The MUSIC project

This is what I do and these are the folk whom I work with. When I moved to Luxembourg I had no clue I'd be involved in something like this; all I can say is that I feel very fortunate.

Most of this video was shot back in April at Ludwigsburg, a partner city council, during one of the project meetings. These meetings are one of the highlights of the project, a group of highly committed technicians and public servants from six different European states working together for two days on a common goal is an experience like no other in my career. The subject of Transition is so absorbing and the folk around you are so in tune that discussions continue throughout the day, even during the supposed gastronomic and social breaks. I always return home totally worn out, but with a motivation boost that keeps me going right up to the following meeting.

One of the striking aspects of this project is the quality of the civil servants working in the city councils involved. In Portugal civil servant is unfortunately synonym of a low qualified professional that by one reason or another managed to assess the state work force, just to crystallise in a guaranteed position and slowly loose contact with reality. In the MUSIC project I work with engineers and social science professionals that are perfectly up to date with science and technology and are objectively able to contribute to the research side of the project.

Not everything has been easy though, many technological obstacles have been tackled, and many more will come. The most difficult has been to marry the process of Transition Management with the spatial technology of Urban Planning. In first place for the former had an head start over the later, but also because plugging the practical side of social science to theoretical engineering aspects has not been so evident. But this is a research project for a reason, and I sincerely expect some relevant outcomes for the process of the energy transition at the urban scale to come through.

Although I pretty much appreciate writing for the web, working on the MUSIC project I have a palpable impact on the necessary design of a new society for the XXI century. For more details on how these front-runner cities are transitioning to a fossil free paradigm please visit the the MUSIC project website.

The MUSIC movie with Dutch subtitles

The MUSIC movie with German subtitles

The MUSIC movie with French subtitles