crc blog feed

In this fascinating article, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his vision on the future of architecture. His designs integrate strikingly modern shapes with venerable ideas about climate and context. His diverse portfolio includes a power plant as well as a zoo in Denmark, office buildings in China, museums in France and Utah, and a luxe apartment building and flood-protection facilities in New York.

This teenage scientist developed a cost-effective, eco-friendly way to purify water. Water is essential to all life, 660 million people lack access to a clean water source and 3000 children die every day from water bourne illness. Click here to learn more about her social enterprise.

Blog by Joanna Chin, Doctoral Student, York University-Environmental Studies

Several years ago, the CRC Research team created a series of HEAD Talks videos featuring interview clips with Ken Lyotier. As the founder of United We Can, a charitable organization creating “economic opportunities for people with multiple barriers living in the Downtown Eastside” in Vancouver, he led the creation of the United We Can Bottle Depot.

On our front page this week, we feature our video on spatial justice, justice that takes into account place integrated into social justice, that we can’t have spaces of inequality alongside gated communities. The rising income inequality revealed by the recent Oxfam study that the top 1% now possess 48% of the world’s wealth is further exacerbating a world of haves and have nots.

A new report from the Columbia Institute says the country would create nearly four million non-residential construction jobs over the next 33 years if we shifted towards a net zero-emissions economy by 2050.

One thing is constant in today’s modern world—change. One institution that is changing are museums as they open up to the web and digital media.

Co-housing is a win-win situation with many co-benefits. As the baby boomers age, and lose their partners, co-housing is a viable alternative to retirement homes and nursing homes. As Anil Gawande points out in his thoughtful book, Being Mortal, “our most cruel failure is how we treat the sick and the aged. .

This episode of CBC Radio’s Ideas, featuring clips from The Enright Files, explores some great ideas on how we can improve “our communities, our countries, and our quality of life”. It opens with an interview with Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian and author, who discusses basic income and how wealthy western societies have become complacent.

A local energy company in Vermont, Green Mountain Energy, is leading the transformation of an electric system that depends on power sent along big transmission lines to a community-, home- and business-based energy system for both economic and environmental reasons. As a practical matter, the less electricity the utility pulls from the regional transmission system, especially at times of peak demand, the less it has to pay in fees, producing savings it can pass on to customers.