Category Archives: locality & place

The Ecozoic City

By John Thackara | Published: March 19, 2013

This story is available in Japanese and in Spanish. For an exhibition that has opened in The Hague called Yes Naturally  I was asked to contribute a text for the book about what nature might mean for cities, and vice versa, in the near future. Here is an extract.  The writer Thomas Berry described as the ecozoic the [...]

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How To Manage a Constellation

By John Thackara | Published: October 1, 2012

The map below is of the Baltic Sea. Over the last hundred years its ecosystems have been poisoned almost to death by outputs from a multitude of industries and farming activities in the nine countries that surround it. These deadly flows are shown on the  complicated chart below: Tweet

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It’s (Still) Not Just The Bags

By John Thackara | Published: May 13, 2012

[I'm re-publishing this story to celebrate the fact that I just got to Sao Paulo, met Adelia Borges, and discovered that the first print-run of her book has sold out in just a couple of months. Adelia explained that one of the organisations doing great work here in Brazil, in support the development of indigenous [...]

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Zürich Eco Lab

By John Thackara | Published: February 27, 2012

As the guest last week of Zurich University of the Arts I set the following task to a group of sixteen masters students: “Create the plan for a social harvest festival that will reconnect Zurich with its natural ecosystems and grassroots social innovators.” The idea was to demonstrate, in practice, and at a city-wide scale, [...]

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From Eds & Meds, to Farms and Watersheds

By John Thackara | Published: April 26, 2011

The skyline of Pittsburgh, once America’s Steel City, is now dominated by towers belonging to two local giants of ‘Eds & Meds’ – education, and healthcare. Does this mean the city has successfully grown itself a resilient new economy? If architectural bravura was an indicator, the answer would be yes. The older tower [above] which [...]

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Rotterdam: where time is no longer money

By John Thackara | Published: April 18, 2011

Twelve-year-old childen in Rotterdam have never known a time when their city was not being rebuilt around them. And because they know no better, or at least no different, they are not much daunted by the huge scale of the projects underway – still less, by the consequences those projects are likely to have for [...]

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Unplugged, but not alone

By John Thackara | Published: November 2, 2010

I was snooty in suggesting, in my comment on Doug Rushkoff’s new book, that he should get out of the city more. But if I’m an armchair tree-hugger, Stephanie Smith is the real thing. Two months ago, this former architect abandoned her Los Angeles life for a new one in her shack in Joshua Tree, [...]

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My plan to save the city of Nice $250 million

By John Thackara | Published: August 21, 2010

This blog first proposed the replacement of trophy buildings with street art back in 2002. In a piece called “Trophy buildings are over” we argued that because they are conceived as spectacles, so-called signature architecture would be subject to the law of diminishing returns: the novelty would wear off, and buildings conceived as tourist destinations [...]

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