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My local council recently bought a bunch of warehouses and turned them into a public park with a playground. What used to be a barren, semi-industrial area suddenly came alive with people and plants. Everyone visiting the park looked in surprise at the playground wondering the same thing: ‘Where have all of these kids been hiding?’
Today’s urban spaces are designed for cars and commerce, making them particularly hostile towards kids. With most streets being considered unsafe, there has been a huge drop in outdoor play. This study, for example, claims that today just 27% of children play outside their homes, compared to 71% of the baby boomer generation. Or look at this fascinating map showing how an eight year old’s ‘range of exploration’ has changed from ~10 km a few generations ago to a mere ~300 metres today.
This short piece makes some cogent points about how our society tends to divide children into two categories undeserving of autonomy – ‘angels’ and ‘demons’:
“On one hand children are considered too small, vulnerable and innocent to roam and play in urban spaces because of traffic, ‘stranger-danger’ and other hazards. On the other hand, teenagers are constructed as a public threat and should not be allowed to hang out on the streets with their bikes, skateboards and presumably bad intentions. … Children and young people are increasingly sequestered in homes, cars or institutional spaces for adult-controlled education and play.”
Research tells us that limiting children’s sense of safety and autonomy also hampers their mental and social wellbeing. And yet, we continue to design spaces that completely robs them of their right to participate in public life. “Children should not be reduced to mere ‘future investments’ or ‘adults of tomorrow’. They are also people with present-day rights to citizenship, participation and autonomy in their living environments.”
As a kid who grew up in the country, I spent my summers roaming the neighbourhood, local fields and woods. I was pretty shocked to hear about friends in Melbourne having spent much of their early teenage years inside shopping malls. They did so because we gradually made every public space unsafe or unwelcoming for them. The irony of now blaming them for being glued to screens all day!
Many of us (especially people like me who don’t have kids of their own) move about a city oblivious to the lack of infrastructure suitable for young people. Away from home, their ability to move freely is often constrained to fenced off spaces: playgrounds, daycare centres, school yards, sports grounds. They are often chauffeured between these spaces in the very thing that makes streets unsafe for them: cars.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We know that designing cities for children ends up benefitting everyone which is why all of us should be demanding child-friendly, slow streets and engage in community efforts to take back public space from cars. Just watch any video of a Bike Bus in action and witness the joy of reclaiming our streets. – Kai
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With a modest yearly contribution you’re not only helping keep Dense Discovery going, you also receive special discounts and get access to the DD Index, a searchable catalogue of past issues. (And it removes this message.)
You receive this email because you subscribed to Dense Discovery, a weekly newsletter at the intersection of design, technology, sustainability and culture. Writing to you from Melbourne is Kai Brach. Do you have a product or service to promote in DD? Sponsor an issue or book a classified.
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The Future of Big Tech? SPONSOR
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Patent Drop illustrates and illuminates the below-the-surface trends in tech (the ones that actually matter) by scouring 100+ patents Big Tech is filing each week. From biometric authentication to AI, Patent Drop’s analysis shows the story behind the latest innovations, and what they mean for the future of tech. Join 26,000+ readers on the edge of innovation – sign up for free here.
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Apps & Sites
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Missive combines email with social messaging apps like Whatsapp and Instagram in one interface, allowing various team members to collaborate on responding to enquiries made on different channels.
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If your email service/client does not offer a ‘snoozing’ feature, you can forward emails to Follow Up Then which will send them back to you at a time of your choosing.
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Breveto is a gorgeous-looking writing app for macOS with tons of great features: focus mode, themes, built-in dictionary and thesaurus, AI assistant, sync to iCloud and more. The iOS companion is in the works.
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‘Intentionality layer’ for iOS
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Clearspace adds an ‘intentionality layer’ over the apps you choose in your iPhone, which means you’re asked to pause and breathe for a moment, making your app experience intentionally more cumbersome. The app also allows you to set session times: after a specific time spent inside an app, Clearspace will ‘pull you out’.
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Worthy Five: Domenico Schillaci
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A concept worth understanding:
Biomimicry involves emulating nature and learning from it to innovate and drive sustainable development in harmony with ecosystems. The practice is part of the so-called ‘bioinspired design’ and is based on three fundamental elements: emulation, ethos and reconnection with nature.
A word worth knowing:
When Dick Fosbury decided to experiment with a new technique for the high jumping discipline, most insiders made fun of him – until he won a gold medal at the Mexico ’68 Olympics. The so-called Fosbury Flop went on to revolutionise the discipline. Fosbury passed away a few months ago, but today there is no high jumper who has not adopted his style.
A recipe worth trying:
Pasta chî sàrdi is one of the essential recipes in the Sicilian culinary tradition. Based on a ‘poor’ fish such as sardines, it is enriched with many ingredients, like wild fennel, pine nuts, sultanas and saffron, for an unmistakable flavour. The vegetarian version of this dish is called ‘with sardines at sea’ – the sardines are still ‘at sea’, not on your plate.
A saying worth repeating:
‘Addina ca camina s’arricogghi ca vozza china’ in Sicilian dialect translates to ‘The walking hen comes home with a full crop.’ – a metaphor for the fact that the most exciting things in your life will happen when you go outside instead of sitting on the sofa.
A video worth watching:
‘Why do migrants have smartphones?’ is a general question that relies on bias and prejudice against migrants and refugees. But smartphones have become an indispensable tool for them. This short video by the BBC helps us experience the refugee journey.
(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Domenico Schillaci in one click.)
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Books & Accessories
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How animals collaborate
The idea of collaboration, rather than competition, between animals is relatively new. This exciting new book offers insights into how different species work together for the benefit of each other. “Biologist Ashley Ward takes us on a wild tour across the globe as he searches for a more accurate picture of how animals build societies. ... Along the way, Ward shows that the social impulses we’ve long thought separated humans from other animals might actually be our strongest connection to them.”
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How parking explains the world
The little I know about urban planning has made me realise that most of us vastly underestimate the true cost of free parking. Vox published a couple of great pieces on this. I’m very intrigued by this brand new title exploring one of the most quietly influential forces in modern society. “Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space?”
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Overheard on Mastodon
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“My hot take on ‘15 minute cities’ is if you can get to the coffee shop within fifteen minutes, but the barrista who makes your drink can’t afford to live closer than a half-hour away, then you live in a theme park.” - Gareth Klieber
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Food for Thought
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As I write about in the intro, this short piece makes a great case for designing our cities and streets with kids in mind – an approach that would not only benefit young people. “Children should not be reduced to mere ‘future investments’ or ‘adults of tomorrow’. They are also people with present-day rights to citizenship, participation and autonomy in their living environments.”
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Our system of infinite growth has an undeniable destructive footprint on the environment. Tragically, our population must continue to grow along our economies in order to avoid collapse. So, what happens when birth rates fall well below the threshold required to keep things going – as is now the case in many countries around the world? “An infrastructure collapse is a near constant of any location that has a dropping population. The way we have laid out roads, power, or water infrastructure, for example, is not easily partitioned. If you build out infrastructure in a city to deliver water to a million people and its population drops to half a million, it still costs almost as much to maintain as it did before, with half the tax base and half the benefit.”
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Some remarkable footage of human history as part of this shortfilm in which the author explains just how much recorded imagery is locked up behind paywalls – even footage that is in the so-called public domain. “A montage of some of the last century’s most momentous events forms the basis of a reflection on how we view the past – and how commercial archives control what we see.” (via)
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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EYECANDY is a visual technique library offering inspiration for spicing up your next video project.
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Jackson Shaner uses figurative ceramic sculptures combined with wheel throwing to express relationships and explore texture, proportion, and flesh mimicry. The result is often creepy, disturbing, yet captivating. Don’t miss the ‘making of’ videos!
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Joseph Ford’s Impossible Street Art project augments reality by adding art to photographs and then placing them in the exact spot in which they were taken. “An ongoing collaboration that challenges street artists all over the world to paint the unpaintable, then uses photography to create glimpses into a parallel universe where they have complete artistic freedom.” (via)
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The beautiful Caliste serif family comes in a text and display version, each with six weights and their italic cousins.
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Notable Numbers
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In Belgium, employees who cycle to work are now entitled to a bicycle compensation of €0.27 ($0.30) per kilometre of their commute.
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Australia’s new federal budget includes record subsidies to fossil fuel companies. The subsidies have increased to an estimated $57.1 billion over the four-year budget papers, up from the $55.3b in 2022, according to an independent report.
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Vertical farms are the new agricultural frontier: modern systems use up to 98% less water compared to traditional farming techniques. Neither weeds nor bugs can get into the sealed unit, so there’s no need for pesticides or herbicides, and production can’t be derailed by drought or floods.
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Classifieds
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply or tweet at DD with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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