Toward Re-Entanglement: A Charter For the City and the Earth
NEWS: Read the continuation of our Charter, the Barcelona Protocol here.
Toward Re-Entanglement: A Charter for the City and the Earth is a global call to action for the healthy and regenerative re-connection of human activity with the Earth’s natural systems. The history of human-kind has seen the accelerating urbanization of the globe, propagating the relentless extraction of planetary resources. The ecological and social impacts of conventional construction methods have been, are, and will be devastating – only a complete systemic overhaul of the built environment will prevent a global climate catastrophe. By switching to regenerative design and bio-based materials, cities can act as carbon sinks and create equitable development opportunities. This transformation must happen now.
We must take today’s unprecedented crises as an opportunity to redesign our cities – the physical objects that comprise them, and the entire life cycle of urban realms – based on the following principles:
1) Invest in nature
2) Expand the system boundaries of design and governance and the temporal and spatial scales of our agency
3) Enhance rather than deplete biodiversity
4) Sink carbon by construction
5) Capture natural energy rather than extracting fossil fuels
6) Question why we build and what we build with and prioritize the reuse of existing buildings and material
7) Build dense and polycentric cities to restore urban community and regional wildlands
8) Provide secure and dignified homes for all people to build social equity, economic livelihood, and shared respect for our common resources
9) Make public space the essential infrastructure of cities and the site of socio-political discourse and innovation
10) Empower rural communities
11) Welcome new urban citizens
12) Redefine beauty by building with love and compassion for humans and non-humans alike
In recognition of the dire threat of climate collapse and global mass extinction, the signatories commit to the systemic transformation of buildings and cities to re-balance nature’s health.
The Charter for the City and the Earth was initiated by Bauhaus Earth and authored by seventeen scientists, architects, spatial planners, and policy makers from around the world. It will be launched on the occasion of Bauhaus Earth’s Reconstructing the Future Conference at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican/Rome, in June 2022.
Click here for the full list of signatories
Download the Charter here:
Toward Re-Entanglement: A Charter for the City and the Earth (English)
Für eine Wiederverflechtung: Eine Charta für Stadt und Erde (German)
Vers le ré-enchevêtrement: Une charte pour la ville et la terre (French)
Hacia el re-entrelazamiento: una carta para las ciudades y la tierra (Spanish)
ميثاق للمدينة وللأرض :من أجل إعادة الترابط (Arabic)