Four For Friday | May 10, 2024
Four For Friday | May 10, 2024
LF122 | Life Enobling Economics, 3/30/300 for trees, Care clusters in Bogotá and optimistic, participatory government in New York
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
Life-enobling economics
This is one where you need to make sure you’ve got a cup of coffee by your side and your thinking cap on. It’s a bold attempt to reinvent economics, by the always interesting Dark Matter Labs, in a way that reduces the social inequitites and environmental calamities that seem to be baked into the current paradigm. The first part (above) was an introduction and the second part, is a response to itself, laying out a blueprint about how it would approach its work with this new mindset. Here’s a flavor of the new economic landscape it’s envisaging:
We are imaging new investment opportunities for city-scale tree canopies, community endowments and resilient bioregional food systems. We envisage that the electrification of transport networks, the mental health of communities and the collective intelligence of cites will become recognisable assets, understood as commitments to a regenerative future. We are also considering what might be unleashed if houses were self-owning and affordable in perpetuity. Or if rivers could express their need for care.
The new approach calls for three tectonic shifts - new philosophies - that are illustrated with some remarkable, poetic language:
From perfectly rational, isolated, individualistic homo economicus individuals, to: "permeable, dynamic interbecomings, deeply entwined in diverse right relationships and joyfully part of a full planetary consciousness”.
From narrow measures of GDP and financial accounting standards to more diverse, value based measures. “How would our economy behave if the collective goal and source of status was increasing regenerative potential or stocks of care?”
From a human-centered othering of technology and the wider world to one that sees human, technology and nature in symphony. “Imagine a future where our governing institutions are empowered to advance and scaffold the continuous learning of a self-aware system.”
It then lays out six structural shifts, seeking to change our relationship to property, labour, resources, contracts, governance and money. As said, a lot here to wrap your head around. But a bold and much needed exercise for a world suffering a lack of new economic thinking and political will to change.
The 3/30/300 approach to healthy and green cities
Speaking of reframing our measurement systems, here’s a a useful heuristic for thinking about tying together trees and health in an urban environment:
3 trees from every home
30 percent tree canopy cover in every neighbourhood
300 metres from the nearest public park or green space
This provides a rule of thumb that can guide local policy makers with a clear transparent metric that’s clearly good. Similar perhaps to the idea of the years of ‘healthspan’ divided by years of ‘lifespan’ to be as close to one as possible. Hat tip to Sarah Barns for the find.
Bogotá and its innovative approach to community care
An impressive story about care innovation at scale from Colombia. Bogota’s district administration built 21 Care Blocks, community centers that have provided support to more than 180,000 female caregivers and their families since January 2022.
Since its inception, the services of the Bogotá Care System have improved the lives of more than 546,500 women and their families. In 2023, it helped more than 550 women receive their high school diploma. A lot to be said for place-based models that provide whole-person, targeted care, in this case to under-supported female caregivers.
Rethinking democracy in NYC
A rather beautiful concept, engagingly presented, for introducing the idea of participatory budgets to New York. With a re-framing question of ‘how 'democracy can be more like honey?’ - sweet, sticky and slow - they’re raising awareness of the new concept of participatory budgeting, which they’re calling ‘people’s money’.
One of the funded projects is to pay immigrants to build cute little yellow (for optimism) statues that will raise awareness of the budgeting project itself, and get more people engaged with voting on projects.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen