Toulouse: “La Belle Ville” the ideal future city of Manon and François
The Toulousans Manon Turina and François Marqués cast off for a year to discover initiatives elsewhere that were supposed to improve future life in cities. Result: a thrilling documentary film to discover in March 2023.
Can the ideal city exist? Maybe not, but we can get close. This is what the documentary film, “La Belle Ville”, directed by two young people from Toulouse aged 26 and 27, Manon Turina and François Marquès, which should normally be released in arthouse cinemas in March 2023, relates. result of a year-long road movie, 70 hours of videos and seven months of post-production. A titanic work to present this film in festivals with the hope of winning prizes. An adventure born during confinement in March 2020. “Stuck in London, we realized that once all the tricks disappeared (café, cinema, shops, etc.), urban daily life was difficult to live with, explains Manon. The concrete is everywhere, the greenery is lacking, the air quality is poor, the noise is too much and therefore living like this cannot satisfy”. Browsing on Google, consulting books, the duo discovers with surprise that many initiatives, sometimes revolutionary, are already in place in several countries, created by communities, citizens, private companies. “We then wanted to get to know these people and better understand their ideas for reconnecting the city with nature. A way to give meaning to our lives. In October 2020, the duo returned to Toulouse and decided to leave everything: “After crowdfunding on Ulule, we followed audiovisual training for three months to share our experience via social networks, podcasts, etc. And in April 2021, we made our trip through a first city, Mexico City (Mexico) which, as we know, is in the top ten of the most polluted cities”. There, these two former students of Toulouse School of Management (TSM), will meet several inspired and inspiring project leaders: “We put our suitcases at the Huerta Roma Verde, an oasis of greenery managed by Piero and Paco, nestled in a green area of Mexico City. Composed of 100% recycled materials, this third place is a laboratory that experiments with all types of innovative and alternative solutions to improve the city of tomorrow. Following the example of vertical gardens installed on walls, sources of shade and freshness”.
“Aquaponic greenhouses allowing the cultivation of plants and fish in the same system”
Then it is the city of Chicago (United States). There they marvel at the green roofs of the buildings. “We also meet 80-year-old Ken Dunn, a fascinating circular economy designer, who for more than fifty years has been collecting food waste from restaurants and turning it into compost to clean up the city’s soil, to then build sumptuous farms urban. This fascinating octogenarian thus created employment and social ties. We felt a real crush on him.” Back in Europe, they marvel at the shared gardens (workers and collectives) of Berlin. Solidarity spaces very popular with the inhabitants. In Brussels (Belgium), Manon and François get to know schoolchildren who happily attend class in micro-forests. “We also spoke with people who do urban agriculture as their job. By paying in particular for mushroom farms in the basements of the city which produce more than 6 tons of mushrooms/month. As well as urban farms on the roofs in closed circuit, decorated with large greenhouses in aquaponics, allowing the culture of plants and fish in the same system: the waste produced by the fish is used as a source of nutrients by the plants. In fact, a pure and simple imitation of what happens in lakes, ponds and rivers.
In Zurich (Switzerland), the duo meets a “peaceful revolutionary”, a resident who for more than forty years has greened the streets and spaces everywhere. Then it was Milan (Italy), the benchmark city for door-to-door waste collection from residents. There also to make compost. “All of these ideas appealed to us. Far from being utopian, they can all materialize to make La Belle Ville”, discovered the duo who have not resumed their life before and hope a lot from this film to raise public awareness.
Manon and François thank AccorInvest for hosting as well as Crédit Agricole and Toulouse School of Management (TSM), Toulouse Métropole and the Occitanie region for their support.