The Wise City

02/27/2021

☢️ No longer using or encouraging the use of Facebook. This is a form of harm reduction; due to Facebook's numerous toxic & unwise practices ☢️

Ways to connect:
1. Twitter & Instagram:
2. Web & Email list: http://thewisecity.org
3. Email: [email protected]

03/16/2019

Second time hanging out with the The Center for Bioregional Living's Urban Permaculture Design Certification program (endorsed by Permaculture Institute of North America.) This time to share principles about wise cities & placemaking in our digital age.

Thanks again for the invitation. Always heartened by the broad mix of people seeking a meaningful sacred & connected relationship with all life.

So many overlapping principles between our movements... all part of the new paradigm growing louder each day.

Where does a garden begin and end on this little planet we all share?

03/16/2019

Excellent recap of the The Latinx Project Digitizing Race Conference, including links to videos from the talks.

Our built environment faces challenges from both normative digital technology schemes and its historical lack of equitable representation in its governance and creation. Why it's great to see events like this with current and next generation voices.

https://wp.nyu.edu/latinxproject/2019/03/11/takeaways-from-the-digitizing-race-conference/

11/14/2018

On the science of what we mean to "take things to heart."

Fascinating reading about the 1990s discovery of the significance of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and its connection to mindbody wellness in the book "The Body Keeps the Score."

HRV research in public space offers the potential for more subtle awareness, useful in helping explain the public health & social resilience benefits of authentic human scale placemaking, active living through more walking and biking, and wise use of technology. Would love to co-create work on this.

Example: think of the HRV rates of people in say New York's Zuccotti Park vs Times Square. The latter will probably rate far higher in anxiety/stress dimensions.

As pressure from technology companies increases to foist more tech in cities, from intensified coercive advertising to the sedentary utopia of AVs, we need broader, deeper, and more subtle awareness to wisely chart a path forward.

11/01/2018

Grateful. Our chat was the 4th most listened to episode to date on the Municipal Equation podcast. Thank you.

Hear the other top 5 most listened to podcast episodes too... all about place culture & ecology 🙌🏽

5: millennials & ageism
3: language dialects in US cities
2: urban soundscapes & active listening
1: science of trees

“We ran stats on our top-listened episodes. Here they are (thread). ”

10/07/2018

Why moving from knowledge to wisdom matters. The reductionism of worshipping information & intelligence is a fool's path. There is far more we must take to heart.

Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate the power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it.

05/18/2018

View more about this event at RightsCon Toronto 2018

03/06/2018

A little more from the last interview on Wise Cities vs. Smart Cities, here making connections with the idea of and Public Health dimensions of crime & safety as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has focused on... expanded on fully now in this excellently produced Municipal Equation podcast.

"Increasingly, communities and their governments are reframing their approaches to crime, by considering it a treatable public health issue before one of criminal justice. On this episode we delve in with several voices from the conversation. A portion of it comes from a session of the National League of Cities' annual conference held late last year in Charlotte."

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looks into the ailments of a particular community, it’s safe to assume the concern is infection or some similar local threat to human bodily h

02/08/2018

Designing cities for people accomplishes greater eco & social benefits than designing cities around technology.

Full interview out now with the excellent Municipal Equation podcast.

It's the origin story, about how bike lanes inspire, chewy bits on ethical tech policy & philosophy, and wraps up with practical assessments for doing wise public realm technology.

https://soundcloud.com/municipalequation/ep-43-wise-cities-and-smart-city-ethics

Coincidentally seeming it's good to see these ideas spreading...

“We must acknowledge the limitations of smartness. Only then we will find wisdom and learn to deal with catastrophe.”
– Cornel West, at MIT Urban Planning Feb 7, 2018

It's an age of big dreams and cool feats in the space of smart cities -- tech-forward, super-efficient places of living and business, with advanced data-gathering, analytics and automation that save t

02/05/2018

New interview coming out tomorrow Tuesday, the 6th of February.

A preview of the Feb. 6, 2018 episode.