utopia

Seeding Utopias & Resisting Dystopias with The Multiversity Collective

- Adam Clare

The Multiversity Collective wants you to think of a better world by exploring alternatives.The collective was created to explore the full potential of Toronto by imaging future worlds (or alternatives to today) that are fully aware of -and engage in – multiple ways of knowing. It’s a call to envision a better city and a better world through diverse multicultural thinking. Their first project on empowering creative communities launched this week and runs to the end of 2019 at Oakwood Public Library in Toronto.

On the cusp of 2020, more than a dozen science fiction creators will be germinating wild ideas at the Oakwood Village Library. Novelists, hardware hackers, game creators, and more will be doing workshops for apocalypse preppers, teaching lo-fi sci-fi podcasting, convening socials for sex workers, and generally inspiring those who believe in social change and a diverse future.

Every Thursday this Fall, 6pm at Oakwood Village Library – come rewrite the timeline with us! Free and all are welcome! Made possible by support from the Toronto Arts Council’s Artists in Libraries Program. For more details – please visit the individual event listings.

Check it out!

Car Free Cities are Always an Option

- Adam Clare

Today I’ll cut right to the chase: car free cities are thriving in Europe. Awesome.

A quarter of households in Britain – more in the larger cities, and a majority in some inner cities – live without a car. Imagine how quality of life would improve for cyclists and everyone else if traffic were removed from areas where people could practically choose to live without cars. Does this sound unrealistic, utopian? Did you know many European cities are already doing it?

Vauban in Germany is one of the largest car-free neighbourhoods in Europe, home to more than 5,000 people. If you live in the district, you are required to confirm once a year that you do not own a car – or, if you do own one, you must buy a space in a multi-storey car park on the edge of the district. One space was initially provided for every two households, but car ownership has fallen over time, and many of these spaces are now empty.

Vehicles are allowed down the residential streets at walking pace to pick up and deliver, but not to park. In practice, vehicles are rarely seen moving here. It has been taken over by kids as young as four or five, playing, skating and unicycling without direct supervision. The adults, too, tend to socialise outdoors far more than they would on conventional streets open to traffic (behaviour that’s echoed in the UK, too).

Read the full article at the Guardian.

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