Episode Details

What if our cities could function more like living ecosystems?

Today’s guest is Joshua Harrison, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Leaf Island and Director of the Center for the Study of the Force Major at UC Santa Cruz.

For more than three decades, Joshua has worked at the intersection of ecology, systems thinking, design, and art, exploring how we can rethink the relationship between cities and the natural systems around them.

His central argument is that we’ve become too accustomed to thinking about the world in simple, disconnected systems. Instead, he believes we need to recognize that humans are living creatures embedded within the same planet as millions of other species.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why Joshua believes Western societies have forgotten that humans are part of nature
• How growing up in a family of artists shaped his approach to complex problems
• Why understanding different perspectives is essential to planetary wellbeing
• The idea of cities developing their own “metabolism”
• Why Joshua believes living systems don’t really have waste
• How cities could reuse their outputs rather than simply discard them
• The potential of plants, green roofs, walls, streetscapes, and other forms of green infrastructure
• The Leaf Island Effect and Joshua’s vision for using vegetation to help cool cities
• How plants can provide shade, reflect sunlight, and contribute to cooling
• The relationship between urban greenery, stormwater, air quality, and biodiversity
• What the transformation of Hawaii from volcanic rock into a lush ecosystem can teach us about regeneration
• Why Joshua believes the biggest barriers to sustainable cities aren’t necessarily technical
• The mental, emotional, cultural, and economic barriers that prevent change
• Why short-term economic incentives can make long-term environmental thinking difficult
• The concept of economic “externalities”
• What Indigenous ecological knowledge can teach us about living in balance with natural systems
• Why close observation and knowledge passed between generations can be powerful
• The importance of moral, cultural, and ethical systems larger than the individual
• What potlatch traditions in the Pacific Northwest can teach us about wealth, status, and distribution
• How colonial economic systems disrupted existing ways of life
• Why communities working collectively may be the force that drives larger systems to change
• Why Joshua remains optimistic despite the scale of the environmental challenges ahead

Rather than presenting sustainability as something that requires completely rebuilding the world, Joshua argues that there are small and practical ways communities can begin changing how they interact with their environment.

Growing food, connecting with neighbors, creating community spaces, planting vegetation, and rethinking waste can all become part of a larger shift.

The deeper question is:

Can we redesign the systems we live in so that they work with nature rather than against it?

🌍 Thought Atlas

https://joinpodmatch.com/thoughtatlas

🌐 Connect With Joshua

Leaf Island

https://leafisland.org/

Joshua explicitly gives LeafIsland.org as another place to reach him, particularly for people interested in the work he is doing around the metabolism of cities.

🌱 Joshua’s Message for Listeners

Joshua encourages listeners to look around their own communities and find other people who are already working toward positive environmental change.

He specifically mentions:

• Growing more of your own food
• Connecting with neighbors
• Building community
• Fin