Lifeworlds 15. Re-Weaving Landscapes: Wildlife Crossings & Designing for Nature as the Client
The roads on which we drive are unlikely to strike us as an exciting source of design innovation or interspecies dialogue. And yet, some of the most fascinating experiments and living laboratories are taking place around the world in how humans can build structures of hope and creativity for other species to flourish, despite having their habitats sliced in half by concrete veins.
Earth is a fluid organism and needs connected landscapes like a canvas upon which to paint its life. Roads, on the other hand, are the single most destructive element in the process of habitat fragmentation (not to mention the millions of deaths due to collisions and the massive economic cost of these accidents). Over the coming 30 years, an additional 25 million km of roads will be built across the planet’s surface. So today in the show, we speak to pioneers in the world of wildlife crossings and design competition leaders who have spurred the process of globally rethinking and redesigning human structures to grapple with the concept of “wilderness” and the radical interconnectedness of nature and culture.
Jeremy Guth is a trustee of the Woodcock Foundation, and an ARC founding sponsor. Nina-Marie is the Graduate Director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University where she leads the Ecological Design Lab, and has created a series of courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design called Wild Ways.
Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/reweavinglandscapes
Show Links:
- ARC website
- Crossings for Wildlife website
- Biophilic Cities Network
- Ecological Design Lab.ca
- Wild Ways Harvard Course
- Wild Ways publication
- Interactive map of wildlife crossings in the US
- Aeon article: Reweaving the Wild
- (Re)Connecting Wild film
- NYT wildlife crossing article
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL
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