Insights
I speak, consult, and write on public spaces, cities, institutions, and the skills of co-existence.
Newsletter
Policies for Convivencia
In my free-of-charge monthly newsletter I feature clever policies for coexistence from public institutions around the world and interview the people behind them.
Research
Inclusive Placemaking (Memphis) This case study on Tom Lee Park written with Terrance Smith and Carol Coletta covers their four innovative strategies for making an inclusive space for all: design equity and excellence, gradual placemaking, neighborliness and safety, and partnerships.
Article
Newsletter:
Three Lessons on Friction
As the inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, I spent 2 years studying how cities navigate friction in partnerships. In this post I summarize my key findings on friction, partnerships and public libraries.
Keynote
Kaupunki kumppanina (Helsinki)
In this talk (in Finnish) to city staff from Helsinki, I cover the concept of convivencia as the capability for coexistence and talk about the four partnership capabilities identified from research in the United States, Brazil, and the Netherlands.
Keynote
Learning Grounds for Convivencia (Montréal)
On 2 May 2024, I had the honor to talk about the role of libraries in building capabilities for coexistence at the annual gathering of Quebec Library Association. In this talk I explain my way of understanding the fundaments of a library, what is convivencia and what libraries can do to build capabilities for coexistence.
Keynote
Convivencia (Kansas City)
Keynote to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Kansas City Library on 5 December 2023. I talked about the core of a library as a three-legged stool and about the library role in supporting Convivencia, co-existence across difference. My talk was preceded by a poem on convivencia by Glenn North.
Article
Learn to Live with Others at the Library. Libraries from Chandigarh to San Francisco show why they are the ideal learning grounds for convivencia, the capability for co-existence. The article operationalizes the notion of convivencia to libraries and gives practical examples from around the world.
Keynote
From a Nobody to a Somebody (Berlin)
In this double act at the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, I talked about lessons on convivencia from my fieldwork in Fortaleza, Brazil, and Angela Reyes talked about the care blocks supporting women taking care of family members in Bogotá.
Article
A Dozen Noteworthy Books on Co-Existence from 2023. These twelve books, old and new, capture something essential about the art of living with others.
Interview
We Don’t Need Superhumans in Libraries. Interview for Library, the professional publication for library staff in Finland. In the interview I talked about the need to think of capabilities for library staff on the level of teams and how the library needs to amplify certain voices while being committed to intellectual freedom.
Interview
Helsinki’s New Library Has 3-D Printers and Power Tools. (And Some Books, Too.) In this New York Times Interview, I talk about the role of physical experience of democracy. “You need some social infrastructure for communities to work. You can’t build them on friendship, or this abstract idea of living together.”
Read article
Keynote
Creating Vibrant Downtowns (Calgary)
Keynote in Calgary for local placemakers. In the talk and in the following conversation I share lessons from Helsinki on asset-based placemaking and on the four partnership capabilities I have found in my research.
Article
Four key equity practices in a publication of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival and the BMW Foundation. The article explains the Latin American concept of convivência and gives concrete examples of equity work from Amsterdam, Helsinki, Philadelphia, and Toronto.
Read article on page 20
Article
We Need Institutions to Be Free. The piece summarizes the core concepts driving my work: capability, convivência, and institutions.
Article
An article on the ways libraries and parks can be learning grounds for living with differences. The article summarizes the Latin American concept of convivência, which is the guiding principle in my work on partnerships.
Discussion
Discussion on the path to leadership with Charles Landry, the President of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival. This discussion focuses on how I see leadership as a service job and discusses how a leader can create psychological safety for innovation.
Interview
On Universal Access to Life-Supporting Systems. An interview on the Finnish concept of freedom as freedom from worry in a collection of ten urban thinkers by the BMW Foundation. In the interview, we talk about the ways that libraries are foundational to the Finnish notion of freedom from worry.
Read interview on page 52
Keynote
Architecture of Hope: Reinventing the Public Library (Washington DC) Keynote at the CityLab conference in Washington DC, USA in 2019. My core message is that civic spaces, like Helsinki’s Central Library Oodi, build people’s confidence to live with difference.