Snow cities

Thinking about climate-adaptive urban planning and architecture.

Twice in the last two weeks, I’ve woken up, mid-dream, from the edge of a snow-packed city that hugs a harbor. The city is filled with pedestrians bundled up, moving through cobbled streets or in their boats bringing in a catch. There are no cars. There are no mountains, either, but the sky is wide and icebergs pierce it like skyscrapers. It is always nighttime. The city is lit up with lights or lit up with the aurora, or both. These photos are the best approximation I can find:

Aurora over Tromsø, Norway, found via Google

But they’re not quite right. Aurora photos are often impersonal, taken from a high vantage point and removing any subject from the field except for the aurora. What I have in my mind’s eye is something intimate and engulfing. A feeling of smallness against the scope of ice and night sky, taken from the ground, from the vantage point of a character who I’m just getting to know.

It has me thinking of illustrations from the 1950s by Ralph Erskine, an English architect and urban planner who was socialist, humanist, and a Quaker and worked extensively in Sweden. I have these saved in my Scrivener as reference photos:

Ralph Erskine’s study for an Arctic town, 1950s. Source

Ralph Erskine’s study for an Arctic town, 1950s. Source

Despite his other contributions to public housing, this Arctic work from Erskine was all sorts of problematic. It was tied up in the forceable relocation of Inuit communities to Resolute Bay, or Qausuittuqᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ, as a way for the Canadian government to claim sovereignty over northern territory of the Northwest Passage in 1953. Here’s a really wonderful blog post Erskine and the Resolution Bay relocation program. But I have these images saved as references because they’re helpful visual tools for imagining other worlds, almost sci-fi or fantastical in their scope.

Erskine’s work is referenced in a new book I just picked up as well, Drawing Climate, edited by Daniel J. Ryan, Jennifer Ferng, and Erik G. L’Heureux.

In the book, different climates are explored—dry, wet, cool, and hot—as a lens for examining architectural and urban planning solutions to storms, monsoons, extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and more. I gravitated immediately to the “Cool” chapter. All information gathering for the details I’m stitching together in world-building.

What I’m writing

A very Jewish conversation between two main characters.

What I’m reading

Almost done with Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler.

What I read

I listened to Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, edited by Bruce Headlam and Malcolm Gladwell, while sewing up a shirt yesterday. This was a recommendation from a friend. Malcolm Gladwell annoys me and I love Paul Simon’s music but have icky feelings about his appropriation of other music traditions. Despite all this, I couldn’t stop listening and now have a greater contextual understanding of Simon’s song-writing approach, influences, and the historical political environment within which he was making music. A really lovely listen if you a) love Paul Simon’s music and b) are interested in listening to an uplifting 5-or-so hours of conversations about a creative process.

A helpful thing

It would be remiss of me not to mention the earth-shattering news that Ursula K. Le Guin’s home is being transformed into a writing residency! Thank you if you are one of the 17 people who have texted, emailed, or DM’d me this. :)

Ursula’s writing room.