Re-inhabiting the world

Something feels broken.
The world is louder, faster, and yet strangely uninhabited.
We build, we extract, we expand.
But we forget to dwell.
We forget to listen, to settle, to measure.
To live with.

We call it development, or progress…
but it’s often the opposite.

Concrete is poured over memory.
Grounds are sealed where water no longer sinks.
Landscapes become backdrops.
The logic is disembodied, ineffective, and yet somehow still dominant.

So what now?

Degrowth.
A difficult word for many, yet an essential path.
Not collapse, not withdrawal,
but clarity, justice, humility.
Building less, but better.
Using what already exists: materials, knowledge, traces.
Designing for sufficiency, not accumulation.

Philosopher Dominique Bourg reminds us that we must stop living off nature,
as if depleting a resource,

and instead learn to live within it, or even as nature.

What role for architects, here?

Perhaps it is to resist the rush.
To give form to the essential.
To hold space for slowness and breath.
To help re-inhabit the world; not dominate it.

No guilt,
no old certainties.
But a sincere hope and a true vision, from clarity, from depth.
From choosing to draw slower, to listen longer, to build with care.

Because there’s still time,
and joy,
and meaning
in doing so.

Rabat June 2025
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“La voie de la décroissance n’est ni le refus ni l’acceptation du monde.
Elle est le refus et l’acceptation.
Il convient de refuser le monde (l’immonde) de l’économie de croissance et d’accepter la vie comme une joie, selon la formule de William Morris.
La décroissance sera joyeuse ou ne sera pas.”

Serge Latouche (1940 | Economist)