In a crisis, re-start from… patch! Possible learnings from P.M.’s social ecological utopia bolo

The ongoing social, economic, ecological, and now health crises are not always present in urban and regional planning. Emergencies suggest cities are more fragile than we believe, exhibiting poor sustainability and resilience. Urban dwellers live far away from where livelihoods are produced, have scarce control on their food, depend on waged jobs that can just be lost, and rely on averagely weak community links. In such a context, this chapter digs out the urban-rural implications of a utopia, “bolo”, described by Hans Widmer (also known as P.M.) in the aftermath of the 1970s’ economic crisis, when the first ecological warnings were also emerging. A bolo is a spatial organisation concept that can be applied to either the city or the countryside, suggesting forms and scales that may ease social cohesion and local food production. It is not a proper plan for a given area; it is instead a flexible model, addressing the cultural, social, economic, and geographical aspects of human settlements that supposedly pursue sustainability and resilience. In systems thinking, we can say that a bolo targets our mental models. Its claimed leveraging potential is here explored toward possibly groundbreaking planning and hopefully deeper debates on cities and food production.