How can we turn individual urban improvement initiatives into systemic change to produce resilient, livable cities? Cities for People is an initiative based in Montreal, Canada that believes that like an ecosystem, a city’s strength and resilience depends on its ability to nurture the full diversity of its inhabitants and give them what they need not just to survive, but thrive. Cities for people has focussed on fostering collaboration, cross-pollinating [...]
Can new communities founded on novel personal beliefs lead to lasting change? The Farm is an experimental community founded in 1971 when several hundred 'hippies' moved from San Francisco to Tennessee to develop a new way of living. The Farm is a long-lasting example of an intentional community that has evolved and produced a number of world influencing innovations. Ina May Gaskin, a founding resident, became a world famous innovator in midwifery. And both she and the NGO Plenty International, [...]
How can people care for biodiversity amidst urban poverty and inequity, when the social, ecological and institutional worlds are fragmented? The Cape Flats Nature project was a project that aimed to reconnect people and nature in South Africa, to slow biodiversity loss and enhance the availability of urban biodiversity. Cape Flats is a plain on the edge of Cape Town that has rapidly urbanized, in which both ecosystem, society, and institutions are fragmented. Apartheid era South [...]
Tamera is a peace research village with the goal of becoming "a self-sufficient, sustainable and replicable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all." It is also often called a "healing biotope," which literally translated simply means a place where life lives. In Tamera, however, "healing biotope" is also described as a "greenhouse of trust", "an acupuncture point of peace", [...]