Episode 015 - Mark Lakeman: Riding the Wave of Sea Level Rise

Earth Repair Radio

SUBSCRIBE: WWW.EARTHREPAIRRADIO.COM In this episode we dive deep into climate change projections for sea level rise and insightful solutions to this complex problem. Much of the conversation is focussed on the San Francisco Bay Area and lessons learned from a massive design challenge to address future sea level rise along that area of coastline. But the conversation is relevant for all coastal areas in the world, highlighting the utter urgency to simultaneously halt the melting of glaciers and sea ice, while preparing for the inevitable rise of waters caused by the melting. Mark Lakeman is very well known for his inspired permaculture activism, and he brings that same passion to this discussion on the changing climatic and geographic situation on Earth. Mark's links: http://www.communitecture.net/ https://planetrepair.wordpress.com/ http://www.cityrepair.org/ http://www.resilientbayarea.org/ Mark's biography: Mark Lakeman is a co-founder of the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon and served as the Co-Director of Creative Vision from 1995 to 2008. He is presently active as a project coordinator in the annual Village Building Convergence. Mark is also the founder and principal of Communitecture, Inc, a cutting edge design firm with sustainable building and planning projects at many scales. These highly popular projects include such social and ecological innovations as The ReBuilding Center, numerous ecovillage projects and infill co-housing examples, and many projects involving low income and homeless people in the development of sustainable community solutions. After working for several years in the 1980’s as a lead designer of large scale corporate projects, in the 1989 Mark embarked on a series of cultural immersion projects with numerous indigenous societies in order to derive place-making patterns which could be applied to urban settings in the United States. These patterns include broad participation, local ownership, and transference of authority to local populations, creative expression in planned and unplanned processes, and social capital as the primary economic engine of change. His travels lasted until 1995 when he returned to Portland to undertake a series of creative, culturally restorative initiatives. His cooperative initiatives include the Last Thursday Arts & Culture Project, The City Repair Project, Communitecture, Inc., the Intersection Repair Project, the T-Horse mobile public gathering place, Dignity Village, the annual Earth Day celebration of localization, and the Village Building Convergence (VBC).