11: Post-traumatic urbanism and radical indigenism
Morning walk, Stockholm 6 April 2020 How cities post-coronavirus can benefit from the distributed patterns of post-traumatic urbanism meeting radical indigenism, Wakanda meeting Aalto, and ‘Lo-TEK’ nature-based technologies meeting contemporary infrastructures. Can a post-traumatic urbanism help us make more resilient cities? Last week saw the US ‘Green New Deal’ for transport launched, by the excellent Data […]
10: Another Green World
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 3 April 2020 Slow cities, flightshame, fast and slow layers, energy-use describes the permanent weekend, the acceptance of essential infrastructures and Universal Basic Services, and is the coronavirus forcing us to sketch new forms of governance? Can we grow a slow city over the summer? As I mentioned in this piece, when working with […]
9: The restoration
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 6 April 2020 The coronavirus immediately creates a (partly) restored and regenerative environment, and the Slowdown starts to create new habits. Clearing the air One of the more startling early datapoints, amidst a flood of flattening and peaking curves, concerned the impact of China slowing, or turning off, its factories and industrial production in order […]
8: An A/B test on our way of life
Morning walk, Stockholm 6 April 2020 The lumpiness of history, how events change the world, World A versus World B, and six questions to prompt reflections about what the coronavirus might mean. Making lumpy decisions in the Slowdown The word ‘crisis’ effectively implies decision-making itself. According to Jonathan Safran Foer, in his book ‘We Are The Weather’, the […]
7: Cultures of decision-making in Sweden and beyond
Morning walk, Stockholm 6 April 2020 Sweden’s ‘Middle Way’ approach to the coronavirus, democracy as a political system for people who are not sure that they are right, and the role, and limits, of trust, expertise, and science, as compared with other Nordics, Taiwan and China. I write these notes from Sweden, whose policy towards the virus […]
6: A language in crisis
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 4 April 2020 How key words, phrases and concepts are being bent out of shape by the coronavirus, shaping how we think about what follows. Using charts as metaphors is one thing. Treating the virus itself as a metaphor is quite another. It is a literal threat, and its dynamics are tied precisely to […]
5: The curves beyond the curve
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 3 April 2020 Flattening the curve on corona, squeezing the curve on climate. Slowdown to drawdown That phrase about the Australian bushfires — “A continuous catastrophe, limited neither by season nor by geography” — captures how the virus feels right now. Ultimately, though, as far as we can tell the virus will not be continuous, its geography will be […]
4: We make the virus and the virus makes us
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 3 April 2020 The reversed dynamics of coronavirus and climate, and how the destruction of biodiversity that created the climate crisis probably also created the virus. Deforestation, biodiversity, and zoonotic diseases Building on Deming’s notion, the virus is thriving because it is produced by the system we have created, and is tuned optimally for these […]
3: Remember the bushfires to remember the virus
Morning walk, Stockholm 5 April 2020 The Australian bushfires and floods as harbingers of the coronavirus, and a world wearing masks and blinkers. The air we breathe, a world wearing masks The air we breathe, and our breath itself, has turned on us. The bushfires in Australia, or wildfires in California, have directly destroyed thousands of lives […]
2: The pitiless crowbar of events
Afternoon walk, Stockholm 3 April 2020 How will we remember the coronavirus? While we are ‘flattening the curve’, how can we think about the curves beyond? Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets This essay is a bookmark, a note pencilled in a margin, a knot in a handkerchief. A small quiet place to […]