Green Urbanist - Sustainable Placemaking, Planning and Urban Design
100+ episodes exploring climate action in cities and neighbourhoods.
This show provides actionable advice and case studies on:
- Sustainable urban design and placemaking principles.
- How to design cities and neighbourhoods for biodiversity net gain and wildlife.
- Climate adaptation: How to build resilience to climate change in cities.
- Net zero carbon masterplanning and architecture.
- Circular economy: How to minimise waste and emissions in new development.
- Transport: How to transition cities away to sustainable and active travel.
- Regenerative Design: Delivering positive benefits for the environment and communities.
Who is it for? Urban designers, planners, developers, architects, landscape architects, urban ecologists, engineers, transport professionals and urban citizens.
The Green Urbanist podcast is hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh, an urban designer and sustainable placemaking consultant.
Green Urbanist - Sustainable Placemaking, Planning and Urban Design
#71: Nate Hagens - Planning for 'The Great Simplification' of Cities
Nate Hagens is a systems thinker and educator focused on a concept he calls The Great Simplification. He has spent the last 20 years studying the systems we live in like energy, ecology and economics. He teaches at the University of Minnesota and speaks widely on these topics, including on his youtube channel called Nate Hagens and his podcast called The Great Simplification.
We discuss:
- The Great Simplification and what that means for cities
- What the end of fossil fuels means for the world
- The importance of scenario planning for the future of cities
- Why electric vehicles and renewables are not the answer to climate change
- Why a post-growth economy is inevitable in the coming decades
We discuss some ideas for what post-growth cities might look like. I will follow up with an episode of more ideas, inspired by this conversation with Nate.
Nate is extremely honest and clear about the direction he sees the world going. Some of you listening will likely disagree with his conclusions and may even feel defensive. Of course we're all free to disagree with each other, but I urge you to keep an open mind and consider seriously what he says and follow up with the resources in the episode description. He goes into these ideas in a lot more depth on his youtube channel and podcast, which are really worth checking out.
More of Nate's content:
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@thegreatsimplification
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The Green Urbanist podcast is hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh.