The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago with the Sun and rest of the solar system. Life is known to have appeared a billion years later, though that may be a conservative appraisal. No matter the exact date of life’s formation, very soon after its appearance, co-evolution began in which life and the Earth began changing together. The biosphere, which is the sum-total of living organisms, began exerting strong feedback forces on the other geospheres of air (atmosphere), water (hydrosphere), ice (cryosphere), and land (lithosphere). Together, the bio and geospheres formed a coupled Earth system that has evolved as a…
‘Man is destined by his reason to live in a society with men and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to make himself moral by the arts and sciences. No matter how strong his animal tendency to yield passively to the attractions of comfort and well-being, which he calls happiness, he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacle that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature.’ – Immanuel Kant Humans are biophysically connected to the biosphere through the flows of materials and energy appropriated from ecosystems.…
RETHINKING THE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVE OF OUR URBAN FUTURE AND THEIR DESTINIES. ENTERING THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic. We live in times of certain endings and yet uncertain possibilities. It is easier to imagine the end of the world due to climate change than the measures that could avert it. Meanwhile, the artificial permeates symbolic and natural systems, revealing an infinite horizon of possibilities. Familiar reference systems by means of which we evaluate logics of action are no longer sufficient in this tension…
We live in very exciting times. Urbanization, now on an unprecedented scale, is a major contributor to the systemic clash between biosphere and Technosphere. As cities expand geographically, they encroach on the realms of the biosphere, usurping ever-larger living landscapes and paving them over with tarmac and concrete. The challenge of global regenerative development is sometimes conceptualized as a choice between change by design (or managed transition) and change by disaster (or forced transition). The upshot is that there is a very high probability that change will come: either forced change or managed change. It is clear that the relationship…
