This article actually reads quite a bit like a manifesto so it’s hard and perhaps a disservice to the author to try summarizing it, but let’s highlight a few points. In Reinventing our cities as constructed ecosystems, Ken Yeang, a Malaysian architect who describes himself as “ecologist first, architect second,” considers the various systems human society is built on, especially the natural ones, and what we need to change in facing the climate crisis.
Very short post since there isn’t that much to say yet about the project and I haven’t looked into potential pushback (this replaces the infamous Sidewalk labs plan which looked good but was very problematic). But for now this new version of Toronto’s Quayside project, which includes a design for a mass-timber building covered in plants, certainly looks fantastic. So have a look at the vision, perhaps we’ll revisit later.
When we hear the word “regenerative” for cities, the economy, or agriculture, it’s different from “sustainable” but too often said as if it were just the new, cooler version. As this piece at Matters Journal shows, it’s much more than a new word; regenerative needs to be the new sustainable because “we are already over or close to breaching many of the nine planetary boundaries being anxiously monitored by scientists around the globe. It means that doing no harm is no longer going to cut it.”
We’ve linked before to articles by Reimagining the Civic Commons, a group that does important en interesting work. In this case, they share some of the work being done around socioeconomic mixing and introduce a longer report on the topic.
A few months back we posted about the idea of a Department of Care which would be a cross departmental effort to take better care of the people and places in a city. The idea was originally proposed by urban designer Justin Garrett Moore.
