Although it may receive different names depending on the country (social economy, solidarity economy, community economy, collective entrepreneurship), in general the concept of social and solidarity economy (SSE) brings together a set of organizations whose activities - in particular the provision of goods or services - are based on common principles of social utility, democratic and participatory management, local roots and return to the community (see in this sense, for example, the definition of the SSE in Quebec according to its Social Economy Act of 2013).

Mapping and collecting data for resilient sustainable cities does not always need to be ‘smart’. As per its Wikipedia definition, a smart city is a “technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data”.

A tiny proportion of the near to 3 million residents of Toronto have been keeping hens, in some parts of the city, in the frame of the UrbanHensTO pilot program. Soon it will be decided whether these urban coops become permanent and accessible to the totality of Torontonians.

Ethan Zuckerman’s written version of his talk* at PopTech 2022 on legacy cities is packed with insights and a number of places and projects you’ve probably never heard of. It’s at once not Fab City and very Fab City. The history and downfall of some of the cities he writes about might not look like the rest of our posts here, but the emergence and potential of how they reinvent themselves, the innovation and grass root DIY of barebones creation is very much at home here.

Alfred Twu, an artist and architect who works on housing and transportation projects, wrote a guest post for Noah Smith’s newsletter with lots of interesting views on the evolution of cities. It’s mostly a sequence of statements of a few paragraphs, so a bit hard to summarise, but here are some outtakes to encourage you to read through, plus there are quite a few of his illustrations spread out along his writing. Twu wrote about renovation, the economy, lifestyle, shopping, colleges, transportation, and dreams.