In this article, published in the special issue “L’erreur est urbaine” of Urbanités magazine (#17), Bastien Marchand and Philippe Bouteyre explore the concept of redirective ecology applied to the management of urban zombie infrastructure, which refers to elements with minimal usage lifespan but maximum waste lifespan.
The redirective ecology proposes a two-step approach to rethink the city. First : inheriting the technosphere while seeking to detach from this dependence. Then closing certain technospheric entities while taking care of vulnerable people.
The article presents an ongoing redirection initiative that considers the municipal swimming pool as a footprint of unsustainable urban habitat in the Anthropocene. It explores how understanding these attachments can help territorial communities adopt redirection strategies.
In the current energy and geostrategic context, the redirection perspective is more urgent than ever. Some communities have already taken temporary measures to close or reduce the energy consumption of their pools in response to this situation. Tourist and leisure sites, such as the Métabief ski resort, are also adopting redirection strategies. These examples are fertile areas of investigation for redirectionism.