You have probably heard of veggie baskets - but have you ever heard of a fish basket? (See our post on Fish Box for more on this). The initiative “La Platjeta”, based in Barcelona, Spain, delivers fish baskets, fresh from the sea, to their clients. The peculiarity of their model is that species other than the ones the market dictates are targeted: La Platjeta has specialised in seasonal fish and species [...]
How can communities reclaim control over their shared challenges? In March 2002, Gigha islanders managed, with help from grants and loans from the National Lottery and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, to purchase the island from its absentee landlord for £4 million. The island is now owned through a development trust called the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust. The Trust aims to promote: community regeneration, employment and sustainability. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFiudQ0t2ms?rel=0] Many people in [...]
How can people organise to gain control of the place in which they live? The Scottish Ilse of Eigg replaced its historic semi-feudal system of land ownership, in which residents were tenants of an absentee laird (a large landowner) with a new model community based ownership. Eigg is one of the Scottish Inner Hebrides. In 1997, the island was bought from its absentee landlord for £1.5m, raised from residents and thousands of non-residents. Many people in Scotland live on land [...]
How could the city of the future be designed and constructed to enable more sustainable pathways of development? City of the Future Lüneburg 2030+ is a project that aims to envision the future city of Lüneburg, Germany in a way that it turns into more sustainable, livable and fair place. The project has been jointly developed by the sustainability oriented University of Leuphana, the local government of the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg, [...]
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", [...]
Trees for Life is a rewilding project that aims to restore the wildness to ecosystems and the human spirit. Doing this requires it to work to change how people view what is natural and possible in Scottish nature and it has done this by building a broad effective coalition to achieve a long term task. The project works with extensively with volunteers to combine landscape transformation with education.
Refugees Welcome has been described as Air BnB for refugees. It is a site that aims to connect refugees with people who have spare rooms to let in their apartments/houses. It was started by a couple Mareike Geiling and Jonas Kakoschke in Berlin, initially to host refugees in Germany and Austria, but it is branching out into other EU countries. It is essentially a platform that enables ordinary people to help out with [...]