Thanks to Sam Woolf for hosting this month’s ‘What if Wednesday’. These monthly breakfast meetings bring curious minds together to explore ideas that sit just beyond the edges of conventional thinking. Some of the questions we explored:
What if your city could pick itself up and move? What if your community wasn’t tied to a street, a suburb, or even a country? What does it mean to belong somewhere, and does that somewhere need to be fixed? How might climate events change impact and what does this mean for the way we plan, scan and act today?
These questions led us to a range of interesting topics…
The Nomadic Spectrum
At one end of the spectrum, there are silver nomads and retirees choosing cruise ship subscriptions or luxury motorhomes as a lifestyle, moving continuously with no fixed address. At the other end, there are people experiencing homelessness who have no choice in the matter. In between sit international school students whose families move from country to country, and remote workers taking advantage of e-visas offered by countries like Estonia. Each has an effect on environment in different ways.
So when we talk about nomadic living, are we talking about freedom or necessity? And in a world increasingly affected by climate emergencies how will this play out in the future?
Infrastructure Needs to Catch Up
One of the most practical threads in the conversation was around urban planning and infrastructure. If people are moving more, or if climate disruption forces communities to relocate, our built environment needs to be far more flexible than it currently is.
The military was raised as a useful model here. Military camps can establish a functioning small city with waste management, logistics, and community, and then disband entirely. It’s temporary, but it works because it’s designed with a nomadic mindset from the start.
Other ideas we discussed:
- Modular schools that can be relocated rather than fixed buildings
- Tiny homes on wheels as a climate adaptation tool
- Waste-to-energy systems like Singapore’s model, where refuse is burned cleanly to generate electricity
- Compostable toilets that could replenish soils rather than burden sewage systems
The underlying point is that resilience isn’t just about surviving disruption, it’s about designing for it from the beginning. It is a future focused way of thinking rather than a narrow mitigation for ‘bounce back’.
Community beyond Postcode
We explored a number of programmes that see people unite for periods of time and then disperse. Pop-up markets and flash mob gatherings were discussed as examples of communities that form, function, and dissolve — operating as their own tribe for a moment in time. Friendships don’t have to be based on place. They can be based on season.
Some people have gone nomadic in their faith. Their church is their beliefs, not a particular building they return to each Sunday. The community travels with them.
There is a grief in letting go of a physical space. As we enter times when communities are being devastated through floods, weather events and displacement we need to build social cohesion and plan for resiliency in communities as well as across countries.
Governance and Equity Are the Hard Parts
A lot of our current systems such as school enrolments, doctor registrations, postal addresses and electoral rolls are built on the assumption that people have a fixed physical location. For those who don’t, whether by choice or circumstance, this creates real barriers. New migrants, people experiencing homelessness, and elderly people who can’t engage digitally all face significant disadvantages in a system that requires a residential address to function. These groups are all on the rise and need to be considered in futures conversations. This involves rethinking how we plan for population growth (ie a population strategy), how we deliver services, and how we ensure that the benefits of nomadic living don’t only flow to those who are already privileged enough to choose it.
Looking Further Out
We also explored longer range territory. A current research project from Boulder, Colorado exploring “generative ghosts” , where AI allows people to have conversations the dead, raised questions about what it means to be nomadic in time, not just space.
The concept of mokopuna decision-making, where past, present, and future are woven together, offers a different cultural lens on the same idea. We discussed a future where holograms and AI-directed thought create a new kind of mental nomad – someone whose sense of self and where community exists largely in digital space.
So What?
What if the way we’ve organised cities, services, and social rituals is simply a product of a particular moment in history – one that’s already passing?
Our ‘What if Wednesday’ get togethers don’t claim to have answers. But we do have a lot of interesting conversations and keep futures flossing alive! And have fun…
Find out more about our next What if Wednesday – a face to face informal gathering in Ōtautahi Christchurch.