Interview | The Circulist Quest

10 Dec. 2021

Episode 9: Steven Liaros and Nilmini De Silva are co-creators of a circular economy village concept. Together they run PolisPlan, a strategic engineering and town planning consultancy where they are developing the Circular Economy Villages Project. Listeners will hear the story of how Steven and Nilmini met, were introduced to the circular economy, and began traveling around Australia, researching how to implement circular villages to revitalise rural areas. Quotable Quotes:“We feel that a lot of people that are in this space, really thinking about ‘what’s the meaning of life?’ and ‘how can we make things better given all the crises we are facing?’, it’s usually people who have experienced some sort of crisis in their life.” — @steven_liaros [0:05:25] “I started to think: isn’t the internet similar to the printing press in making information widely available? Isn’t there a possibility for another renaissance?” — @steven_liaros [0:08:51] “We began to see that the idea of having a network of villages that were connected was not so far fetched because people were already beginning to look for these connections.” — @DeSilva_Nilmini [0:15:28] “We can see this yin yang thing happening again. We’re used to thinking of cities as planning for people’s housing and work, where you’re anchored to a place. We think of it as a balance between the settled life and the nomadic life.” — @steven_liaros [0:17:58] “So far, the unit of design has been the individual house, but it’s hard to really get proper sustainability in that environment, be it economic or social, using that means. When you think of a unit as a village, it is much easier to have these decentralised systems.” — @DeSilva_Nilmini [0:20:55] Circulist Host Nick Gonios, Producer Jim Lounsbury