29. Slowdown landscapes: Street fight
Afternoon walk, Enskededalen 7 August 2020 What does the street want to be? The street can decide. Also, how cities are about inefficiency, learning from the pack-donkey rather than Le Corbusier “There are people who are craving to be heard and to be seen and to have their humanity recognized. We had the opportunity to send […]
28. Slowdown landscapes: Small pieces, loosely joined
Afternoon walk, Enskede 4 May 2020 How the virus reinforces the value of different patterns for our social infrastructure, infrastructure, farming, and habitation. From the eco-feminist robots of pixel farming to inverting San Francisco’s sewers as gardens. “Patterns are the work of the human hand but their mission is to make nature even more natural. Skilful patterns […]
27. Events are not enough
Afternoon walk, Ljusterö 20 July 2020 Learning from the 1973 oil crisis, with its car-free streets, reduced consumption, and toilet paper hoarding; Tarpaulins on glaciers, and daylighting everyday infrastructures “The consequences of these measures were soon felt. In certain European cities, road traffic became almost non-existent on Sundays. The roads were often deserted and rather bleak … […]
26. Defunding downstream, moving upstream, taking care, making repair
Afternoon walk, Ljusterö 20 July 2020 Defunding not only the police, but the hospital and social services too; cooks as health workers, police as care workers; a city of gardens promotes care and repair The bushfires, COVID-19, and Black Lives Matter combined have not only pulled focus onto the deep economic and political fractures in our patterns […]
25. Slowdown landscapes: Building blocks for care and repair of the city
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 8 August 2020 Retrofit and repair, in a Slowdown neighbourhood; a colourful patchwork city of loosely-joined building blocks; collaboratives, participatives, cooperatives, and plain old social housing The second set of Slowdown Papers looked at some of the aspects of architecture and planning at the scale of the building, the block. They concerned themselves with […]
24. Slowdown landscapes: The care and repair of our suburbs
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 18 June 2020 Retrofit over new build; greening the grey, greying the green; urbanising the suburban, and suburbanising the urban; making the suburbs work, by enhancing diversity Between the peri-urban surrounds and the central business district (CBD), we might find the diversified suburban neighbourhood — diversified in terms of activity, biodiversity, culture, space, amenity, environment. […]
23: Slowdown landscapes: Flattening the curve on the city centre
Afternoon walk, Ljusterö 20 July 2020 The new cultures of living and working are flattening the curve on the city centre; New York, Manchester, Red Dead Redemption; the end of the office (or is it?) and the end of the shop (or is it?); the end of Hudson Yards, and the beginning of the 15-minute city […]
22. Revisiting the Slowdown, and the end of the Great Acceleration
Morning walk, Granö, 1 August 2020 Danny Dorling’s book ‘Slowdown’ on how the engine driving the Great Acceleration is being dismantled; Japan, Greece, and the Nordics as ‘developing nations’; Fukuyama on the tea ceremony versus Japanification Perhaps the most interesting paradigm in front of us is the least discussed yet, and a gently confronting idea that […]
21. Clear skies, full parks, can’t lose
Morning walk, Granö 28 July 2020 A casebook logging how our environment changed – or not – reviewing progress, or lack of it, against the original Slowdown Papers; Is the curve beyond the curve fading, or become clearer? The first sets of Slowdown Papers ranged across numerous possibilities and pitfalls inherent in the moment, observing some emerging […]
20. Wait, what?
Afternoon walk, Enskede 2 May 2020 I know what you did last summer The first reaction upon hearing reports of troops from the billion people-strong nations of China and India engaged in a fatal skirmish in the mountains, two advanced nations deploying rocks, sticks, and earthworks in almost neolithic manner, is to wonder why 2020 seems quite […]