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John Thackara2022-10-04T09:23:48+00:00May 15th, 2020|urban-rural|
In this China keynote I describe three enabling conditions for system change: a capacity for ecological thinking; a focus on social infrastructure (rather than the concrete kind); and a shift of focus from place making, to place connecting.
John Thackara2022-10-04T09:23:49+00:00May 14th, 2020|most read|
Social Food Forum | The Internet of Things and Earth Repair | Design Agenda for Bioregions | Peak Car | Re-wilding the Bauhaus | The City as a Living System (a selection of my texts selected for publication by Resilience magazine)
John Thackara2022-10-04T09:23:50+00:00May 13th, 2020|earth repair, urban-rural|
Paving over the soil, and filling our lives with media, obscured our interdependency with living systems. We must learn to think of the places where we live as ecosystems, not as machines. (This was my first keynote in Shanghai)
John Thackara2022-10-04T09:23:52+00:00May 12th, 2020|most read|
The word ‘transformation’ sounds uncontroversial - but does any of us has the right to transform somebody else’s life without them being part of the process? (An interview at Alison Clarke's Victor Papanek exhibition in Barcelona)
John Thackara2023-04-28T11:49:58+00:00December 10th, 2019|newsletter|
Tree-consciousness | Cotton Capitalism in India | 32 Case Study Collections | Learning journeys | Water museums | Social fermentation | Shanghai’s BIOfarm | Bioregional fiber economies
John Thackara2022-10-04T10:09:43+00:00November 1st, 2019|urban-rural|
Takeaways from the big Urban-Rural exhibition I curated in China: Urban and Rural are one place, not two | the same goes for Analogue and Digital | A farm is not a factory - it's a social and ecological system | my definition of 'Sustainable Fashion' | Old knowledge and new tech are not a choice - we need both.
John Thackara2022-10-04T10:09:44+00:00October 28th, 2019|urban-rural|
(Press Release) Many people want to reconnect with nature and rural life - but cannot move out of the city for good. Zhangyan Harvests Festival in Shanghai, in November, is filled with practical ways to reconnect the two worlds. Located in a beautiful high-tech agricultural dome, an exhibition called Urban-Rural features a dazzling array of real-world projects.
Kris2022-10-04T10:09:46+00:00October 3rd, 2019|newsletter|
Rewilding AI | Bioregional design | Social Food Atlas | Back to the Land Reader | Meetups and Residencies chez nous
admin2025-06-30T07:57:51+00:00July 4th, 2019|
150 word summary – [continue …]
John Thackara2022-10-04T10:09:49+00:00June 8th, 2019|food systems, urban-rural|
Some of my more popular talks on video: From Biomedicine to Bioregion - The Geographies of Care | Thinking Like a Forest | Future Ways of Living | The Skills We need | Regenerative City | Social Farming
John Thackara2023-07-23T09:41:02+00:00June 3rd, 2019|newsletter|
My research agenda in China: Care. Value. Place | Rewilding the Bauhaus | Social Food Forum takeaways | "Making as Connecting" - text for Atelier Luma book
John Thackara2022-10-06T16:55:45+00:00May 18th, 2019|food systems, urban-rural|
Annie Proulx on Barkskins | Simone Weil on The Need for Roots | Pamela Mang on Storying of Place | Jane Memmott on Ecosystem Interactions | Arturo Escobar on Buen Vivir | Gloria E. Anzaldúa on weaving | Ann Whiston Spirn on Bacterial Urbanism | Margaret Wheatley on Emergence | Molly Scott Cato on Gaian Economics | and many more
John Thackara2022-10-10T13:05:48+00:00May 15th, 2019|food systems, knowing, urban-rural|
Drawing on my work organising Doors of Perceptions and xskools in 20 countries, the following three research topics are the focus of my contribution at Tongji University in Shanghai (D&I): Care. Value. Place | Urban-Rural Reconnection | Knowledge ecologies and scale
John Thackara2022-10-04T10:10:09+00:00October 31st, 2018|development, knowing, most read, urban-rural|
A cultural disconnection between the man-made world and the biosphere [continue …]
John Thackara2023-04-18T07:32:22+00:00April 28th, 2018|care|
Wellbeing is intimately linked to connection - to other people, but also to place, and the living systems that inhabit it. Relational design creates those connections (I helped design this Masters in Relational Design course for Bangor University; at this time - September 2022 - it has not been re-started since Covid).
John Thackara2022-10-07T10:21:32+00:00March 19th, 2018|most read, moving, urban-rural|
Peak Car | Cloud Commuting | Gram Junkies | Green Tourism | Caloryville: The Two Wheeled City | From Bike Chain to Blockchain | From Autobahn to Bioregion | A Tale of Two Trains | From My Car to Scalar | Is an environmentally neutral car possible?
John Thackara2023-05-17T06:46:06+00:00December 17th, 2017|newsletter|
Learning the phrase "Whatever Makes Your Dough Rise" was one of many gifts I brought back from a Fellows' retreat at the Good Work Institute in the US. What makes my dough rise is helping people reconnect with the land at the scale of the bioregion. Here are some examples of that work.
John Thackara2022-10-04T10:10:13+00:00October 23rd, 2017|moving|
Two hundred people per second now climb onto a dockless bike somewhere in China. The bigger story? We may have reached a peak-car tipping point - a moment of system transformation - that's been slowly 'brewing' for a very long time. (This text follows my keynote at Seoul Smart Mobility International Conference).
John Thackara2023-04-21T16:33:29+00:00October 21st, 2017|civic ecology, earth repair|
On a recent visit to @IAAC in Barcelona, I was charmed by their Smart Citizen platform. It enables citizens to monitor levels of air or noise pollution around their home or business. This innovation is impressive - but it leaves a difficult question unanswered: Under what circumstances will possession of this data contribute to the system transformation that we so urgently need?
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