The signals of transformation I write about are not concepts, and they are not the fruits of a vivid imagination. They are happening now. But in conversations about the book, I am often asked the same question: Are small local initiatives an adequate response to the global challenges we all face?<\/p>\n
The sheer number and variety of initiatives now emerging is my first answer to that question. No single project is the magic acorn that will grow into a mighty new oak tree. But healthy forests are extremely diverse, and we\u2019re seeing a healthy level of diversity in social innovation all over the world.<\/p>\n
My second answer concerns scale. Many people \u2013 for example in government, or in large foundations \u2013 tell me that large-scale solutions are essential if we are to deal seriously with the large-scale challenges we face. But that\u2019s not how healthy nature works, I answer. Every social and ecological context is unique, and the solutions we seek will be based on an infinity of local needs.\u00a0There is no such thing as a correct approach for the whole planet.<\/p>\n
My third answer concerns history. Big transformations in history have seldom been the result of a single cause or action; they were a consequence of multiple, interacting, processes and events that unfolded at different tempos. The German word eigenzeit \u2013 \u201cproper time\u201d \u2013 describes this phenomenon well: The timescales of change for a bacterium, a forest, or an economy, are very different \u2013 but they are all interconnected.<\/p>\n
History also contains numerous examples of profound transformations that seemed impossible at the time \u2013 until they happened: the end of slavery in the United States; women gaining the right to vote in England; or the end of apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela\u2019s famous words on the subject \u2013 \u201cit always seems impossible until it\u2019s done\u201d \u2013 have inspired millions of people \u2013 and rightly so.<\/p>\n
The assumption that the future is all about cities is another \u2018inevitability\u2019 now being reversed.<\/p>\n
Designers have taken the lead in rediscovering the qualities and value of rural life Design Harvests, for example, led by Professor Lou Lou Yongqi at Tongji University, leads the way internationally in the creation of of new links \u2013 both cultural and economic \u2013 between city and rural.<\/p>\n
Designing for change, in this context, is less about single, problem-solving actions, and more about the continuous search for value in neglected contexts, and the creation of enabling conditions for system change.<\/p>\n
The first and most important enabling condition is a capacity for ecological thinking \u2013 the ability to see the patterns of life as a connected whole. Experiencing the world as a web of connection \u2013 between humanity, place and nature \u2013 is deeply rooted in Chinese culture, but has been forgotten in most of the West.<\/p>\n
These connections \u2013 or their absence \u2013 are best explored at the scale of the bioregions that surround our cities. A bioregional focus re-connects us with living systems, and each other, through the places where we live. It acknowledges that we live among watersheds, food sheds, energy sheds, fiber sheds \u2013 not just downtown or in \u2018the countryside\u2019.<\/p>\n
Thinking ecologically gives new meaning and purpose to the concept of growth. Rather than measure progress against such abstract measures as money, or GDP, growth in a bioregion means observable improvements to the health and carrying capacity of the land, and the resilience of communities. Value is created by the stewardship of living systems rather than the extraction of \u2018natural resources\u2019. The language used is one of system stewardship rather than \u2018productivity\u2019.<\/p>\n
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A second enabling condition for system change is a focus on the social. In the North, the sharing or Peer-to-Peer economy has been presented as a novelty in recent times \u2013 but throughout history, people have collaborated, and shared resources, to raise and educate their families, take care of the land, and support each other in times of difficulty; social systems based on kinship, and ways to share resources, have deep roots in China, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Although these practices have been neglected during the modern age, they have enormous potential today. We need to ask: who has answered a similar question in the past? How might we learn from what worked before?<\/p>\n
A third enabling condition for system change design is a shift of focus in design from place making to place\u00a0connecting<\/em>. In place of an architecture concerned with discrete buildings, \u2013 or the design of stand-alone products \u2013 the new priority is\u00a0relationships<\/em>. As the biologist Andreas Weber points out, this is how nature works, too: The practice of ecology is the forging of relationships.<\/p>\n A fourth enabling condition for system change is that a new kind of infrastructure \u2013 social infrastructure \u2013 takes precedence over the concrete kind.<\/p>\n As we change the way we govern our communities and our ecosystems, a variety of different actors and stakeholders need to work together. The exploration of social and cultural assets, for example, can involve a range of skills and capabilities: the geographer\u2019s knowledge of territory; the biologist\u2019s expertise in habitats; the ecologist\u2019s literacy in ecosystems; the economist\u2019s ability to measure flows and leakage of money and resources. This convergence of expertise requires institutional support.<\/p>\n The scale and complexity of learning we have to do now is demanding, but it is not not unprecedented. During the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, numerous regional institutions were invented to ease our transition. Many of these can be repurposed to do so again.<\/p>\n New sorts of enterprise are also needed: food co-ops, community kitchens, neighbourhood dining, edible gardens, and food distribution platforms. In these new kinds of enterprise, paying attention to the process by which groups work together is just as important as deciding what needs to be done, if not more so.<\/p>\n The social infrastructure we need is beginning to appear in the form of new social and business models: Sharing and Peer-to-Peer; Mobility as a Service; Civic Ecology; Food and Fibersheds; Transition Towns; Bioregions; Housing as a Service; The Care Economy. Platform Co-operatives, in particular, promise to be to effective ways to share the provision of services in which value is shared fairly among the people who make them valuable.<\/p>\n Technology has an important support role to play as the supporting infrastructure needed\u00a0for\u00a0these new social relationships to flourish. The re-emergence of gift exchange can be made possible by electronic networks. Mobile devices, and the internet of things, make it easier for local groups\u00a0to share equipment and space, or\u00a0manage trust in decentralised ways; technology can help us transition from an economy of transactions, to an economy of relationships. Technology can help reinvent cooperative practices in rural contexts: sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, exchanging, & swapping \u2013 in which money is but one means among many of holding or exchanging value.<\/p>\n A focus on the local and the social does not mean abandonment of collaboration at a national or international scale. We can use technology to link projects, initiatives, and individuals in a global ecosystem. Learning in a bioregion \u2013 and between them \u2013 can also be enhanced by the ways people in the software world find what they need on a day-to-day basis. They ask each other, in real time. The Tech For Good community, for example, keeps up to date on GitHub.<\/p>\n This book is not about pre-cooked solutions. It\u2019s about building on what has already been done, in our various social and cultural histories, and on what\u2019s being done, right now, in diverse contexts around the world. It\u2019s about positive change that is top-down and bottom up; long-term and short-term. It challenges us all to search for connections that are working, and those that need to be made, or repaired. The health of a place, and of the persons who inhabit it, are one story \u2013 but it has many different versions.<\/p>\n
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