On Human Expression and Resilience

The past few weeks have certainly been filled with numerous catastrophes: typhoon, earthquake, drought, flood… These environmental events have an impact on millions of people, and climate change seems to be leading us to a future where they will be common occurrences. What, then, becomes the place of urban design in this turmoil? What priorities should municipalities and governments put forward? A million questions emerge as we face such uncertainty.

In the meantime, videos on Twitter have shown Yayoi Kusama’s famous pumpkin turned upside-down in the water, attacked by strong winds and rain. However, it was not destroyed by the waves, and the option to rebuild the structure is being carefully studied (McCurry, 2021). The resistance of this yellow-dotted pumpkin made me think of human resilience. How many catastrophes have we faced in the past, and successfully dealt with? The ability of our species to adapt to varying challenges has already been proven, as we have re-emerged more than once both wiser and stronger.

The human expression will always thrive, whether it is suppressed or not. Diverse forms of art of the ancient world have made their way through the present with archeological digs, archives, or oral tradition transmission. Times of instability only reinforce the need to express oneself, even if the means to do so are limited. Let us instead reinvent urban design to have both a useful and creative purpose. Art is a beam of light in the dark.

The Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture. Image source: McCurry, J. (2021, 12 August). Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture washed into sea by Japan storm. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/japan-tropical-storm-batters-famous-yayoi-kusama-sculpture

Siotu: The City That Saw It Coming

Adapted from a prompt asking for a creative story about a fictional city

In today’s global discourse, climate change is a mainstay that supersedes most other areas of conflict but has the potential to unify us as a human race. However, this conversation is not new. In fact, conversations about the effect our mass industrialization have had on the planet have been happening in academic circles for several decades. But no real municipality heeded to all of the scholarly warnings, except for the small city-state of Siotu (pronounced SEE-oh-TU). Located in the center of the Pacific Ocean, Siotu has long been a mecca for environmental enthusiasts for its harsh laws pertaining to human-caused pollution and its commitment to mitigating the effects of ongoing climate change. We are currently in a place where we, as a whole, should be transitioning from focusing on climate mitigation to focusing on climate adaptation; Siotu started this pivot over 25 years ago and has been a pioneer in experimenting with new forms of urban civilization that are adaptive to our changing climate. For one, the entirety of Siotu lives in an urbanized setting. It is a well-known fact that population density has a negative correlation with carbon footprint and Siotu takes this seriously. Also given Siotu is on an island, there has been numerous efforts to adapt to rising sea levels by raising population density at the high-points of the island and incrementally guiding water to accumulate in unhabituated areas of the island.

Nonetheless due to a great repertoire of respect for the planet, Siotu knows these measures are only temporary fixes and will not fight against the sea as the Earth runs its course. Eventually as the ocean takes more and more of their land, Siotu residents will slowly become environmental refugees until the entire island is submerged. So, what is the future of Siotu? I posit the future of this city is the amount of knowledge gained through its attempts to be a climate-adaptive civilization in a world where that was not a shared priority and proof that adapting to climate change has to be a worldwide endeavor. In this fashion, while the future of Siotu may not be physical, it will still have an impact on cities of the future.

Siotu was loosely inspired by several island cities including:

Figure 1. Malé, Maldives. Image Source: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/maldives/male

Figure 2. Isola dei Pescatori, Italy. Image Source: https://www.stresatours.com/portfolio/isola-pescatori-tour/

Figure 3. Suva, Fiji. Image Source: https://fijisun.com.fj/2021/01/30/council-to-install-more-cameras-in-suva-city/