Social Innovation

In the modern urban landscape, two things come at a premium: a place for flora to flourish, and space for advertising. A German company has approached the issue of cleaning our cities’ air with a unique and multipurpose solution. Their creation, called the “city tree” is a freestanding, self-sustaining structure, which uses moss as a substrate to feed plants arranged using a weighted system. It has its own irrigation system that uses captured rain water and a series of sensors to keep everything growing.

It never fails to amaze me about human ingenuity, if the rules of the game don’t get in the way of implementation. Our last e-Dialogue on waste talked a lot about the importance of reframing the issue, this project converts human waste to bio-methane to fuel buses.

What will the U.K. collaborative economy look like in 2025? Six scenarios have been created to explore this pathway--rise of the micro-entrepreneur, hyper-productive goods, international monopolies, a million local economies, on demand, convenient and embedded and increased sustainability. Interesting food for thought.

This library outside of Beijing shows how important design is to sustainable community development. The architect for the building, Li Ziaodong has just won the inaugural Moriyama International Prize, and he explains, “this project is about the relationship of a building to its surroundings and its role in serving the community, rather than a building as a discrete object”.

Integration, inclusion and dialogue. This article discusses the efforts of a Danish town to deradicalize returning young fighters from Syria. An interesting model, especially for countries with highly plural societies.

In this remarkable video, Amanada Burden, Chief City Planner for the City of New York, discusses that cities are about people, where people go and where people have spaces to meet, and what attracts people to successful public places--a place to pause, to stop. A great city is about great open public space, which is also good for the common good. Public space is a place where people want to be, places that tap into your humanity, see into and out of us, where can find your very own seat?

September 3^rd, 2013

Last week, we had the first of our Robert Bateman Conversations on The Meaning of Growth and Progress in the 21st century, very rich discussion because of the diversity of the panel. We will be publishing the conversation this week, so stay tuned.

This video powerfully demonstrates the power of innovation and simplicity to enhance human well-being. In our search for the 'big fix' and the 'grand solution' we often miss the meaningful small steps that can lead to major social change.

We will be publishing a case story shortly on youth entrepreneurship and micro-credit. In that case, it talks about a lack in the school system about encouraging entreprenurial choices for young people. Equally, I wonder why business schools across Canada do not talk about co-operatives as a viable business model. A few facts.