According to Ermacora, for the past century we have designed cities mainly for cars and hinged our economies and communities on an unsustainable model of urbanization. By rebuilding the commons and using public facing architecture principles the speaker believes we can transform our neighborhoods collaboratively to become the thriving places they should be.

Thomas Ermacora is a Danish-Italian Urbanist, technologist and futurist focused on social impact design, open source thinking and the circular economy. Since 2002 he has acted as a creative director and strategic consultant for mayors, developers, social landlords, local authorities and curated exhibitions to promote innovations in sustainability. In 2008 he founded the regeneration and acupuncture architecture non-profit Clear Village imagining new commons to restore community wellbeing and build capacity for local resilience of fragile communities. His book 'Recoded City : Co-Creating Urban Futures' (Routledge 2016) is a vibrant and critically acclaimed global survey of the potential of participatory placemaking to empower citizens today. Ermacora’s anchor project now is the Limewharf cultural innovation complex in east London which houses his Machines Room Fablab - the heart of a tech-for-good cluster dubbed the “Maker Mile” part of the MIT Fabcity initiative.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx