‘Creating Sustainable Cities’ & ‘Small is Beautiful’

Earlier this year I shared the news that I had been confirmed as a fellow at The Schumacher Institute, so I wanted to spotlight these two books today.

I started reading Herbert Girardet’s ‘Creating Sustainable Cities‘ (1999) in late August of last year, as my family & I spent a week in Malmö during our transition moving to Poland after 4 1/2 years of living in Sweden.

Girardet’s work is influential and he is one of the distinguished fellows of The Schumacher Institute, which led to me reaching out to them late last year, also sharing about the work I’ve been doing with pedestrianspace.org (and eventually discussing becoming a fellow at their society).

Creating Sustainable Cities‘ is a very digestible 72 pages, yet I savored it over the course of several weeks as it is dense with information and insight. I see it as a key and essential text within the broader discussion of sustainable urbanism- a true challenge for many cities this century and one that has significant relevance for planetary health as well.

I’m currently in the middle of ‘Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered‘ (1973), a collection of essays by E.F. Schumacher, regarded as a visionary book addressing many themes of contemporary relevance.

The Schumacher Institute itself was “formed in order to advance the education of the public in the teachings of Dr. E. F. Schumacher as they relate to issues affecting the future of our local & global society, including resource use, climate change, environmental management and social cohesion by organizing and facilitating cross-disciplinary learning and the funding of research, the useful results of which will be disseminated for the public benefit.

Highly recommend both texts! 📖

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent,” Schumacher wrote. “It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” E.F. Schumacher

-Annika Lundkvist, Founder at Pedestrian Space

Photo: Books in Krakow, Annika Lundkvist