Guiding Lights

Reviving the Commons

Before the enclosure of the commons in Britain, our shared spaces were managed by communities according to their own needs and customs. Today, the planning of space has become knotted up within layers of ownership and bureaucracy. Cities such as Bologna are putting placemaking back in the hands of its citizens and aiming to boost local engagement by establishing The Active Citizenship Office – a single department responsible for distributing funds to allow citizens to improve their shared spaces, whether that’s painting a bench or rehabilitating abandoned buildings.

Lifelong Learning

Post-pandemic, we’ve expanded our definitions of traditional schooling, including online, shorter, and more specialised courses in our library of learning. Attitudes are still changing, it’s not just teaching methods but also lesson subjects and student demographics that are being rewritten. Learning becomes a life-long activity, there is no traditional university age as schools and businesses encourage people of every generation to continue in education. This also means our workforce is becoming more highly skilled, and in broader chapters of life than just their professions. Learning becomes a part of leisure, no longer confined by traditional hours as people use their own time to better themselves.

Place

Co-living and Sharing

We’re beginning to understand the dire consequences of loneliness on our health, with some studies suggesting it’s as damaging as being a habitual smoker. New models of Co-living are being tested in concepts like The Urban Village Project by EFFEKT, where residents share facilities such as laundry, daycare and cars, providing more opportunities to come together with your neighbours. But co-living has dual benefits beyond our wellbeing - by sharing commodities such as cars and washing machines, we’re being more efficient with space, making less ‘stuff’ and sending less of it to landfill in the long term.

Green Civic Hearts

Parks have often been called the lungs of the city, but in truth they are becoming our cities’ centres: the brain and the heart. These are more than intermittent spaces, not just greenery but parts of infrastructure, centrally placed opportunities for socialising, gardening, and experiencing culture all in the open air. The pandemic has encouraged us all to value time outdoors, and activities like performances and sculpture trails allow the world to come outside to meet us. The people of Huntingdonshire often say that the green spaces are what they love about the area. So, where once our shopping centres were a social draw, we now have greater desire to meet and spend time without needing to spend money, and our parks can offer us just that.

Economy

The Green Job Dream

As our workforce changes, so does what it values. Studies show our younger generations want to work for companies that make the world a better place, ones that reflect the things they believe in. Businesses that commit to sustainability or reducing emissions, or even make changes as small as encouraging recycling and using solar power are shown to attract young workers.

De-Growth Mindset

We’re understanding that the world has limits, and that living within the confines of its resources is becoming unavoidable. Economists have come up with the concept of a ‘degrowth mindset’, telling us that reducing both production and consumption is the way forward. How do we balance the need for employment and local prosperity with sustainability, longevity, and lasting impact?

Self Sufficiency

Our sense of self is heavily rooted in community - in terms of self sufficiency, we form an ecosystem of reliance around each other. With energy and food supplies under strain from global wars, national strikes and unpredictable weather, there is an assurance of safety that comes from keeping things local. Hyper-local growing, like community gardens and allotments, help reduce the food anxiety that inevitably follows supply chains. Green energy can also belong to the community, with schemes where locals can invest in and regulate their own shared solar or wind power systems.

Seven Generations

As we seek to grow, this sometimes means adapting old ideas in order to become new. The Indigenous Iroquois’ Great Law finds unity between tradition and innovation in their ‘Seven Generation’ theory, the idea that our actions hang in the balance between being a culmination of the 7 generations of knowledge before us and the impacts they’ll have on the 7 generations after. The western world is beginning to embrace this, seeing a revolution in architecture of using traditional building methods, and ensuring every ecological decision we make is governed by our responsibility to preserve our assets for the future.