Afleveringen
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Re-greening Paris, with Nathalie Baumann
This weeks guest is Nath Baumann, urban ecologist with the Swiss Green Infrastructure Consultancy &
Lecturer at the Zurich School of Applied Science (ZHAW).
Nath joined me to talk about her more than ten years work in the regreening of Paris and in particular the initiatives under Mayor Anne Hidalgo to widen access to the benefits of nature as part of increasingly urgent efforts to transform the city into a beacon of circular and ecological design. The conversation was framed around La Recyclerie, an urban farm, repair cafe, sharing hub and restaurant but we covered a lot of the great initiatives and developments around Paris - and even touched on the way systems thinking is shaping its relationship with the agricultural areas beyond its periphery.
LINKS
Nathalie Baumann: www.greeninfrastructureconsultancy.ch/locations-people/
ZHAW: https://www.zhaw.ch/en/university/
La Recyclerie: https://www.larecyclerie.com/
Reinventer Paris design competition: https://www.designboom.com/tag/reinventer-paris/
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I'm delighted to be joined this week by Henri Brocklebank, Director of Conservation Policy & Evidence at Sussex Wildlife Trust. In an episode recorded in early February 2021, I talked with Henri about kelp as a climax habitat and the new bylaw (just) passed which will restrict trawling off the Sussex coast in the Channel to 4km offshore.
We talked about how the bylaw will help restore the 200km2 forest lost to human activity
- why kelp is such a big deal for not just inshore waters but the local culture and economy and the livelihoods of the fishing fleet
- How the English channel formed and how its shallowness has influenced its biodiversity - including the mammoth tusks dredged by the trawlers which have done so much damage
- offshore wind and how to do marine actively sensitively
We also talked about how to value nature, and why marine environments have been slower to be included in investable models of habitat restoration like peat, mangrove and trees.
LINKS
Nature Table - https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/woods-mill-at-50/nature-table
Tiny Recorder: https://www.facebook.com/TinyRecorder/
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Harini Nagendra is Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University in Karnataka, India. Her work explores the evolving relationship between people and nature in Indian cities, with publications including Nature in the City, Bengalaru in the Past, Present and Future (2016) and Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities(2019). We explored the way that ancient and more recent human activity helped shape the region's ecology and in particular the way that Bangalore's development has been informed by the need to manage scarce water resources - but also how the particularities of indigenous culture have lent a deeper everyday connection with and understanding of nature - and what (and how) we can learn from the way these challenges are being met.
Talking points
- the role nature in rapidly urbanising countries/densifying cities
- animism and the spiritual connection with nature
- how to engage with indigenous approaches to ecology, and how they improve upon colonial attitudes
- ecological memory and forgetting in indian cities
- how resource (water) scarcity and human activity to compensate for it has shaped Karnataka’s ecology and the regions’ priorities for modern GI interventions
- medicine, food and scent as drivers of our experience of nature in the city
- why citizen restoration movements rather than municipalities are the key drivers of ecological enhancement
- how the pandemic story is unfolding in India, and the implications for social urban development
LINKS
Prof Harini Nagendra - @HariniNagendra
Robin Hobbs - Farseer Trilogy via bookshop.org
The Nature of Cities
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This week’s guest is Araceli Camargo (@aracelicamargo_), cognitive neuroscientist with @TheCentricLab in London. Araceli joined me to talk about the emerging role of neuroscience in explaining how built environments can create pathologies in the people that live in them and what that means for the people affected. We talked about how every planner, architect, consultant and developer working in ways that shape the built environment are also - whether they know it or not - healthcare practitioners, and how this can and will increasingly shape the way we design and build the places that we live.
Talking points:
What exactly is neuroscience, and how does it help us understand how people experience their (built) environment What is biological inequality, how has it arisen and what are strategies for tackling it?Why health isnt only (or even mainly) the absence of illnessWhy construction phase is as critical as post-occupancyBlame and self-esteem: what the pandemic has revealed about the role of authority and infrastructure in health outcomes, and what that suggests about personal responsibility for health outcomesLinks
The Centric Lab
Red Nation podcast and Twitter @The_Red_Nation
Ibram X Kendi - How to be an Antiracist via bookshop.org
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This weeks guest is Peter Massini, green infrastructure policy and practice lead for the Greater London Authority (GLA). We discussed what green infrastructure comprises and why it should be seen as comparable in importance to transport, energy and sewage networks, as well its history in the parks movement and more recently nature conservation (particularly rare species of birds who's adopted habitats in brownfield sites around the city were endangered by urban regneration)
We also unpacked how its funded and regulated in London and the way that national frameworks might interact (and sometimes conflict) with local initiatives. And of course we spent some time thinking through how what we know about the pandemic so far might indicate some of the opportunities and obstacles we’ll see being thrown up green infrastructure.
LINKS
Future Nature by Bill Adams - shop via bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/books/future-nature-a-vision-for-conservation/9781853839986
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen - shop via bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/books/the-song-of-the-dodo-island-biogeography-in-an-age-of-extinctions/9780684827124
@grassroofco - The Grass Roof Company
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This week's guest is Dr Tony Whitbread, independent ecologist and former Chief Executive of Sussex Wildlife Trust. Tony joined me to talk about rewilding - what wild means in a modern 21st country, and how it relates to other kinds of nature conservation that continue and which have gone before. We explored the various scales at which we can think about rewilding, the difference between applying in urban and non-urban areas, the obstacles we’ll face in linking up the core areas of wild space and bringing them into our cities - and how we can overcome them, both practically and in terms of how to communicate the benefits with the wider population.
Talking points include:
-Rethinking value
-What ragwort can tell us about how to communicate rewilding
-How far does a policy like biodiversity net gain get us without enforcement?
-Nature recovery networks as a framework for thinking about outcomes
-Regenerative economics as a guide to post-CV recovery
-What George Monbiot gets wrong about rewilding
Tony's 3 good things:
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - via bookstore.org
George Monbiot on Twitter - https://twitter.com/georgemonbiot
The Mens and Ebernoe Common nature reserves
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This week's guest is biomimicry expert and architect Lydia Fraaije, who joined me to discuss the application of biology - and especially the study of nanostructures - to building and product design, and how explain how insights from the study of ecosystems can improve the resilience and output of social groups including public and commercial organisations.
Lydia has three companies in this field working - Bio^Mi, Fraaije Architecten and Spinwaves. We talked about how biomimicry relates to the more familiar disciplines of 'biophilic' and closed loop design, material passports, libraries and harvest masters, and how close biomimicry is to becoming a mainstream discipline.
LINKS
Janine Benyus - Biomimicry in action
Frans de Waal - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Tamsin Woolley-Barker - Teeming: How Superorganisms Work Together To Build Wealth On A Finite Planet
Cascading Sustainability business consultants
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This week's guest is Kayla Ente, founder and CEO of BHESCO, who joined me to talk about the politics and economics of the clean energy transition. We covered a lot of ground, and there's lots here to inspire and encourage as well as a deep dive into the complexities, obstacles and opportunities in the landscape at the moment. Topics include
How the margins involved in PV hamper traditional financial investors from supporting uptakeProperty ownership mix in generation rent as a drag on retrofit and the move to reduce energy use and decarbonising fuel How property owners can get involved, and why the new retrofit coordinator role is so important in our net zero strategy How homes of the future will be heated and powered, and how fast the changes are happeningThe psychology of clean growthThe failure of the green new deal and the impact on the ecosystem of expertise needed to undertake the clean energy transitionThe opportunities for British higher education to pivot to clean energy trainingStacking the benefits of decarbonising gas-dependent villagesThe political economy of nuclear power vs renewablesBiomethane and fuel from food & agricultural wasteLINKS
BHESCO
Retrofit Works
Energy Vault
Community Energy South
Community Energy England
This Changes Everything - Naomi Klein
Energy Revoution - Howard Johns
Resurgence Magazine
Satish Kumar
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This week's guest is Claire Vokins - horticulturalist, whisky expert and trustee of Veteran's Growth, a charity providing horticultural therapy for service personnel suffering with PTSD. We explored what horticultural therapy involves and how it can help with the particular challenges that decommissioned armed forces can face, and how nature-centred therapeutic pathways are becoming integrated into mainstream mental healthcare within the NHS. We also talked about Claire's wider work which focusses on why private garden designs too often need rehab after implementation, and how strategies for moving from unrealistic intensively-managed 'perfection' to lower-maintenance planting often provides a more climate-positive space for nature.
LINKS
Veterans Growth
Wilson Vokins garden design
Roots and All podcast
Good News Movement on Instagram
Auschwitsz Museum on Twitter
Claire Vokins on Instagram
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I am joined this week by Phil Minns, founder of Best Foot Music, a music label and events hub which works with musicians from around the world to document their musical heritage, as well as facilitate live performances and cross-cultural exchanges. Now in its 10th year, Best Foot is an example of exactly the kind of initiatives we'll need to look to as our changing world brings increasingly diverse groups of people together, often in difficult or dramatic circumstances. We talked about why music is such a great connector and facilitator of connection, how the label has evolved over the years, and its archival projects with the British Library amongst and its many other activities.
As Phil says, projects like his benefit from donations but, like all musicians in the digital age, particularly from attendance at live events and performances. For details of whats coming up, as well as how to donate, please go to www.bestfootmusic.net
LINKS
Best Foot instagram
Maté cafe
Ephemeral - on iheartradio - Diaspora epside with Ian Nagoski of Canary Records
Cohesion Plus (Kent, UK)
Gurvinder Sander
4x4 banghra
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To mark the opening of his Reframing Space exhibition at The Building Centre next week, I was joined this week by Will Sandy, Landscape Architect and Designer, who has recently returned from a British Council-supported project in Caracas, Venezuela, which explored innovative ways of activating & reinvigorating public space.
We talked about his work with stakeholders in Caracas, and how it was informed by his wider approach to design - challenging ideas about what counts as good public space; how to make design meaningful; and the ways that rethinking temporary interventions can both enhance the experience of place for members of the public and the economics of large scale developments. And some characteristically thought-provoking ways of thinking about the benefits that designing with nature brings for the people who use the space.
LINKS
Reframing Spaces with Will Sandy: Exhibition at The Building Centre
The Catalyst Cube - video
British Council blog on the Catalyst Cube
The Spot - BMXers in london
The Developer Podcast - Everything has been very polite until now
Meanwhile Gardens, west London
Grayson Perry - Descent of Man
John Mannell @Portrait_Per_Day
John Little on Roots and All
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I was joined this week by Anastasia Kucherova, senior architect at Studio Boeri Architetti, one of the team behind the iconic Bosco Verticale in Milan where she is based. We talked about what its like being a pioneer of vertical forestry and how the commercial and professional landscape in which the Studio operate has changed with the success of the first tower.
We also looked at some of the implications for material palettes of buildings with extensive vegetated surfaces; the upfront and operating budgets such buildings require; how the parameters of cost/benefit evaluation of ecocentric design needs to evolve to better reflect the contribution to public health and wellbeing buildings and city-scale urban units replete with vegetated surfaces will provide; and discussed the forthcoming projects that the Studio has in the pipeline and what they open up in terms of possibilities to scale positive change.
We began by talking abvout the studio’s pioneering and ambitious mission statement - hugely groundbreaking and inspiring, and which has resonated with me for the year since i first heard it: reversing climate change.
Links
Anastasia Kucherova
Instagram: @mynameisnastya & FB profile
Studio Boeri Architetti
Instagram: @stefanoboeriarchitetti Twitter: @boeriarchitetti
Facebook: @StefanoBoeriArchitetti
Book recommendation
Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens, and Homo Deus
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This week's episode explores the promises of improved stewardship of the urban canopy using cutting edge technology. I was joined by Nadina Galle, PhD candidate in Ecological Engineering and CEO & Co-Founder of Green City Watch, a geospatial AI firm and Sophie Nitoslawski PhD student at UBC and Research Director at the Internet of Nature.
Nadina & Sophie's Internet of Nature startup seeks to overcome the urban fragmentation of mycorrhizal networks which have kept trees healthy and connected for millions of years. Their Internet of Nature start-up is a multi-city venture which incubates and deploys a network of sensors, algorithms and other tech tools to bridge the gap between increasing smart infrastructure and the need for increasingly robust green infrastructure. Extending and deepening the conversation I had with Cecil Konijnendijk, Nadina & Sophie covered:
Why cities are so stressful for treesThe role of emerging technology in improving tree health, and the aims of The Internet of NatureWhy the value of trees goes UP over timeWhy experts should be leading on tree planting drives, and what can go wrong when they aren'tImproving data sets: the pressing need for tree inventoriesWhy mid-size cities are often better innovatorsHow climate change is impacting city tree strategiesTheir diverse work is housed at the new website - www.theinternetofnature.com
Nadina's TedTalk can be seen here
Nadina and Sophie will be presenting a keynote presentation at the 4th Trees, People & The Built Environment conference (Birmingham, UK) - tickets available here
Twitter
@sophienito
@earthtonadine
LINKS to show mentions
@hopejahren - Author of Lab Girl
@awitnesstree
The Outdoor Citizen - John Judge
The Second Machine Age - Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee
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This week’s guest is Ollie Pendered, Chief Executive of Community Energy South and founding partner of Riding Sunbeams, an incredibly exciting tech startup working with Network Rail to decarbonise rail travel in the UK. What makes it even more important is its triple bottom line approach to business and the potential it offer to link the rail network to community energy providers along the routes. I spoke with Ollie about his pioneering efforts in the early days of community energy before we moved on to his latest initiative for a deep dive into the process of powering trains with solar power. Its hard to know where to begin getting excited about this initiative which as you’ll hear is already in trial phase - reducing the reliance of rail travel on diesel, replacing the feed-in tariff for the countless communities adjacent to rail lines, and the potential spillover into other territories (India for example) and other travel and industry sectors.
Ollie also talked to me about his work at the vanguard of efforts to improve energy security, end energy poverty and decarbonise electricity especially in rural areas, as well as the evolving outlook for regional organisation of energy investment.
Talking points include
- The early days of UK community energy & the transition town movement
- Post-crash economic conditions and the financial rationale for private investment in public energy infrastructure
- City-regions and the regionalisation of green investment
- Rethinking nudges for adopting lower impact private journeys
- How the train network is powered, its environmental impact and the engineering challenge of solar
- How decarbonising policies at national level are driving grassroots initiatives
- Wider applications - powering the water industry, Environment Agency’s multi-million pound water pumping annual outlay, luxury air travel
Links to some of the groups, organisations and individuals mentioned
Possible (formerly 10:10)
Riding Sunbeams
Imperial College Energy Futures Lab
OVESCO
Community Energy South
Yongey Mingyur Rinposh
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As its #nationaltreeweek, my guest is Cecil Konijnendijk a professor of urban forestry working at University of British Colombia in Vancouver.
We spoke about the difference between urban and non-urban drivers for tree planting, unpacked their relevance to the climate change and air quality agendas and explored the way that sensitive design of planted areas can amplify the health and wellbeing effects of urban nature, especially around schools.
We also talked about how China is leading on urban forest policy, the huge potential for (and slow pace of) urban greening in India, and heard about the need for an explicit focus on social justice in the large scale deployment of trees in carbon offsetting schemes.
As always, if you find this week’s podcast useful please consider liking and reviewing on iTunes, and sharing in your networks so we can grow the reach of the ideas we’ve talked about. You can also follow us on Twitter @makinggoodpod
LINKS -
Prof Cecil Konijnendijk - @CecilUforia
Health and Nature research at UBC - Dr Matilda van den Bosch
Sponge Cities - Kongjian Yu, Turenscape
When Darwin Comes to Town - Menno Schilthuizen - and Guardian review
The Nature of Cities blog
http://www.woodguide.org
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This week’s guest is Victoria Lee, lead advisor on Masterplanning & Infrastructure at the Design Council. Victoria has more than 12 years of experience in built environment and has supported over 300 development projects both in the UK and internationally.
We spoke about her work on and interest in delivering resilient and inclusive cities, and especially about the role of megaprojects such as the Olympic Games in scaling the impact of good design; her early work on bioremediation and why we need to talk about soil more, including the children’s book series she’s writing on that subject; privately operated public spaces and the politics of design, including how language takes on material form in our built environment; and how useful the word ‘sustainability’ is for defining the radical steps we need to take to combat climate change.
If you enjoy the podcast please consider rating and reviewing it on iTunes, and sharing on your social media platforms. You can also follow us on Twitter @MakingGoodPod
LINKS
Massive Small by Kelvin Campbell
Caroni Swamp, Trinidad
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In this weeks episode I spoke with Dr Tom Young, an academic and practitioner of blue and green roofs, with a Phd in substrate design. Tom has been centrally involved in the design and implementation of the new British Standard in substrate design, which was launched this summer
We discussed how the Standard came about, who the stakeholders are and explored some of the basic questions involved - for instance the difference between good and bad green roof substrate, and why it matters; why its important to embrace variation in green roof design, and why we should be designing for outcomes.
We began with a simplified overview, looking at the benefits of green roofs for urban environments and building occupants, some of the different ways of achieving vegetation at roof level and how green roof design can affect the way these benefits can be achieved in practice.
LINKS
How golf courses are working to contribute to their local ecology: The Golf Environment Awards (GEA)
Malcolm Gladwell on golf courses - A Good Walk Spoiled - Revisionist History S2 E11
Chicago City Hall green roof
Ken Burns - The American Civil War (trailer)
Reasons To Be Cheerful podcast
James Wong - @botanygeek
Edale folk train
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Duncan Baker-Brown is an award-winning architect, senior lecturer at University of Brighton, acclaimed author of The Reuse Atlas and a member of the judging panel for the Architects Journal Retrofit Awards. For over 25 years he has focussed his practice, teaching and research on Sustainable Design and closed loop systems. Duncan and I had a wide ranging conversation, which included
how to activate the recent spate of climate emergency Declarations by professional bodies and public authoritiesthe scale of the challenge and the size of the opportunity that UK construction representswhere we need to concentrate our efforts to scale and speed-up the changes which our situation demandsthe role of data in making reuse easy and scalablerestorative design and how the story-telling around circular economy sets it apart from 'sustainability'what ARE closed loops?The School Of ReconstructionLINKS
Duncan's 'Wake Up' keynote to 600 architects at the AJ Awards Dinner
The School of Reconstruction
The Reuse Atlas: A Designer's Guide Toward the Circular Economy
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - Michael Braungart & William McDonagh
Trummelfrauen short film
Underland - Robert MacFarlane
Given Half a Chance: Ten Ways to Save the World - Ed Davey
ReRun Clothing
Circular Economy: A User's Guide - Walter Stahel
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I spoke to John Lieber, a Canadian environmental professional about nature-based climate interventions in urban areas, and in particular the ecological framework proposal he's recently presented at the UN Climate Action Summit.
Here are links to some of the people and social media channels mentioned during our conversation:
Twitter
John Lieber: @jungle_capital
Cecil Konijnendijk: @ceciluforia
Facebook
Environmental Professionals
Publications
Junglenomics by Simon Lamb
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