I was asked to write a provocation for DAMN magazine in Italy. 1 Change and innovation are no longer about finely crafted ‘visions’ of some future place and time. Positive change happens when people reconnect – with each other, and with the biosphere – in rich, real-world, contexts. Rather than ask about utopias, I challenge […]
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Manifesto For Utopias Are Over: Cities Are Living Systems
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No organism is truly autonomous – including us
An interview with Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, the editor and publisher of STIR magazine. Current and back issues of the magazine are available in the online shop Jonny Gordon-Farleigh: Your new book, How to Thrive in the Next Economy, explores practical innovations in sustainability across the world. What stories would you pick out as the most instructive […]
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Bioregions: Notes On A Design Agenda
In myriad projects around the world, a new economy is emerging whose core value is stewardship, not extraction. Growth, in this new story, means soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient. These seedlings are cheering, but when it comes to binding diverse groups together around a common agenda, something more is needed. We need a compelling […]
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Socially Smart Sanitation
Ugly Indians don’t blame their fellow citizens, or politicians, or ‘the system’: They act first, and then they talk. They make it “our” problem, not “your” problem.
Also posted in care & health, social innovation & design
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The True And Hidden Costs Of Stuff
Do you simply love iPhones, wind turbines, cloud computing, and electric cars? Good, because the following may be of interest:
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How We Meet Is As Important As Why
This is the text of my talk at the OuiShare Festival in Paris today. Did any of you wander around in a group last night – trying to agree on a place to eat? Welcome to the sharing economy! Sharing is hard! And that’s just about one meal. Think about the food systems of a […]
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Keep Your Stuff Alive
The Tending and Grooming Station (below) is a wondrous collection of combs, brushes and other obscure (to me) gadgets. They are used to primp and revive pre-loved sweaters and cardigans that have been disfigured by bobbles and pilling – those unattractive fuzz balls that appear when short fibers misbehave on woolen garments. Every object has a dark […]
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Cloud Commuting
A two-year project in Belgium proposes new relationships between people, goods, energy, equipment, spaces, and value. Its design objective: a networked mobility ecosystem The signs on the small van describe the services it supports: Taxi; Pick-up; Delivery; Assistance; Vendor; Security; Rental. Seven functions, one vehicle. As imagined in a project in Belgium called Mobilotoop the van, when […]
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From Oil Age to Soil Age
The Design Museum in London opens at its new home this week with, as its centrepiece, an exhibition called Fear and Love curated by Justin McGuirk. I contributed the following text to the book. (Above: Debra Solomon examines nature’s internet at Schumacher College in England) Why we need a new story In 1971 a geologist […]