What is this page about?

I began thinking about starting a new publication in late 2019. Four months into 2020, everything has changed. I’ve paused on soliciting editorial content, and I have decided to focus on some of my own thinking and work. However, I’ve decided to post some of my calls and writing solicitations here, essentially as open provocations. Consider it a validation of an assumption.

If you have thoughts related to any of these topics, or would generally be interested in contributing to a new dialog on topics at the intersection of buildings, cities, technology, ecology and economy, get in touch with me here or reach out on social media.

Reconsiderations

We're in the throes of a global pandemic that will have enormous costs in lives, dollars, and our everyday understandings of how we live. Some things may bounce back quickly. Some things may never bounce back. We are, as some people have described, in a "fog of war." Uncertainty has spiked. Our government, scientific, health, and financial institutions will be pushed to the breaking point in terms of practical capacity, but also in terms of granted authority and public trust.

Our need for spaces and environments will not disappear, obviously, though the near term demand, especially in sectors like travel and hospitality will suffer. We may never go back to work in the same way, but we will still need places to work, even if they are in the places that we live. For those who have dedicated their lives to thinking about buildings and cities and how we live in them, the need for your services will not evaporate. How we think about the built environment will certainly change, but the need for this thinking may be more necessary than ever.

What are the scenarios, beyond the immediate crisis, and what might they mean for our built environment? What, now, deserves reconsideration?

On Growth

I recently read Tyler Cowen’s most recent book Stubborn Attachments, which focuses largely on Cowen’s position that sustainable economic growth is the best path toward prosperity for all (even considering widening inequalities). The book is pretty convincing on a number of points and deserves deeper consideration, especially with regard to our approach to building and the built environment more generally. For me, it also raises a number of questions related to “growth” more generally, even outside the context of economic growth.

In business, markets and investors have turned cold on so-called "growth" companies, especially the "growth at all costs" model of tech VCs and startups. This has resulted in foundering IPOs for big unicorns like Uber and the outright IPO failure of WeWork, as well as increased scrutiny of the valuations behemoths like Apple. But is growth synonymous with speed or success? Would a tempered approach to growth still align with the high-speed, high-risk, high-reward strategies of early investors?

Meanwhile, population growth and increased resource consumption appear to be key drivers of our deepening environmental crisis. Can we have prosperity and stability without growth? Cowen would seem to counter that, if you value prosperity, stability, and the environment over the long term, then sustainable economic growth should be at the top of your list of priorities.

And what about inequality? Are the same forces that drive prosperity also creating the unprecedented economic divide we see in Western nations? This divide resonates politically and socially, as we see the left and the right diverging more sharply around issues such as the role of government and the distribution of wealth.

Is there a balance to be found? Is sustainable growth an oxymoron? Or will economic growth always put us at odds with our environment's carrying capacity? Can new technologies and models of business and governance contribute to a "smarter" approach to growth and environmental health? Is it time to slow down, at least until we develop more and better renewable resources? Or is it the wealth generated by increased economic growth that will catalyze those innovations?

As planners, designers, builders, and entrepreneurs in the built environment, how are these changing attitudes toward growth affecting us?

Space & Data

Billions continue to freely offer their "digital selves" in exchange for services from email to social networking to streaming media to wellness tracking and more, even while the downsides have become clear, impacting everything from our individual psyches to our institutions and our public trust.

In many ways, the business of the built environment has lagged in this revolution, but "spatial data analytics" is blossoming as a sub-discipline, "people analytics" is thriving in the workplace and HR spaces, and "generative" or "data-driven" design has become common parlance of design practitioners.

As a sector, we appear to be catching up, enabled by ubiquitous networked devices, sophisticated and robust data sets (for free and for sale), accessible machine learning toolkits, advanced software, and plain old experience.

As we progress through the adoption curve, what new questions are we asking, from the ethical to the technical? What do stronger data laws mean for our efforts? Does the positive potential of these technologies outweigh the risks — especially the potential for long term social, environmental, and economic gain? Or do we have a greater responsibility to protect individual rights to privacy?