Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Creative placemaking — a concept that employs a specific strategy to infuse the arts and culture into a space — can be seen in different forms all around the world. Now, one creative placemaking project along the waterfront in Berlin, Germany — near where the Berlin Wall once stood — has transformed into a robust urban village.
Even after the Flint scandal reawakened the nation to the dangers posed by lead drinking water pipes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appears to be in no rush to strengthen federal health standards. Years after Flint declared a state of emergency in December 2015, the agency is delaying publication of rules that could prevent lead poisoning.
Local initiatives can lead to modest gains in sustainability, but not the large-scale transformation we need. Meeting that challenge will require, among other critical factors, substantial changes in how we create and use money. As its history demonstrates, money is a social and political construct. It is the privatization of money—and not money itself—that has fueled social exploitation and environmental destruction.
By reimagining scientific publishing as a type of commons, PLOS has been at the vanguard of the massive shift in scholarly publishing. Access to research is increasingly more open, and not restricted or delayed – and scientific inquiry itself has become more rigorous. Equally important, PLOS has been able to provide vital advocacy and pacesetting innovation to the field, which now includes thousands of open access journals and over half a million freely licensed research articles.
The author David Wallace-Wells is correct when he writes, “No plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster.” However, that doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to save our species – and the planet – from approaching cataclysm. In fact, if humanity was to awaken to our current plight and work together, we could transform the Earth in a positive direction that would allow us to thrive here for the long term.
Yes, you can regulate markets, but that requires a regulator with both sufficient teeth and the nerve to use them, and one which does not believe that switching suppliers is the answer to all its problems.
How can we secure food justice in the United States when 98% of all farmland is owned by White people? Successfully developing this future will rely on expanding access to capital for farmers of color beyond the conventional financing institutions that have, so far, failed to meet their needs.
Global temperatures are rising faster on the land, where we live, than the oceans, where we don’t, NASA charts reveal. Since scientists have long predicted this trend and say it will continue, it’s worth a closer look.
Often the most important things are invisible — we simply don’t have eyes to see. Feel the wind on your cheek and something undetectable to the human eye has been perceived. But what of the cultural patterns that have been invisible to us? How can we learn to see them?
In our cities and towns, there isn’t a more democratic space than our streets and sidewalks. Buildings are exclusive—homes are private, offices are secure, you have to pay to get into the gym or eat at a restaurant. Yet, streets are inclusive, collectively ours, and the very essence of public space, shared by all citizens.
In prison was not where I was expecting to spend any time during my travels around small scale farmers and growers! That’s exactly where I did spend a quite unforgettable day, though, specifically at HMP Rye Hill.
At the scale of local communities, abundance and human thriving are not exclusively based on the availability of material resources and energy but on human creativity and relationships. Community and individual prosperity depend on how we collaborate to create win-win-win solutions for all.
