Urban living labs (ULLs) are increasingly exploring resilience and sustainability-related themes. This paper contributes to the gap in the research of ecologies of intermediation in processes of ecological transition through civic resilience. It investigates mediation roles and ecologies in four ULLs: a civic network in Bagneux, Paris, France; the Urboteca fellowship in Bucharest, Romania; a learning initiative at Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm, Sweden; and a civic activation project in Hammarkullen, Gothenburg, Sweden. The research questions address mediation’s importance in supporting civic resilience, mediator roles within European living labs, and the mediation types necessary to sustain, scale up or instigate civic resilience. Mediation is understood in the Latourian sense as transformative, a capacity of both humans and non-humans. Mediation ecologies require the connection and creation of relations (when the social field is fragmented), the negotiation and balance of positions (when there are conflicts or oppositions) and catalysis (when collective initiative is missing), but that mediation can also be obstructed. PRACTICE RELEVANCE Understanding mediation ecologies and the roles within them can be of use to future ULL networks, allowing them to anticipate and increase the agency of particular types of actors/relationships early on in processes of ecological transition. The study proposes mediation role categories for initiating and sustaining ULLs: catalyse and strategise; support and sustain; negotiate and balance; connect and reach out; and obstruct. Mediation needs a diverse ecosystem of actors: the roles of strategists and supporter/ sustainers are key to ULL resilience; negotiators are critical to mitigate obstructions; and ‘double agents’ enable increased connectivity.

We explore rewilding human life as a deliberate engagement with the environments people care about to cultivate wonder. This is through an annotated portfolio of seasonal crafts completed by the first author in her home and local outdoor places with family, friends, and neighbors. The crafts are based upon monthly activities from a Swedish children’s book on experimenting with nature. We present the process and outcomes of forty activities, and annotate encounters with wildness and wonder. From this visual calendar, we reflect upon tensions within seasonal crafts as a regenerative design practice that bridges nature-entangled design with social sustainability. This includes the role of technology in rewilding human life, the frivolity of everyday crafts, and the inclusion of children in ecological care. We contribute practice-based examples of rewilding human life and call for a diversity of ages in designing more-than-human relations differently.

A basic idea of the Sharing City concept is that non-commercial forms of sharing have particular potential for sustainable and socially inclusive urban development. While there is much research on commercial sharing in the context of the Sharing Economy, non-commercial sharing and its local setting remain largely unexplored. In this article, we draw on research in neighbourhoods of seven European cities to examine characteristics of non-commercial sharing and the role of the neighbourhood. Based on a quantitative survey with 1.032 residents and 71 expert interviews, we point out that non-commercial sharing clearly differs from commercial practices in terms of content, motives, organisation, and actors. The neighbourhood emerges as a key entity of non-commercial sharing. We point out differences of actors, their perspectives on and organisation of sharing between the poorer and peripherally located neighbourhoods and the more socially mixed inner-city quarters of our sample.

In design, the expression of values through form and experience is often referred to as aesthetics. In response to the ecological crisis, we explore wonder as a design aesthetics for planetary care. This exploration occurs through the presentation and critique of three seasonal activities with children in Sweden, aimed at inspiring local ecological curiosity: Appreciating the Wind, Looking for Frog Eggs, and Making Natural Perfumes. From these activities, we reflect upon the ethics of an aesthetics of wonder. This includes addressing the prioritization of human experience and the commodification of nature in design. We offer three contributions: defining and positioning wonder as a possible design aesthetics for planetary care, presenting three seasonal activities that situate wonder as an aesthetics in practice, and offering reflections on the ethics of wonder based on a critique of the activities.

Toys as situated within the relational ontologies of children includes how more-than-human relations are imagined and valued through play. Motivated by a concern for a damaged environment, we critique a selection of existing toys intended for outdoor play and fabulate other versions based upon alternative relations. From the detailing of six redesigns through text and collage, we foreground generative pathways for how children, and adults, might relate differently to nature. These pathways are presented as questions prompted by the toys. This exploratory research contributes to the imagining of multispecies worlds and the agency of children in toying with more-than-human relations.

Welcome to Learnings/Unlearnings Reader #4: Spaces and Places of Environmental Learning: Material Community Practices guest edited by Nicola Antaki, Emilio Brandao and Meike Schalk. The Reader includes contributions from the section “Building and Playing: Spaces and Places of Environmental Learning” from the conference Learnings/Unlearnings: Environmental Pedagogies, Play, Policies, and Spatial Design, which took place in Stockholm in September 2024. The Reader explores environmental learning as a practice of care, bringing together authors who examine how care is embedded in the tools we use—and the ways we plan and design those tools—to support meaningful environmental engagement. They also ask: How do the methods we choose shape the kinds of learning that emerge? What positionalities, assumptions, and relationships become visible through these methods? How might we navigate and address the tensions and power dynamics that arise? With contributions by  Nicola Antaki, Pia Palo, Marco Adelfio, Emilio Brandao, Effrosyni Roussou, Eeva-Maarja Laur, Sadia Sharmin, Ziana S. Madathil, and Zuzana Tabaková.

Available here:

https://urgentpedagogies.iaspis.se/up-reader-051-ar-learnings-unlearnings-material-community-practices/

This chapter rethinks the role of the architect, seeing them as someone embedded in the network of relationships that negotiates between different agencies, points of view and disciplines. It suggests foregrounding existing and possible relationships of mutual dependencies that have the potential to build caring alliances. In those reciprocal networks, the architect, often described as a facilitator, negotiator or mediator, becomes an active node that navigates between multiple stakeholders to create inclusive spaces. This attentive and proactive approach, theoretically framed by Meike Schalk, is unfolded in reflections on polyphonic educational processes instigated by Kasia Nawratek at the Manchester School of Architecture and in participatory practices of Copenhagen-based architectural office arki_lab run by Jeanette Frisk.

Format: Performative round table conversation 

A conversation between co-researchers (young people, youth leaders, artistic practitioners, researchers) investigating ‘Cultural Commons’ by reflecting upon the sensitive balance between giving support, paving the way for youths, and letting go. Conversing about negotiations, different levels of control and the difficulty of dealing with open processes.

How is friction and/or coexistence embodied, felt, sensed, performed, manifested, made knowable in artistic practice and research?

With attention to the perspectives of young people and the underlying social power structures they encounter in their everyday lives, this contribution explores the frictions within our ‘collective body’ during a series of common workshops, excursions, and conversations.

This text is about talk. By talk we mean gossip, complaints, conversations, and other marginalised communicative processes that are often overlooked  – idle  – in architecture and urban studies. Why do we bring up the notion of “idle talk”? Drawing on our separate research on gender, ethnographically– and practice-oriented studies, we share the assumption that it is necessary to challenge dominant ways of knowing that often take for granted what and who should be formally included in the circulation of information. We therefore compiled the annotated bibliography that follows by asking: how might idle talk reveal issues in the material world other than those foregrounded by established ways of communicating, recording, and archiving?