September 10, 2012
A team of MMM employees and external designers, working in their own time, put together a hypothetical city plan, called Rhizome City, for submission to the Morph My City Challenge, part of the 2012 National Infrastructure Conference. The Rhizome City team will be one of three finalists asked to present their vision for the future of sustainable infrastructure to a national audience of decision makers such as mayors, councillors, members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, administrators, and city planners from Canada's big cities.
Being shortlisted was a significant achievement, as there were some 58 submissions from 117 countries competing for the Grand 2040 Prize, which will be presented at the conference, to be held September 10-12 in Regina.The Morph My City Challenge (2040 Prize) is sponsored and curated by IBM and Regina Regional Opportunities Commission, which is crowdsourcing solutions to transform an existing Regina neighbourhood into an innovative, environmentally, and technologically sustainable neighbourhood.
The team’s selection of the name Rhizome City was inspired by prairie grass rhizome root structures, which form vast subterranean and decentralized networks. The rhizome’s root network is resilient, adaptable and can survive localized weakness through such forces as flooding, drought, or fire. This concept is used to describe the creation of productive landscapes, performing landscapes, and social networks.
Click herefor more information on the Morph My City Challenge