Society

First Principles for Sustainable and Equitable Transportation: A Review of Beyond Mobility

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Subway systems, trams, Bus-Rapid-Transit, high-speed trains, cars – these can all play useful roles in well-designed transportation systems. But we must not forget what still is and what should remain the world’s most important transportation method: walking. That is one of the key messages of Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places, a survey of urban planning successes and failures around the world.

When Winning in Court Won’t Save the Environment Looking for a Plan “C”: (Part 2)

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Plan C is a concerted effort to encourage and support the use of ballot measures allowing voters to have a direct say in the climate-related laws and policies of their states.  Ballot initiatives are as close to a pure democratic practice as one is likely to find.

My Review of David Holmgren’s ‘RetroSuburbia’

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David Holmgren’s new book is a fascinating, and intoxicating blast of ‘what if?’ which ought to be put through every suburban letterbox in the world, although given its size I have doubts that it would fit. I am a huge Holmgren fan.

Addressing the Systemic Challenge at the Heart of Escalating Inequality and Environmental Destruction

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The inconvenient truth is that we face a problem beyond politics and reform, beyond good projects and initiatives and campaigns – ours is a systemic crisis at the very heart of our 21stcentury political-economy.

Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Imagination

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I was intrigued as to what impact living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ might have on the human imagination, on its ability to flourish, and to imagine the future in positive ways.  Are we all, to one degree or another, living in a state of ‘Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder’?

Designing for a Better Society: How Tiny Houses can Have a Huge Impact

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With IMBY we wanted to answer the question of how, starting from design and production methods, we could build a house that could foster social integration and civic engagement in a sustainable model. And this can only be done by empowering the people.

Cultivating Place: Refugees and Urban Gardening in Baltimore

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There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?

Hierarchy, Climate Change and the State of Nature

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We briefly mentioned the problem of hierarchy as the shared root of many systems of oppression in our first column two weeks ago.  In this article, we want to expand on the meaning of hierarchy—a system of obedience and command backed by the threat of force—and ground it in history.

The global village and the surveillance society

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The global village has many similarities to an actual village or small town. Fellow villagers and small town neighbors are much more likely to know about each other’s personal lives (often including many of the intimate details) than those who live in a large city. As McLuhan wrote in 1962: “unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”

Sustainable St Albans Week 2018

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Sustainable St Albans Week  – a Transition St Albans initiative – does make steps to get the mainstream to engage with climate change – but we came at it, not from science, but from necessity, borne out of our personal motivations about climate change; tiredness and frustration that we couldn’t get more people on board.