Regenerative placemaking
On the well trodden path from Germany to Mallorca, defining what a regenerative city actually is, and some recommendations
Greetings,
I’m writing this not from Berlin, but from somewhere in the middle of the ocean between Mallorca and Barcelona. We planned this holiday in the midst of a Berlin winter, dreaming of sun, sea and endless time to read. It has been a genuinely very enjoyable trip, but tourism in the context of climate collapse also feels really weird. A theatre performing our collective fantasy of the “good life” as the Titanic sinks. At the end of the world there will be a beach bar selling novelty towels and parasols. Why else did we go to Mallorca, really, other than chasing this nostalgic fantasy ourselves. It was fun.
A few months ago I exchanged some voice notes with researcher Kimberley Camrass, who I reached out to because her field of research (regenerative urban futures) is the theme of this newsletter. I was speaking with Kim about the concept of “used futures”, which she references in her work. This concept was developed by futurist Sohail Inayatullah to describe how old and outdated ideas, for example about progress or success, can be folded into the fabric of the futures we imagine and create, even when we’re trying to bring in something new or disruptive. The uncanny feeling I have sitting at a beach bar in the south of Spain in the height of the tourist season is in part due to the used future I’ve purchased, the cultural narrative of recreation that I’ve bought into. Adrienne maree brown calls this “living in someone else’s imagination”. The fact that used futures colonise and reproduce themselves in our imaginations is one explanation for why systemic and social change is so difficult.
Kim told me that something that emerged strongly in her research is the idea that each city, each bioregion, has a unique story of place, and developing this story will help communities to imagine what a regenerative future looks like for them. There is no one-size fits all template. Socio-historical context is everything. Following this line of thinking, things like water recycling, green roofs and organic agriculture won’t necessarily lead to more sustainable communities if they are implemented in a top-down manner, without taking this specific local context into consideration. A regenerative future, then, must be developed through a genuinely collaborative and bottom-up process of collective imagination. In this way, regenerative placemaking is the anthesis to the kind of mass tourism you see on beach resorts across the world, where the place (the visited area) is developed in a cookie-cutter model to serve the culturally-prescribed needs of outsiders (tourists from wealthy countries).
In a clumsy attempt to explore what individuals can do to intentionally create alternative futures, I recently published this article on Medium. Another article I wrote was also just published on The Tilt, a publication from the New Media Advocacy Project. The article looks at why “imagination activism”, meme-making and myths are vital tools for addressing climate change. Read it here.
Right now, as I sit on this eight-hour ferry ride surrounded by fellow passengers sprawled across red PU leather seats in an air-conditioned cabin, a news story about the incoming heatwave plays on a TV screen in the corner. 43 degrees expected in Badajoz. 45 in Córdoba. A nearby couple offer their toddler bites of ham and cheese sandwich. The show goes on.
Seeking collaborators!
I have been dreaming up an idea for a podcast related to the this newsletter for a while now, I’m starting to explore funding and looking for an audio producer and a podcast editor to work with. If this is you, or anyone you know, drop me an email!
Recommendations
This essay unpacking the myth of Web3 by researcher/artist Alice Yuan Zhang
This essay unpacks some of the things I intuitively sensed about the Web3 and decentralisation space, but did not have the language to express. That underneath its shiny exterior, Web3 sets out to “hard-code the Internet with free-market economics,” and that most of the time what is celebrated as “emerging or innovative” in the Web3 and decentralisation space is that which can be commodified. The essay also outlines some examples of grassroots networks across the world using decentralised technologies in relational and subversive ways, but that don’t receive the same kind of fanfare. Read it, if you’re into Web3 and environmental/social justice.
This podcast exploring local food systems in Berlin
Did you know that in 2020, Germany was the second-largest importer of milk, and the second largest exporter of milk? This is just one of many illogical and unsustainable realities of our food system today. Food in my Kiez explores local food systems in Berlin, through the stories about the humans that build and support them. What I love about this podcast is that it’s alive and grounded in the present-day reality of the food cultures in different areas of Berlin, whilst softly encouraging listeners to imagine what a local food system that honours the cultural diversity of the city could look like. In the course of the series Samie speaks with imbiss owners, Polish butchers, regenerative farmers, slow-food experts and NGOs about the political, cultural and structural factors shaping the food system in Berlin.
Researcher Jessica Böhme is etching out a new, embodied philosophy for the Ecocene that offers an alternative framework for thinking about consumption, technology and the clothes we wear.
This discussion about the regenerative movement on the Doomer Optimism podcast with Nora Bateson, Joe Brewer, Kate Raworth and and Daniel Christian Wahl.
This blog post by on rewilding the imagination by Phoebe Tickell.
This dreamy musical collaboration by Isasi Armengod
Love,
Tarn