Author: Stephen Potter
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Redesigning how to tackle sustainability
In her thought-provoking blog in November, Alice Moncaster expressed the hope that, following COP26’s image of male, white, and wealthy people making decisions, that COP27 would be “redesigned in a way that allows all people to participate equally that works best for them”, concluding that “the most sustainable solutions are those which are designed by…
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Homeworld ’81 revisited
The Homeworld ’81 BBC Future Home 2000 Last month I attended one of the online events celebrating the 40thanniversary of the Milton Keynes Homeworld ‘81 exhibition. Yes, I am old enough to have been there (so was Robin Roy and a number of other old timers from the OU). Indeed, as I was covering the…
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Covid-19: a catalyst for redesigning transport services?
Among his plethora of typically journalistic sound bites, last week the Prime Minister expressed the desire that the Covid-19 pandemic could be a “catalyst for change”. He was picking up the growing desire not to return to the ‘old normal’ but shift to a new, more sustainable and regenerative trajectory. There’s a lot of this…
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Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel….
There’s a lot circulating around about how we might emerge from Covid-19 by using its disruptions to embrace sustainability. Now it seems that Boris is proposing a big car scrappage scheme to subsidise electric vehicles, together with encouraging bikes and making electric scooters legal. But social and economic transformations involve a few more wheels within…
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Transformative Transport design
Sometimes something happens that represents the tipping point between simply enhancing the design of an existing product or service and when a transformative redesign happens. I am wondering if we are about to hit this for urban transport systems. The modern tram is frequently seen as a core high quality public transport system, but its…
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Getting good social design to happen
Georgy Holden’s post last week got me thinking. Do have a look at it. Georgy made a link between the philanthropic housing activities of the 19th century ‘model village’ builders and the lessons for today with the push for the private sector to build vast amounts of new homes. She is so right that there…