Learning to Live With Climate Change

Very thought-provoking article from Wired a couple of years ago regarding the futility of trying to stop climate change. Basic idea is that we've already gone too far. The amount of emissions in the air is already so high that climate change is inevitable. Throw in the political inability to make the sort of massive changes in behavior that would be required just to stabilize, let alone reduce our emissions, and we need to start planning for how to cope with the different climate.

Random Post: Yun Jung-Hee

Loved this article about South Korean actress Yun Jung-Hee in the NYTimes. Gorgeous piece of writing about her newest movie, Poetry, and her career, which spanned 330 films from 1967-1994. This is her first movie since retiring in '94.

She plays a pensioner struggling to learn to write poetry while suffering the onset of dementia.

“To Mi-ja, writing poems is important because she’s discovering the meaning of the world,” Mr. Lee [the director] said. “The paradox of her life is that she’s leaving the world and forgetting the words.”

The Cities Programme at LSE

Starting the Masters program in City Design and Social Science at LSE on the 27th. What exactly is "City Design and Social Science"? Good question. Here's an interview with the director of the Cities Programme (with an extra "-me" because it's in London), Dr. Fran Tonkiss.

The key takeway:

"There are two ways of understanding our commitment to the concept of city design. Firstly and most simply, our approach differs from an idea of urban design as primarily concerned with the public realm, or with ‘the space between buildings’. While such spaces form part of our focus, our interest is less with specific design interventions than with larger processes of city-making, not only through the practice of design but through policy and planning, the economics of development, and environmental and infrastructure strategies. This links to the second point, which is the defining character of the Cities Programme approach: our central concern with the relationship between the social and the physical production of urban space. For us, cities are always understood as social as well as physical forms. The two parts of the equation are equally important: the focus on city design as an integrated process, and the value of social science – sociology, economics, geography, planning and public policy – in the analysis of how cities are made, and how they can be made better."

3rd Ward

Very cool article in the NYTimes about an urban artisans collective in Brooklyn called 3rd Ward. Communal design and fabrication facilities, classes, studio space. Amazing for both the creative community it's brought together and also that it's become a successful business model. Would this work in Mumbai??

Paul Romer: Charter Cities

About Paul Romer's concept of Charter Cities - autonomous regions in developing countries administered by a foreign nation. Roughly analogous to Hong Kong under British rule.

Why We Hate HR

A sentiment I can generally agree with.

Apple's Secret Sauce

The ingredients that make Apple the best company in the world (and have everyone trying to imitate them). From Fast Company.