Rooftop gardens for cooler, cleaner megacities
Inspiring stories from three organizations, in Egypt and Bangladesh, who promote and help the installation of rooftop gardens in megacities lacking green space.
City data commons for the climate crisis
Excellent article at Branch magazine by Renata Avila and Guy Weress, proposing a bold vision for city data commons against the enclosure of citizen data.
A library where you learn from the books… and the building
It’s probably not very common to find an article about a library on a nature magazine’s site but this is about a quite unusual combination. The largest oil spill in US history was in the Greenpoint neighbourhood of Brooklyn, NYC, and happened in the mid-19th century. 140 years, a lawsuit, and one community environmental fund later, the Greenpoint Library re-opened following a very green and thoughtful renovation.
Using an 11-foot-tall printer to create a community
There are multiple ways in which technical innovation can spread out, probably the two most common are: something expensive gets cheaper and cheaper as it gets more popular, which means it starts as a luxury or relatively exclusive product. Second, it’s a cheaper way of making something, and as the technology progresses the products are more and more advanced, and increasingly expensive versions come on the market. Smartphones are an example of the former; originally expensive (and some models still are), they scaled various technologies like small cameras and GPS units, dropping prices for these components, until we now have $50 smartphones, even without a data plan.
Community organisations need community tech
Community organisations need community tech Three part series of short articles by Rachel Coldicutt, starting