HUBS (Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Base Requirements for Approved Hubs
How Can You Find a Partner Camp?
Steps to Form a Hub
HUBS Timeline
Important Things to Consider When Forming a Hub
Resources Shared in HUBS
How Placement Will Map Hub Requests
Hub Layout Requirements

HUBS (Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability) is a resource-sharing system first introduced in 2022 to help camps plan and share resources to support Burning Man Project’s goal to handle waste ecologically, be regenerative, and be carbon negative by 2030.

HUBS is built to co-locate camps who have partnered to efficiently share resources such as water, power, tools, and transportation. The HUBs process is not a way to request your friends as neighbors. If you mainly want to be next to your friends or to just co-program events, do not apply for HUBS and simply request each other as neighbors in your Placed Camp Questionnaire.

Camps must meet Placement Criteria and be selected by Placement as a theme camp or support camp before being considered for a hub. Only camps who are selected for placement will be considered for the hub, and it is possible for not every camp within a hub be selected for Placement, so we encourage camps to focus on their community contributions first and foremost.

A bird’s eye view of Black Rock City, 2019 (Photo by Scott London)

Base Requirements for Approved Hubs

  1. At least one camp placed within the last three years must be part of the hub. Placement will not approve a hub composed of all or mostly new camps.
  2. Every camp within a hub needs to have frontage on a city street, a camp cannot be buried within the hub. Placement generally maps in 50’ increments. If a group is interested solely in focusing on providing a resource like power for a hub, they should be included in the footprint of one of the camps in the hub that is a theme camp or support camp.
  3. Hubs are contained within a single block. Placement will not put a camp in the same hub across a the street from one another. If adjacency is not required, please do not request a hub and simply ask to be near each other in the Placed Camp Questionnaire.
  4. Each camp is treated as an individual and will have its own flagged boundary lines demarcating its space on playa. Placement expects the frontage and most interactivity to be within the camp as it was mapped. Internal hub boundaries can be crossed or shared with hubmates at will; however, the mapped camp is still accountable for any MOOP discovered by Restoration.

How Can You Find a Partner Camp?

  1. You may already be friends with other camps or might have befriended some on playa — building on those relationships can lead to the best pairings. If you had a great experience with a previous neighbor and their email address you sharpied on your arm is long washed away, email us at placement@burningman.org and we can help with re-introductions.
  2. The Camp Listing Archive is searchable by year, by camp name, by hometown, and by keyword. If the camp has submitted a public URL or email address, you can use that to contact the camp.
  3. Global Regional Directory lists Regional Contacts whose role is to help local Burners connect with each other. There are contacts in almost every continent and many host happy hours where you can meet Burners near you!
  4. Social media platforms where Burners meet. We do advise that you have some relationship or trust built with any potential hub-mates if you find other camps this way as you’ll be living by one another and sharing resources and costs.

 Steps to Form a Hub

  1. Decide which of the camp leads will be the HUBS Liaison for your hub. This person designate themselves as the HUBS Liaison and name the camps within your hub in the Placed Camp Questionnaire.
  2. Fill out the Placed Camp Questionnaire by the last Thursday in March!
  3. Lay it out! We need a map of how camps prefer to be positioned in relation to each other. The HUBS Liaison won’t be able to complete the questionnaire until they’ve uploaded your hub layout. Read about layouts below for instructions on this.
  4. We will review and follow up with any additional information we may need.

HUBS Timeline

  1. Last Thursday in March: Placed Camp Questionnaire due for all camps that wish to form a hub by 12pm (noon) PT / 3pm ET / 9pm CET
    1. Support camps in a hub must also complete the Placed Camp Questionnaire by the theme camp deadline of the last Thursday in March rather than the April deadline for support camps that are not in a hub.
  2. May: Placement maps Black Rock City and determines hub locations
  3. June: Placement notifies camps and hubs of their approximate locations

Important Things to Consider When Forming a Hub

Take care in deciding who to form a hub with and make sure it’s for the right reason. Beneficial reasons may include sharing resources between camps to lower costs, creating efficiencies for your camps, or  furthering the sustainability efforts of our temporary city.

Get to know the camps you have had a good rapport with on playa; ask what their addresses or sectors have been in the past. Some important questions you might ask about each other include:

  • Did your prior BRC placement locations mesh with where you want to be placed?
  • Is your interactivity complementary or will your schedules clash with each other?
  • Are your preferred sound levels complementary? Perhaps one is loud and one is a quiet camp.
  • Does your camp have kid-friendly events while the proposed pair camp is an adult-only camp?

You may have camps that you have requested to be neighbors with and haven’t been placed adjacent with; please remember, there may be one or more reasons that each of your camps have been given the addresses they have received and forming a hub instead of simply requesting to be near each other could affect the location of your camp in ways you don’t prefer.

Shared Resources in HUBS:

  • Power (Generator)
  • Power (Renewable/Solar)
  • Waste/Grey Water Containment and Removal
  • Fresh Water
  • Shower
  • Kitchens/Food
  • Transportation (People/Rideshare)
  • Transportation (Cargo)
  • Storage
  • Tools/Equipment
  • Heavy Equipment
  • Sound Equipment
  • Medical Supplies
  • Fuel
  • Shade
  • Structures for Public Interactivity
  • Performance Stage
  • Lighting
  • Common Areas
  • Access or Fire Lanes
  • Interactivity
  • Leave No Trace Efforts
(Photo by Jared Ficklin)

How Placement Will Map Hub Requests

Black Rock City is divided into sectors (2:00 & 10:00, 3:00, 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, & 9:00) and a lot of thought and care is taken in looking at the macro-scale of the sector itself as well as the micro-scale of the neighborhoods on a one-to-two block radius. The Placement team thinks about how camps of different shapes and sizes fit together, interactivity throughout the day and night in each neighborhood, and how it all flows together. 

Being in a hub may influence where your camp is placed in BRC. If your camp is used to being on Esplanade and your united camps don’t warrant the same location, your hub may be placed in a lower profile area of the city. This can also work the other way around — you may prefer being back on H street, but your hub’s combination of camps may warrant a Plaza, for example. Make sure to talk about these possibilities with your potential hub-mates. Placement is unable to tell you in advance about where we might place your hub as that decision is made during the mapping process itself. You’ll find out your location when we announce addresses to all camps.

Keep in mind that once placement locations are announced, it is very difficult to move camps around. Moving one camp is hard, and moving multiple camps is even harder. Please alert Placement ASAP of any changes that occur to your hub (for example a camp decides to separate, or an additional camp wishes to join). We will do our best to accommodate, but may not always be able to.

Hub Layout Requirements

The Placement team needs to understand how the camps within each hub are physically configured. Please submit a map that details the preferred orientation of the camps to each other, indicate the frontage of each camp, and illustrate/label what your camps are sharing that requires the configuration (such as a power grid or an access lane).

We recommend your hub fit as much as you can within a rectangular shape with 4 corners. While we will try to work with your requested shapes, we may need to modify the configuration based on available space. Most BRC blocks have a depth of ~250’. Esplanade to A is ~400’ deep and E to F is ~450’ deep. Average length of full blocks is around 1000’.

Note: This is not your individual camp layout, which you will submit separately and has its own requirements and specifications. Please review the Camp Layouts page for more information on how to create a camp layout.

Layout Specs (see sample below)

  1. The HUBS Liaisons name and email should be at the top left
  2. The date or version should be at the top left
  3. List each camp in the hub and include the camp lead and email address
  4. Include the total dimensions of the hub
  5. Include the dimensions of each of the borders of the individual camps.
  6. Indicate camp frontages for each camp.
  7. Indicate fire and access lanes in your layout. Fire and Service Access Lane Requirements for each camp in your HUB can be referenced above.
  8. Indicate where adjacency between specific camps is necessary
  9. The camps should be easy to differentiate, use different colors or shading

Fuel Storage (for all camps) and Delivery Requirements (for camp receiving fuel through Burning Man’s Fuel Program)

  • Camps Must keep a clear path to generator(s)
  • A distance of 10 feet or greater must be maintained between any stored fuels (liquid fuels and compressed or liquified fuel gasses) and any combustible materials (e.g., shade structures or tents) or sources of ignition (cars, trailers, etc.).
  • A distance of 20 feet is required between liquid fuel (diesel, gasoline) storage areas and liquified petroleum gas (propane) storage areas.
  • No fuel storage area shall be closer than 50 feet from another fuel storage area.
  • A fire lane of 20 feet shall be kept free of obstructions to provide emergency access for fire vehicles if needed. Camps 100’ x 100’ and smaller are not required to have a fire lane.

If your hub plans to receive fuel delivery from the BRC Fuel Program this year (delivery is only available for dyed diesel generators of 30+ gallons per delivery and drums of fuel) please include your generator location on your hub layout. Your generator should be no more than 20 feet away from your frontage street with a straight access for the fuel hose to reach it from the road. If you are approved to have your generator on an access lane or you have a pre-flagged Service Alley, parameters must be at 20’ fire/servicing lane requirements from the access road or Service Alleys in order to be fueled. Fire/servicing lanes must not include any sharp turns or corners, trucks must be able to pass straight through to the street. There must be clear unobstructed access to the generator from either the street or access lane.

Hubs in BRC Fuel Program: Generator Location

If your hub plans to receive fuel delivery from the BRC Fuel Program this year (delivery is only available for dyed diesel generators of 30+ gallons per delivery and drums of fuel) please include your generator location on your hub layout.

  •  Your generator should be no more than 20 feet away from your frontage street with a straight access for the fuel hose to reach it from the road. 
  • If you are approved to have your generator on an access lane or you have a pre-flagged Service Alley, parameters must be at 20’ fire/servicing lane requirements from the access road or Service Alleys in order to be fueled. 
  • Fire/servicing lanes must not include any sharp turns or corners, trucks must be able to pass straight through to the street. There must be clear unobstructed access to the generator from either the street or access lane.

File Requirements

    • We will accept multi-page PDFs with one version of your HUB per page. Each page must meet the layout specs.
    • Maximum file size: 10 MB
    • Accepted file types: .jpg .jpeg .pjpeg .png .pdf
    • Include the day and month and HUBS Liaison’s name or playa name
    • Filename must not have spaces, please place underscores (_) between words.
    • Limit file name to 20 characters or less.
    • The file extension (i.e., .jpg) must be included
    • File format example: firstname_lastname_mm.dd.jpg

Click here to download a higher resolution pdf.