[Full Length] Urban Ecologies: Where’s Nature in the City? — with John Thackara

“You don't have to give people lectures about biodiversity. You just say, yeah, do you want to be part of growing food?”

- John Thackara

SYNOPSIS:

John Thackara is a writer, curator and professor who develops design agendas for ecological restoration, urban-rural reconnection, and multi-species design. He curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, first in Amsterdam and later across India; he was commissioner of the UK social innovation biennial Dott 07, and the French design biennial City Eco Lab; and in 2019, he curated the Urban-Rural expo in Shanghai. His last book was How To Thrive In the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today.

Here we discuss…

• Why more information about the climate crisis just won’t cut it anymore;

• How designers can experiment with the presence of microbial lives in their cities;

• The phenomenon of weed watching and why it’s gone viral;

• Celebrity hen and mango farmers in China who have broken down the rural-urban divide;

• Placefulness as a doorway into caring;

• How a giant consulting firm could better design their employee sustainability programme (hint: it involves having real tasks to do);

• Ecosystem restoration camps and place-based summer schools;

• The failings of snazzy car insulation made from mycelium;

• And more ;)

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GUEST BIO:

John Thackara is a writer, curator and professor whose work focuses on developing the design agenda for ecological restoration, urban-rural reconnection, and multi-species design.

He curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, first in Amsterdam, later across India; he was commissioner of the UK social innovation biennial Dott 07, and the French design biennial City Eco Lab; and in 2019, he curated the Urban-Rural expo in Shanghai. He is Visiting Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, School of Visual Arts in New York, and Politecnico di Milano, and is a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art.

He is a 2022 Design For Planet Fellow at Design Council, UK, and curator of the Social Food Forum. His last book was How To Thrive In the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today.

QUOTES:

• Just telling people things is not enough. They need to experience connection, or lack of connection, through an embodied understanding. So now my work is focused on how to enable people to have living embodied relationships with nature.

• We’ve learned too slowly that telling people things isn't the same as them getting it.

• The task of design isn’t to get people to do things, but to get them to uncover other worlds.

• It's not about just going to a forest and feeling sort of green. I think that people should be given tasks to do. These tasks should be productive tasks, that are beneficial to the place.

• You don't have to give people lectures about biodiversity. You just say, yeah, do you want to be part of growing food?

• The trick is to be inspired. To learn how incredibly resourceful nature is without feeling some kind of compulsion to turn that into a design action. I think the need to make things is not necessarily always consistent with leaving an ecosystem healthier.

• I had to let go of the notion that only mass solutions were important.

SHOW NOTES

• John’s website and rich resource list

• Design for Multi Species Cities 

• Regenerative Empathy Paper 

• Sugi Project

• Back to the Land Summer School 

• Urban Rural Connection in China 

• Internet of nature

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