book – Things Are Good

Women Changing Cities

A new book has come out to celebrate Women Changing Cities for the better. Cities around the world are dealing with climate change, inequality, and an assortment of local issues and often we forget that these cities can do more than react – they can lead. This book takes a look at 19 women who are leading our urban fabrics into the future to ensure a better locally life and, in some cases, shaping the globe.

The book spans 11 geographies, profiling 19 women in leadership: mayors, civil servants, entrepreneurs and advocates who, through their work, are fundamentally reimagining how cities can and should function. A brief preview of some of their stories are below. What unites these women across wildly different cultural and political contexts are five recurring themes: a commitment to listening and empathy; an intersectional, long-term vision; care as a social value; the power of coalition-building; and the courage to prioritize having an impact over holding on to power and pushing through the opposition.

Tiny Gardens Everywhere: Let’s Get Growing!

When times get tough it’s time to get gardening! Actually, even when times are easy it’s time to get gardening. Even a small plot of land can produce a lot of benefit for you, your community, and improve where you live. Historian Dr. Kate Brown recently published a book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City about how little plots of land made bog changes in our modern cities.

After hearing or reading what Dr. Brown has to say I’ll bet you’re going to start plotting out your plot.

From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban gardening: nurturing health, hope, and community.

This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned.

Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, too: in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership.

Check out the book here.

Get Your City to Experiment With Joy

Table of contents of the Joy Experiments book

A new book wants you to make your city a better place by brining joy into the equation. In The Joy Experiments the authors who work in real estate and architecture argue that we need to have more fun and levity in our cities. In this easy to read book they explore ways they and others have improved their cities through seemingly simple interventions. What’s more – they break down their book into useful chapters (see image above) that you can jump around and read as you like, just like a well-designed city.

Our divided society is quicky reaching crisis level.

We are no longer able to sustain social and economic prosperity nor ensure democracy. Fuelling this crisis is a growing sense of social isolation caused by the divisive nature of social media and the decline of infrastructure that used to bring communities together.

But there is hope for rebuilding our collaborative society, and it is found in our mid-sized urban areas. These towns and cities offer a scale that can tangibly change the quality of our lives and an intimacy that allows us to influence what our communities can become.

Changing cities can change the world!

In The JOY Experiments, real estate developer Scott Higgins and creative mind Paul Kalbfleisch use their own mid-sized city-building experiences to present a new way for citizens to engage with their city and an urban planning strategy that prioritizes infrastructure for the human spirit.

This Book Can Give You Power

Oil prices are rising again and oil is yet again at the centre of international conflict, it’s time to get off of oil. Sustainable energy is peaceful energy. Solar power is one such renewable energy source that can work anywhere the sun shines. Setting up a solar rig can be a challenge and intimidating for the average person. A freely available book, To Catch The Sun, provides the current knowledge you need to setup solar power generation of any size.

This is a book for people looking to build a better future together, that includes:

Inspiring stories: Real life accounts of building solar power in communities.
Technical details: Straightforward descriptions of solar components and diagrams of systems, replete with real examples (many from the systems described in the stories).
Math and science: Easy-to-follow math that allows readers to size small photovoltaic systems for all types of environments and uses.

Thanks to Trevor.

Fight Book Bans by Reading These Books

Movements in the United States are trying to ban a number of works of fictions which they deem to be problematic. The problem, as they see it, is that certain books can help people question the world around them. Another problem they identify is that some books for children inform the children of previous human atrocities like slavery and the holocaust. Ironically, they are literally burning books. These groups want to deny knowledge and history.

Over at the Atlantic they’ve collected some of the books the anti-intellectuals want to ban. Defy the book burners by reading the knowledge they want banned! If you’re in a region where groups are trying to censor knowledge, stand up and support your librarians.

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s award-winning fantasy trilogy is populated with talking armored polar bears, soul-sucking specters, and translucent angels. But ultimately, it’s about a war on adolescence. The story’s villains, all affiliated with an allegorical version of the Catholic Church, are motivated by a perverse desire to keep children innocent—even by essentially lobotomizing them. In contrast, the heroes celebrate knowledge and fight to overthrow the religious hierarchy threatening their world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books were criticized for their supposed anti-Christian themes and plotlines involving witchcraft.