KEG Public Lecture with Guest Professor Nichola Lowe

Biophilic Institutions: Building New Solidarities between Economy and Nature

Climate change and economic insecurity are the two most pressing challenges for modern humanity and they are intimately linked: climate warming intensifies existing structural inequities, just as economic disparities worsen climate-induced suffering. But this interdependence creates an opportunity for institutional transformation. In this talk, Professor Nichola Lowe will make the case for institutional remaking to be biophilic, meaning it supports, rather than undermines life and livelihood. Drawing on ideas co-developed in an essay with her collaborator Natasha Iskander, she will offer grounded examples from Southern California and New Orleans. While still works-in-progress, these emergent biophilic responses speak to the contingency and creativity of institutional spaces and particularly their use by progressive coalitions to foster life-affirming solidarities on the basis of shared vulnerability. Her hope with this talk is to inspire more of us to reimagine institutional change, making room for alternative economic practices that are regenerative in form and thus act to counter those that intensify human and environmental suffering.

Nichola J Lowe, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on inclusive forms of regional economic development, and she is author of Putting Skill to Work: How to Create Good Jobs in Uncertain Times (MIT Press 2021).

https://nicholalowe.web.unc.edu/