Be a Duck

El club más sostenible de América Latina

CityZeen × Helen Cooper × The Allegory of Identity

Hi,

I recommend that you read: Pumpkin Soup

We Are the Duck

My mum always used to tell me to “be a duck.” I’ve loved ducks since I can remember, every summer at my grandmother’s house, watching them play, glide, and shake off the water as if nothing could ever weigh them down. We kept the tradition alive for the next generation, too, buying little ducks that would jump into the water, never getting wet, always improving, even learning to surf the waves.

So reading this book together was a truly special moment for the fourth generation at home. It felt like a circle closing, a family story continuing. Many thanks to Helen Cooper for the fun and the lovely draws so cute

Pumpkin Soup & the Real World of CityZeen

A bridge between a picture book and the city that never stops stirring the pot

The Story

A Perfect Soup. A Fragile Peace.

Helen Cooper's Pumpkin Soup (1998) is, on its surface, a tender autumn tale: a Cat, a Squirrel, and a Duck live together in a little white cabin in the woods. Every evening they make the same pumpkin soup Cat slices the pumpkin, Squirrel stirs, Duck adds just one pipkin of salt. It is perfect. It is theirs. It is home.

Then one morning Duck decides he wants to stir. Not add the salt — stir. The roles break. The harmony shatters. Squirrel is outraged. The soup is ruined. Duck runs away into the dark forest. Cat and Squirrel, horrified at what their pride has cost them, search desperately, only to find Duck and bring him home — where, together, they let him try.

"Best of all, the soup still tastes the same." Helen Cooper, Pumpkin Soup

The genius of the book is this: the soup doesn't change when Duck stirs it. The panic was never about the soup. It was about identity, ego, and the terror of being replaced.

CityZeen is Undoubtedly the Duck

CityZeen is Duck. No hesitation. No metaphor half-built. Full Duck energy.

In every city in every community, there is a system already in place. The Cat has been slicing for decades. The Squirrel has been stirring for generations. The roles are settled. The soup tastes fine. Nobody is asking questions. And then comes the citizen who says: "What if I stirred?"

That citizen is a CityZeen. That question —innocent, curious, genuine — is the most disruptive force in civic life. Not because it destroys anything. But because it exposes how much of the system runs on habit, not on logic.

Duck didn't want to overthrow the kitchen.Duck just wanted to participate fully in it.

The CityZeen Principle🔢03 — The Numbers

Real World Allegory, By the Numbers

3 Characters in the Cabin

Cat, Squirrel, Duck. In every civic ecosystem: Institution, Operator, Citizen. Three forces. The system only works when all three are respected.

1 Pipkin of Salt

Duck's single contribution, small, precise, essential. CityZeens often hold exactly one critical insight that institutions are too close to see. One vote. One voice. One idea.

68% Civic Disengagement

Studies show nearly 68% of urban residents feel they have no real say in decisions affecting their neighbourhood. They are Duck, silent, adding their pipkin, never allowed to stir.

0Times the Soup Changed

When Duck finally stirred? The soup tasted the same. Zero loss. The fear was entirely manufactured. This is the number that haunts every institution that refuses participation.

∞Cost of Duck Leaving

When Duck ran into the dark forest, Cat and Squirrel nearly fell apart. Communities without their citizens don't just stagnate, they lose the will to cook at all.

1998 Published

Cooper wrote this the year Google was founded. The world was on the edge of a participation revolution and she already knew the crisis wasn't technology. It was belonging.

🦆The Cast

Who Plays Who in Your City

The Soup Always Tastes the SameWhen You Let Duck Stir

CityZeen's bet is simple and radical at once: give every Duck a spoon. Not as charity. Not as consultation theatre. But because the soup is already theirs.

The cabin in the woods was never Cat's or Squirrel's alone. It was built by three. The fire is kept by three. And when one leaves — even the smallest one, even the one who only ever added salt,  the warmth goes with them.

Every city has 10,000 Ducks adding their single pipkin of salt and going home unsatisfied. CityZeen is the moment the door opens and someone says: "Do you want to try stirring?"

With enthusiasm,

Celina

At CityZeen directly on on your Store

No doubt. We are the Duck. 

Many thanks 🦆Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper · Published 1998 · This interpretation: CityZeen Allegory Series