LA+ Vitality

Vitality is liveliness, to be alive. To be alive is to have the ability to harvest energy for movement, growth, and self-replication. But without health, vitality is just mechanistic. In this issue of LA+ we explore the notion of vitality as a proxy for the health of all things. We explore how design can improve the vitality of people, cities, systems, and landscapes.

• Sara Jensen-Carr explores the intertwined epidemiology of ecosystems, cities, and human bodies.
• Through the intimate case study of a 15th century Roman noblewoman, historian Mirka Beneš reveals the role of gardens in maintaining physical and mental health in the early modern era.
• Design anthropologist Chuan Hao Chen reflects on vitality through the metaphor of the medical emergency.
• Experimental psychologist Colin Ellard explores questions about the roots of our perceptions of life and agency
• Urban designer Julian Bolleter shines a light on the practice of “placemaking” in contemporary Dubai.
• Public health scientists Billie Giles Corti, Jonathan Arundel, and Lucy Gunn explain why urban design is important in creating livable cities.
• Landscape architect Clay Gruber captures a case study of the potential for renewal of a rural American landscape drained of socio-economic vitality.
• Designer Colin Curley surveys the beautiful ugliness of Newtown Creek, New York’s most-polluted waterway.
• Biodiversity conservation scientist Andrew Gonzalez explains his multi-year research into designing a comprehensive and practicable green network for the city of Montreal and its hinterlands.
• Landscape architect Jake Boswell offers a wide-ranging rumination on ecology and aesthetics.
• Psychiatrist and urban health scholar Mindy Thompson Fullilove reflects upon the vitality of main streets in small-town America.
• Philosopher Mark Kingwell takes on artificial intelligence in a series of provocative propositions dealing with notions of life and vitality.
• Architect and urban designer Christopher Marcinkoski considers Tokyo’s landscape future in the face of significant population decline.
• LA+ VITALITY also includes interviews with the celebrated author of Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett, MASS Design Group’s Sierra Bainbridge, and The Nature Conservancy’s lead scientist for global cities Rob MacDonald.