which have reclaimed a future based on three principles: humanity, nature and technology. These new collective ideals have also found expression in art, philosophy and literature. People have started believing again in progress, in a better future.
In this new course, people have started organising their work from home, growing their own food and producing the energy they need in sustainable ways. They have started using new technologies to improve daily life, making more time for themselves and for their friends and families.
They have rediscovered or reinvented their identity, while the shared identity of each community has become more and more important, to the point of defining the mission of the community itself. These new rural communities have learnt to protect their own identity and their own data, eluding surveillance and supervision. The communities have come into contact with one another associating in a new local and global network.
Life in cities has also improved: thanks to a lower density of population, both traffic and pollution have drastically reduced, and the pandemic has subsided. Flats have been merged into bigger housing units, which has allowed for working easily from home and for the creation of new congregational spaces.
Technology, not conceived as private property anymore, has become open and public. In 2051, in fact, the big tech companies, held responsible for violating human rights, were transformed into non-profit organisations, and their economic surplus redistributed thanks to the creation of the Common Global Fund for Research and Development. The following thirty years have therefore been characterised by new researches and great discoveries in the fields of IT, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biology, medicine, new means of transport and communication, and energy production. Automation has relieved human beings of heavy and dangerous jobs, allowing everybody to focus on study and research. That was the start of a new technological era, not aimed at production and economic gain anymore, but at the improvement of human, animal and vegetal life. Every aspect of daily life has considerably improved.
During the Trembling Age, seven new rural communities formed in Tuscany, establishing, in 2051, the federation RURALIA.
Ruralia has become the model for new life on Earth and for a new global political order, not based on nation states anymore, but on connections between ‘real communities’, united by the same principles and objectives.
In 2040 the decline of the whole planet started to slow down, in 2050 global warming stopped, in 2060 the Earth started regenerating and in 2070 environmental conditions rapidly and unexpectedly started to improve, and so did the quality of life. A new balance between man and nature was developing.
Today, 1st October 2081, humanity and planet Earth are safe.
Welcome to Ruralia.
Ruralia Manifesto (signed on Pianosa on 20th February 2051)
1) Ruralia is the first experimental federation of Neo-Rural Communities.
2) Ruralia’s objective is to develop a new fair and sustainable model of life on our planet, centred on man, nature and technology, and constituting the basis for a new global socio-political organisation.
3) Ruralia is a democratic and meritocratic federation based on study and research, which believes in automation as instrument to relieve humanity from the oppression of work.
4) Ruralia’s seven founding communities are: Castelnuovo Val di Cecina/Larderello, Pianosa, Buriano, Lucchio, Bacchionero, Lamole and Poggio di Santa Cecilia.
5) Each community of the federation has a different mission contributing to Ruralia’s general mission.
6) Each community must be defined by its identity, interests and common goals, and must be small enough to make every citizen responsible towards the others.
7) Regardless of their geographical position, communities with similar missions and interests can group together in specific federations to work on common objectives of global relevance.
8) Ruralia is a non-profit organisation financed by the Common Global Fund.
9) Ruralia believes in Neo Ruralism: it invests in technology and farming in view of improving human, animal and vegetal life on the planet.
10) Ruralia believes in Fragilism, which is based on the protection of human nature and its intimacy, of biodiversity and the environment. It operates in solidarity and care for the others, refusing competition.
11) Ruralia supports the Adaptive Community Movement, with which it shares principles like the abolition of the nation states and the creation of a global federation of ‘real communities’, intending to represent its first experimental model.
