Such a beautiful project, and with unusual partners. The US Forestry Service, whose mission is conservation, worked with social enterprise Humanim and furniture retailer Room & Board to put together a process of deconstruction of empty houses, rather than demolition, addressing a grave problem in Baltimore.
At the height of lockdowns around the world, a number of people moved to smaller cities or villages, in some cases simply to find more space, in others to move back with parents or in cheaper places. Some had the privilege of a second home, while others moved ‘for good.’ Such a movement happened in Italy, temporarily revitalizing some long suffering and shrinking villages. Now there are new villagers, mayors, and other politicians hoping they can use the opportunity to keep this new life around.
There’s often talk, including here, of the importance of citizen involvement, mobilization, organisation, support, basically of people coming together. But we also know that inequality and divisiveness is present and growing in many places. So how can neighbourhoods bridge that gap between the current state of things and the communal goals we know are needed? Tessy Britton of Participatory City knows a thing or two (or hundreds) about doing just that and gives an excellent introduction to how organizations can design neighbourhoods for cohesion.
Three strong trends that are appearing all over the world in multiple domains: What gets mapped or measured gets noticed. What doesn’t, “disappears.” Adjacent idea; various entities, like large corporations and some government instances try to obfuscate issues and information to dissimulate parts of systems. Data is everywhere, being collected everywhere, and often seized or made private when it should have been public and transparently available. In this piece at MAS Context, Olga Subirós explains how these three trends and other factors interact and why it’s important for citizens to create and collect cartographic evidence of invisible cities.
Such a fantastic idea! The Urban Rooms Network regroups physical spaces in various cities and neighbourhoods in the UK, where citizens can get informed and involved in where they live and work.
