Kokura and the Dance Between Old and New
In Kokura, the windows of glossy office buildings send a shimmering light from one side of the city to the other, where tired old factories with tall smokestacks puff like dragons over the seaside.
The Possible City Essays
The Possible City is a series of visually-rich adventures, exploring ecological solutions through the life and lens of Patrick M. Lydon, an American-born artist and author living in East Asia since 2011. Independently produced, these stories take us into real places and mindsets where solutions spring from a combination of common sense, dedication, and a deep sense of wonder for the world. Each story leaves readers with sense of the possible futures for the kinds of cities, towns, and neighborhoods we could build, rather than the ones we inherited.
A Series of Weekly Illustrated Shorts on “The Possible City”
Urban ecological adventures, revealing imaginative solutions for sustainable cities that you and I actually might want to live in. These are stories not about the world we currently inhabit, but about the world we could inhabit. You can support the series by becoming a subscriber.
Cities, Trains, and Cultures in a Pandemic
A journey between Japan and Korea in these times, means government health checkpoints, special bullet trains, hazmat teams, and disinfectant baths. Through it all, different ways of viewing ourselves, our cities, and viruses, become clear.
We Had Forgotten We are Ecological Beings
In this time of slowness, natural farmers in Japan’s countryside remind us that everyone has the ability to listen to nature. But can city dwellers really learn?
Shotengai: Shopping Streets and Bicycles
Explore an old Japanese neighborhood where few people would consider going to the market in a car. In Kagaya, bicycles and pedestrians rule the road.
A Japanese Neighborhood Where Time Stopped: Virtue in Slowness
Stories and images from Kitakagaya, an old Osaka neighborhood with little money, yet a wealth of strange, beautiful, and useful ways of approaching life, work, and cities.
Slow Village, Cute Organic Lawnmowers
Nothing much of interest to GDP or the stock market ever happens in Urugi Village. Yet there is an unexpectedly resilient human ecosystem here. What answers could places like Urugi offer for an environmentally-sane future?
A City, Designed by Trees
Seeing trees as sacred is not an anomaly, it’s the fact that our culture has somehow lost this fellowship that’s an anomaly. If trees are a keystone of our wellness, why not learn to listen to their voice? If we did, how might the things we hear transform the landscape of our city over time? What would a city look like if it were designed by trees?
When a Korean Hillside Town Disappears, Who will Notice?
A review of “A Local Neighborhood Traveler,” an exhibition of painting and drawing by Korean artist Se Hee Kim at the Boroomsan Museum of Art in Gimpo, South Korea.
What the Garden-Hacking Grandmas and Grandpas of Korea Know
This article was published in YES! Magazine. — More than a century ago, urbanist Ebenezer Howard
Building an Ecology of One
Our systems of production and consumption have become so far separated from ecological reality, that sustainability and human well being have both become impossibilities. What needs to change, and how do we re-write the rules to build a truly sustainable culture?
Rice Fields, Rice Balls, and Relationships
From a tiny rice field to one of the world’s largest cities, we follow a chef as she builds a pint-sized restaurant focused on nourishing relationships.