Author Archive

Money is, as Bernard Lietaer describes it: the ‘iron ring’ we have put through our own noses which now drags us around. We’ve forgotten that we designed the ring in the first place, and that it is within our capacity to reshape it. What Lietaer is telling us is that […]

Urban Dreams Offices, salaries and opportunity colour the imagined ideal of The City. While for a privileged few this may indeed be a reality, for many this dream ends upon arrival and the reality of job scarcity, nepotism and high rent dawns. This is particularly so in the context of […]

The world is at a critical point; from the Kogi people of Colombia to the World Bank, we largely have woken up to the fact that we are heading down a dangerous way. Increasingly it is clear that change is not a choice but a necessity. Education can equip people […]

“Cities are our most magnificent creations, but are essentially physical, built expressions of the society which creates them and, like all societies, they require constant maintenance to operate. Life is about maintenance and sustainability is nothing if it’s not about life.” – Paul Downton, Christie Walk We all know that […]

It is no secret that ‘good governance’ and democratisation are top priorities of development agendas in the Pacific region. While numerous Pacific nations have made the transition to ‘democracy’, at least in technical terms, its realities have proved less than ideal and far from participatory. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the […]