So… You want to know what to read to become a better designer, urban planner, architect, and social activist, who puts inclusion at the forefront of their work? Here are a few recommendations from our Designing Cities For All (DCFA) team, and we will add new recommendations periodically. For all you city designers that want to empower yourself (and others), let these reads guide your practice of transforming cities for the better. And guess what? You can order these books with a pretty neat discount via our local bookstore Athenaeum!*
The following books were chosen by the 4th DCFA fellow of 2024: Shinta Oosterwaal. These books and articles relate to Shinta’s work and the overall theme of her fellowship: Beings of the Economy. It focuses on the exploration into the idea of an economy as a sanctuary for all life. Our current economic system and thinking are resulting in polycrises. Yet beyond scenarios of doom and catastrophe, something seems to appeal to a new wholeness. We need healing responses to a deeply fragmented world with a new economy. In this series, we dive deeper, personally, and ask the question ‘how’ we may embark on a transformative journey to wholeness within the context of our economy.
Watch back the first episode of Shinta’s fellowship!
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonisation. Decolonising heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relationships with the Earth and one another. Combining the latest scientific research and scholarship on globalisation with the stories of Marya’s work with patients in marginalised communities, activist passion, and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies but the world.
In The Nutmeg’s Curse, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment.
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse further states that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.
What can you do when you carry scars not on your body, but within your soul? And what happens when those spiritual wounds exist not just in you, but in everyone in your family, community, and even beyond?
Spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl has spent years investigating why it is that old and apparently disconnected traumas can seed their way through communities and across generations. His work culminates in Healing Collective Trauma, a new perspective on trauma that addresses both its visible effects and its most hidden roots. Thomas combines deep knowledge of mystical traditions with the latest scientific research. “In this way,” writes Thomas, “we are weaving a double helix between ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding.” Thomas details the Collective Trauma Integration Process, a group-based modality for evoking and eventually dissolving stuck traumatic energies. Providing structured practices for both students and group facilitators, Healing Collective Trauma is intended to build a practical tool kit for integration.
By the acclaimed author Gabor Maté, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.
In The Myth of Normal, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
In this op-ed, eco-philosopher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy introduces us to Entering the Bardo —the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a gap between worlds where transition is possible. As the pandemic reveals ongoing collapse and holds a mirror to our collective ills, she writes, we have the opportunity to step into a space of reimagining.
We are in a space without a map. With the likelihood of economic collapse and climate catastrophe looming, it feels like we are on shifting ground, where old habits and old scenarios no longer apply. In Tibetan Buddhism, such a space or gap between known worlds is called a bardo. It’s frightening. It is also a place of potential transformation.
As you enter the bardo, there facing you is the Buddha Akshobhya. His element is Water. He is holding a mirror, for his gift is Mirror Wisdom, reflecting everything just as it is. And the teaching of Akshobhya’s mirror is this: Do not look away. Don’t avert your gaze. Don’t turn aside. This teaching clearly calls for radical attention and total acceptance.
Economies of Life argues cogently that there is a ‘default assumption that there is only one economy in our lives – the economy which is the one based on money. Our position is that there are many economies, of which the one based on money is just one, and that they all contribute to the health and sustainability of our shared lives’. To extend this thinking, money is the currency of trade, and art is the currency of experience.
Bill Sharpe and a small group of other IFF members, working with the Watershed Media Centre in Bristol, took as the starting point for their inquiry the question ‘Can we help people who fund the arts develop better policies if we use ecological thinking to understand how the arts work in society and in the economy?’
Are you interested in the topic and have these books spiked your interest? Make sure to join us in the last episode of the Beings of the Economy series called “The Sanctuary”. Register here for free! Missed the previous programs of the Beings of the Economy? Watch them back here.
Some books in this list can be ordered at Athenaeum Bookstore by emailing [email protected] . With the code DCFA2324 you get a 10% discount on non-Dutch publications. Please mention the code when ordering your books!
