Dear reader,
It has already been a month since Mangrovia was born. Thank you for every advice, suggestion, demonstration of affection and sympathy shared in these first weeks: they were not to be taken for granted and we will treasure them. As promised, this month we will explore together another habitat, in which there is more than a 50-50 chance that you will live: cities.
Within six years, according to UN projections, more than 70 per cent of the planet’s existing human beings will live in urban agglomerations. How do we live, how will we live together? Is it possible to conceive of a city in which each person is welcomed and can move around independently, express themselves freely, participate in a good relational life and collective wellbeing? Is it possible to design places of coexistence that do not discard people and things and have in mind the living conditions necessary for next generations? Is it possible to enable practices in which conflicts are managed without leading to mutual destruction?
These days, even asking these questions can be considered bizarre: we believe it is urgent. These questions have guided the search for the other stories we present to you, stories of people who through art, culture and technology carry out projects and actions that can concretely help us to answer them.
In this month, we will try to reflect, for example, on the relationship between cities and some essential goods such as water and lighting, on some participatory practices for the rights to health and education, on how to use big data to make those who live in them intervene in the management of spaces, on a radical approach to waste management that passes through research on new materials.
We continue not to settle and to be curious, together. We await your perspective and to hear it from you.
Enjoy your reading!