As a word, “sustainable” made us feel good. But words, on their own, don’t make the planet healthier. We want want the real thing, not a verbal substitute. The 'real thing' is practical acts of care - for places, and for people
Apart from farming and tourism, what kind of work is available for young people in rural areas today? I talk with Shuchin Shu, an activist (with a Masters in Environmental Art) who heads the Yunhe Forest School in Zhonglu village in China’s Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Region.
A talk in Shanghai during the launch of Design Harvests 3, the urban-rural innovation programme. The idea of “designing for life” sounds meaningful – but what do those words mean in practice? Are there jobs are available in that space?
India’s Natural Farming movement is now active in 20 of India’s 29 states, and the Indian government has just launched an National Mission on Natural Farming. At this year’s Care, Value, Place #BITSDesignSchool at I asked, what practical acts of care might design offer to India’s Natural Farmers?
The following text is my keynote talk at last week’s World Design Cities Conference (WDCC25) in Shanghai. At that same event I was astonished - and delighted - to be awarded the Frontier Design Prize. This talk (video below) is a fair summary of the work being recognised by that award.
John Thackara Newsletter August 2025
“Balancing proximity and modernity” is the informal theme for our last MeetUp of the year which starts on 28 August (until 4 September).
I’m borrowing the words from Frédéric Bosqué who’s developing a rural transition neighborhood called Tera in the Aquitaine region of France. [continue …]
Emiliano Godoy discovers other reasons to produce than just feeding the economy. This text is my foreward to his new book El ABC del Diseño. It chronicles a 30 year career (so far) of learning-by-designing-and-making
“From urban ecological restoration, and 15-minute cities, to ‘the last mile’ in waste ecosystems, transformative change is happening all around us. This timely event in Mumbai spotlights next-generation green projects - and how design will make them stronger”
We ask real-world practitioners: What does bioregioning mean to you ? How does it catalyse/amplifiy your work? Which relationships are most important in your work?
Plans are being made to plant billions of trees – but who will care for them, and how? One answer: Green infrastructure is as much social, as it technical. That lesson informed the design of these urban ecology tools, equipment, and experiences.
This short talk is about an economy with caring for life as its centre, rather than extraction and production. I compare earth care to modern medical care, and suggest that looking is not the same as caring. I ask what design can learn from Care Ethics – and find inspiration [continue …]
A new course in Sweden asks, “what will a self-sufficient Hällefors Municipality taste like in 2030?” By turning ‘would-be-nice’ ideas into tangible prototypes, it turns ecological transition from an aspiration, into a practice. Included here: 20x emerging new livelihoods - from Edible Food Forests, to School-Farm Biocantines
You and I use more energy & resources in single month than our great-grandparents used during their whole lifetime. The science says we can thrive in future - but only if we meet our every day needs using 5% of the energy and material throughputs we’re using now. What are we supposed to do with that information?
Mapping Local Resources. Connecting Growers & Citizens. New Co-operatives. Urban-rural reconnection. (These videos introduce the annual Back To The Land 2.0 summer school, in Sweden, that I run together with Konstfack).
(This my review of Ezio Manzini's new book). You and I use more energy & resources in single month than our great-grandparents used during their whole lifetime. The science says we can only thrive in future by meeting our everyday needs using five percent of the energy and material throughputs we’re using now. That’s a Factor 20 reduction. What is anyone supposed to do with that information?
Village Hosts bring new social, economic and ecological life to small villages and their local economy. They create new livelihoods, and good work, in emerging urban-rural markets: positive-impact tourism, nature reconnection, adventure sports, farm-shares, learning journeys, wellness retreats, work-vacations, heritage trails, and more.
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.
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)
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.
(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.
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
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
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
My 6k words paper for She Ji. Keywords: Bioregion | Urban-rural reconnection | Civic ecology | Social infrastructure | Smart villages | System change | Knowledge ecologies
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 [continue …]
The Greek physician Hippocrates described the effects of “airs, waters, and places” on the health of individuals and communities. The industrial age distracted us from this whole-systems understanding of the world - but we are now learning again to think of cities as habitats, and as ecosystems, that co-exist on a single living planet. (Chapter for a new Cite du Design book)
Soil health, human health, microbiomes, biodiversity, the climate - they all are connected. Digital tools can help us perceive the living world - and care for it - in new ways. Design be transformative where citizen science, and digital craft, converge.
Founded in 1941, Outward Bound began as a school on the coast of Wales that trained seamen for the harsh life of working at sea. The model expanded to include outdoor, adventure-based, programs. Could Outward Bound be reinvented today as an urban-rural co-operation platform for today?
The elements of a thriving bio-economy exist in Wales - but they are disconnected. The country’s uplands, for example, are filled with grasses, and colourful wild flowers. One project scenario could be a product-service platform that links biorefining and beauty treatments.
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?
“The future will be all about cities” – say people who live in cities. Endlessly. Our xskools, in contrast, are about reconnecting with rural communities and looking, together, for ways ways to unlock value. Here is an invitation to check out our updated xskool page.
To effect the system change we yearn for, we need a shared purpose that diverse groups people can relate to, and support, whatever their other differences. My candidate for that connective idea is the bioregion. A bioregion re-connects us with living systems, and each other, through the places where we live. It acknowledges that we live among watersheds, foodsheds, fibersheds, and food systems – not just in cities, towns, or ‘the countryside’.
North West Wales has the potential to lead the world as a living laboratory for innovation where adventure sport, tourism, and wellness meet. To realise this potential, and turn ideas into new livelihoods and enterprise, the region's assets need to be combined and connected in new ways. But how? (I've been invited to gjve a talk).
Ecological restoration adds new kinds of value to planning and design. On this short course, I introduce you to projects, framed by their bioregion, in urban, peri-urban and rural contexts: regenerative agriculture; civic ecology; green infrastructure; river recovery; wetlands restoration; blue-green corridors; pollinator pathways; urban forests; and the use of plants to restore polluted soil
“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. [continue …]
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, [continue …]
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 [continue …]
I was invited to give a keynote in Milan to the general assembly of the International Biennials Association. My talk was called Life’s Work: Biennials and Regeneration. Here below is a summary:
The Belgian magazine Rekto Verso recently ran a review of my book by Mia Vaerman (in Dutch) with the title “Terug naar het wildebeest in ons” (“Back [continue …]
(Pic: Being Nicely Messy, CRIT, Mumbai) In London, I did this interview with Midtown Big Ideas Exchange:
Q Do you believe cities are rational or organized and, [continue …]
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 [continue …]
I wrote this preface for a new book called Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures by Thomas Ermacora and Lucy Bullivant.
I write these words [continue …]
Doors of Perception is helping to lead a two week course at Schumacher College which runs from 25 [continue …]
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 [continue …]
(Above: A forest skills workshop in Big Tree Country)
Last month I spent a day in a small town of 2,000 [continue …]
On Saturday 12 December, together with Mansi Gupta, I’m running a workshop at the UnBox Festival in Delhi.
We will develop the programme of [continue …]
People go hungry not because of a shortage of production, but because the food available is too expensive, or they lack the land to grow it on. In California, the prototype of a combined social, political and technical solution has been launched which promises to unlock the food system crisis.
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As an artefact, the swallows’ nest is not exactly the Taj Mahal. It’s a ramshackle structure, made of mud pellets and straw, that’s stuck crookedly to the wall. But it seems to suit them well – or rather, the surrounding habitat does.
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A hand, a map, a story: In each of 30 photographs made by Céline Boyer, a cartographic fragment of someone’s country of origin is projected onto the subject’s own hand. Cities, seas, rivers, roads and borders are glimpsed.
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In what ways can design help people interact with living systems in ways that help both of them thrive? And, what small practical steps might one take to test the effect of small actions on the system as [continue …]
JOHNTHACKARA designing for life
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