Sometimes articles don’t necessarily bring new facts, but they attach some exiting ideas together in a useful synthesis. This is what this article on people not returning to the office is doing. We already know that on typical days offices are still sitting half-empty, “the Kastle Back to Work Barometer currently hovers around just 41%.”
The second edition of Further afield, where we look at some ideas that are perhaps a bit further afield than our usual focus but that can inform our thinking on cities from a broader perspective.
Pop-up spaces are not a new thing (even the article we’re linking to is two+ years old), but few are well done, fewer still are not incubating retail spaces, but it’s even more unique to find a group that does multiple projects over a few years. That’s what the CultureHouse have been doing, turning pop-up spaces into social infrastructure.
This great piece by Sheila Foster, From Vacancy to Decommodification: Co-Cities and the Enabling State, was part of a symposium on decommodifying urban property, held by the LPE Project (Law and Political Economy). In it, Foster shows how the commodification of property can be replaced by a community-oriented vision, and how homes and shared resources can be managed in land trusts, instead of as private property dealt on the speculative market.
Excellent article at WIRED UK, proposing that people hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one. Which sounds about right. I’m sharing it here for two reasons. First, the topic itself; fewer cars, more and better public transport, more cycling, this combination tackles a number of huge issues for cities. Less pollution, less traffic, better health for citizens, fewer carbon emissions, etc. The second, less obvious reason, is as an example of an unpopular but essential change becoming the new normal.
