Architecture is a political act: Regenerative community responses to ecological emergency
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Is humanity doing well enough to keep humans alive? In 2022, the UN Secretary-General claimed that insufficient action to alleviate global heating could lead to “collective suicide.” This work critically assesses whether regenerative and community-led responses to the ecological emergency are transforming cities for a healthier world.The author uses autoethnography to reflect on his engaged research with ECOLISE and UrbanA, as well as his experience as a grassroots activist. From practice, he examines three questions: Why is this work needed? How is it happening? What healthy places are emerging? An accompanying theoretical component examines the Ecological Emergency, Pathways of Change, and Healthy Places. Under the premise that "Architecture is a Political Act," the text examines architecture’s complicity in current crises and its ability to resolve them by supporting bioregional, community-led transformations.The Paris Agreement is failing: in 2024, Earth’s global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. NASA’s James Hansen declared the international 2°C target dead in 2025. Climate denial is growing, tipping points are fast approaching, and the accurate 1972 ecological emergency predictions of The Limits to Growth were ignored. Despite the widening acceptance of post-growth frameworks, it is not enough; system change requires ending fossil fuel use. Furthermore, the transformational work of radical groups to connect communities has been interrupted by culture wars, internal conflicts, and climate justice illiteracy—all exacerbated by blind European racism regarding ongoing global conflicts.Sustainability is no longer enough; regenerative cultures are needed, and re-connection to place is key. Indigenous-led Rights of Nature law changes are positively disrupting territorial governance. Finally, social movements should employ municipalism for multilevel governance, mimicking nature through nested systems within fractal river networks.
Source: Repositório do ISCTE-IUL
Author: Crowley, Duncan
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222772661