Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If there’s a single consistent aspect to Donald Trump’s strategic vision, it’s this: U.S. foreign policy should always be governed by the simple principle of “America First,” with this country’s vital interests placed above those of all others.
If there is one idea that has gained the status of true hegemony – dominant and unquestioned around the world – it is the idea that we need to perpetually grow our economies, and every part of them, in order to improve the quality of human life.
…[A]n unfortunate side-effect of the explosion of information that the Internet has provided us with is the even further erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio.
Of all the problems facing parents, making sure our children have access to the highest quality childcare is one of the biggest. As studio members at Near Now…we have been working with #RadicalChildcare founder Amy Martin to research and prototype possible alternatives to current childcare provision.
These days, you spend your life paying off a house, and even building a shed or animal shelter can be expensive…For thousands of years, though, people used a simpler technique that used nothing but natural, local materials.
Too obsessive a fixation on that claim to authority, and the political and financial baggage that comes with it, could very possibly result in the widespread rejection of science across the industrial world in the decades ahead.
Even though, by definition, public spaces are open and accessible to everyone, for refugees and immigrants they often become sites of danger and exclusion.
From a Transition perspective, a shortening of trade distances has to be a good thing, right? Bringing manufacturing back closer to where people live, thereby reducing carbon emissions, enabling more money to cycle within the national economy rather than globally? So far, so Transition… And yet.
It’s important to say at the outset that this is not about one story being in any simple way better than the other, let alone one being right and the other wrong. The point is that, by being able to contrast the two, we get a fuller understanding of the present moment than either could offer on its own.
Due to a lack of robust public transportation infrastructure, residents of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut and the local government have launched a bike-sharing service to offer an alternative, sustainable transportation service.
The conventional wisdom of our era insists that modern industrial society can’t possibly undergo the same life cycle of rise and fall as every other civilization in history; no, no, there’s got to be some unique future awaiting us—uniquely splendid or uniquely horrible, it doesn’t even seem to matter that much, so long as it’s unique.
Urb-i was founded initially by four urban designers. Dealing with urban projects, creating new quality public space was imperative to our projects, however we felt that we could not influence or change existing public spaces, which were relatively easy to transform into better spaces for people and not only car oriented. That is when we decided to create Urb-i.
