As cities(and architects push for a net-zero and climate-positive future, repurposing infrastructure rather than destroying it—not to mention capitalizing on the liminal spaces created by infrastructure—is common sense. We must get used to unresolved tensions in cities if we’re going to resolve the issues of climate crisis: clean water, food insecurity, and homelessness. “Behind the design of any park are assumptions about normative cultural practices,” Kevin Loughran writes. One could say the same about cities and communities. But can we make the sensible and healthy reinvention of our infrastructure a normative practice, too?

➜ The Tension Between Garden and Machine, published by Architect Magazine, 2022 (a book review of Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City, by Kevin Loughran)