I wrote the following text for a new book, Human Cities: Challenging The City Scale (published by Cite du Design and Clear Village). The Greek physician Hippocrates described the effects of “airs, waters, and places” on the health of individuals and communities. For a short period, the industrial age distracted us from this whole-systems understanding […]
city & bioregion
From Neighbourhood To Bioregion: The City as a Living System
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Field-to-Face: Beauty in Biorefining
At Pontio, in North Wales, a new Masters by Research in Relational Design (#api_MRRD) is designed to help you make a positive step-change in a live wellness project for a region. The elements of a thriving bio-economy exist in Wales – but they are disconnected. One project scenario could be a product-service platform that links […]
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Back To The Land 2.0 – A Design Agenda For Bioregions
What’s needed is a new story in which care for the places where we live is a practical focus for solidarity. In that spirit, a series of xskool workshops called Back To The Land 2.0 brought local actors together, in diverse locations, to flesh out this new story of place with live examples. The text […]
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of Druids, Biorefineries, Adventure Sport, Ecomuseums, Code Clubs…
I’ve been invited by Pontio Innovation to make a return visit to North West Wales and continue our exploration of Innovation In Small Nation. On Tuesday 6 June I’m doing a public talk, too: here is the announcement. BACK TO THE LAND 2.0 Tuesday 6 June, 18:30h Main Lecture Theatre, Level 5, Pontio, Bangor, Gwynedd. […]
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Earth Repair In Your Bioregion: Short Course at @SchumacherColl
Ecological Restoration by Design 26-30 June @SchumacherColl In the leave things better economy now emerging, ecological restoration can add new kinds of value to planning and design. But how? This short course, which I am leading together with Lisa Maria Enzenhofer, will introduce you to a constellation of real-world ecological restoration projects, framed by their […]
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A roof, a skill, a market: The multiple dimensions of scale
“Beware the scale trap”. In a Letter To Philanthropists Parker Mitchell, a former CEO of Engineers Without Borders in Canada, advised potential donors that “scale is important, but don’t rush it. Most good ideas take time – to iron out the details, to bring down the costs, to be tested in different environments”. Organic demand-driven scale will […]
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Manifesto For Utopias Are Over: Cities Are Living Systems
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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The 72 most cheering things I learned on my book tour
SEPTEMBER 2016 Newsletter Since my book How To Thrive In the Next Economy was published – a year ago this week – I’ve had conversations about it at forty talks and workshops. With thanks to my diverse but always generous hosts, this email is to share the 72 most interesting and cheering things that I […]
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How To Thrive In the Next Economy: Preface to the Chinese edition
A cultural disconnection between the man-made world and the biosphere lies behind the grave challenges we face today. We either don’t think about rivers, soils, and biodiversity at all – or we treat them as resources whose only purpose is to feed the economy. This ‘metabolic rift’ – between the living world, and the economic […]