Regeneration

Paying Back Double

This new study is really cool, showing again that by doing right by the environment is doing right for yourself. Did you know that people who live on a street with 10 more trees on average (both on the street and in their backyards) makes you feel as healthy as if you were seven years younger or making $10,000 more a year?

The World is Definitely Changing

A French and Dutch design firm called The Cloud Collective  has come up with an amazingly innovative and creative way to extract damaging Co2 from busy roadways and convert it into oxygen, using algae. The algae absorb the Co2 emissions, and combined with the absorption of sunlight, convert it into oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. The benefits don't end there. Their innovative design allows for the algae to be even more useful once it has matured.

The Good Society--Rural Revitalization

This interview with Zita Cobb about the revitalization of Fogo Island touches on a major issue in sustainable community development, the revitalization of small and rural communities. Cobb states we need a revolution of thought, recognizing that nature and culture are the two great garments of human life. We have faulty accounting, let us reflect as a country, who hasn’t met a Canadian whose money didn’t come from a rural place?

A Good Society--A New Model of Collaboration

One of the wonderful benefits of collaboration and partnerships is the wealth of diverse information and multiple perspectives that are shared. One of the themes of my chair is diversity and as many know I am deeply committed to sustaining biodiversity in our modern world. I have been experimenting over the last five years with new ways of doing research in collaboration with community practitioners, and have been working with dear colleagues at Sustainability Solutions Group.

Reclaiming City Spaces

I can’t believe it is Labour Day Weekend, the summer flew by. When I was a young girl, a summer seemed to last forever, and the older I get, it now seems as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. My research agenda has looked at the characteristics of place, scale, limits and diversity, and now we are going to look at the question of time, how our perceptions of time shape place and how we move through spaces. And time may also be cultural, so stay tuned this year as we explore temporality.