We speak of a 'food desert' to refer to an area with poor access to "shops offering products related to healthy eating habits". That is to say, a convenience store that sells Doritos and beers – however good that combination is – does not count to face these deserts.

The Wiyot people, in what is known today as the Humboldt Bay Area of Northern California (U.S.A.), has a mission of exercising tribal rights for their self-government and common welfare, the protection and development of their lands and resources, and the promotion and safeguarding of their aboriginal laws.

Although ‘FabCity’ or fablab are terms originating in the West, other cultures carry common elements of a vision for the resilient and sustainable development of territories. Indeed, quite a while before we could use a 3D printer at the neighborhood fablab.

Sometimes words taken from another language can provide a useful little perspective shift on a topic. Tsundoku, the Japanese word for “the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them” gave a tiny bit of a rallying cry for those of us who buy books left and right, the Danish “hygge,” which roughly translates to “a quality of cosiness” became a decoration trend and life style for many homes. During the pandemic, the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rekindled “samfundssind”, a compound noun of “samfund” (society) and “sind” (mind) to bring citizens together and encourage them to put “the good of the greater society above your own personal interests.”

At The New Yorker, for the 200th anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted, Alexandra Lange meets with landscape architect Sara Zewde and goes over some of Olmsted’s legacy. Like many important figures from the past, his life and work can look contradictory to contemporary eyes.