Good Doomed or Bad Doomed?

The Report finds two ways to look at the future of individual lives today and all those that follow in the Twenty-First Century. It concerns the happiness of those living now and in the future. The despair starvation and death embedded in climate change will destroy millions of people. Many others will escape the chaos with resources to assure personal safety. With these two views, The Report is unable to decide which will be more impoverished by these events.

A Thought Experiment

The irony of the architectural fascination with the zero-sum city is that it includes the option of never leaving the building, leading to one question.  Is it really an option?  Answer (1): It depends on what’s outside. Answer (2) If you are prepared, you have that choice. Answer (3) As the third answer to every question is one: What are the necessary preparations? Answers (1) and (2). Come up with a variety of worst cases and prepare for them and hope for precision or develop best cases and prepare for them. Leading to the question: Why is it so difficult to prepare for the future? Answer (1) It is difficult (not impossible) to design for unknowns as it includes the fear of them. Answer (2) The resources to create best cases are highly dependent on what is known and considered incomplete and inefficient. That answer of course always leads to that final unacceptable answer that is not a question. Building the most promising future can occur (3): when humans escape evolution, stop being animals of instinct, and free the mind from the substrate of cognition. The sense of insufficiency and inefficiency is a falsehood of that mind.

The Doom Loop

Dense urban environments offer high levels of collaboration that support quality micro-changes within firm boundaries and flexible economic regions. When contained, cities reduce latency in the acquisition of complex social and physical change. Fueled by diversity and interdependence, this creates a unique urban intelligence in the abiotic and human world of urban life, and there is one prime rule. First, do not cause harm.

The charts are from “Hunger and Blackouts Are Just the Start of an Emerging Economy Crisis” April 20, 2022, Source: UNFAO, Bloomberg. The article refers to the latest World Economic Outlook. The IMF likened the impact of the war in Ukraine to “seismic waves” rolling over the global economy. In addition, pandemic debt could produce a deluge of defaults among developing nations. However, behind war and pandemics lies the financial assessment of risk associated with climate change. The two photographs below illustrate a very different use of capital when a rising sea includes the risk of extreme and unpredictable weather.

Enclosing space for a preferred climate (left) is “a place to hide strategy,” Building islands for a rising sea is the leading A&E response to “finding a place to watch” climate change.

The Little Island Park officially (image right) opened on May 21, 2021, and cost $260 million [? cost of Airbus A380, the largest passenger airplane]. The public funds could have purchased an Airbus A380, the largest passenger airplane, for a cost comparison. However, the original Olmstead argument produced the cash for this 2.5-acre recreational facility. The public’s investment in this unusual amenity will continue business growth and new housing development along Manhattan’s Hudson Waterfront. These images can be found in Arup’s Journal (here) to exhibit the skills of this A&E giant in addressing climate change issues.

The Cascading Doom Loop

Capital is moving intensely in the interest of resilience experimentation. The investment in NYC’s Little Island at over $100 million [= Large city office buildings] per acre and the exploration of encapsulating cities are notable examples. The cascade possibilities have a global capital structure. The top ten are spread across the Earth.


All cities are affected by nations seeking geopolitical advantages. On the other hand, the “we are doomed” feeling is best known by NGOs acting as muted partners in mitigating the problems caused by wars, pandemics, climate change, fire, and flood events combining natural and capital impacts. Isolated disruption events cascade across a landscape, reduce shelter quality, destroy regional economies, and crush hope in their capacity to produce essential goods and services. The global NGO network in the nations listed above needs a comprehensive insurance policy.

The insurance economy is recognized as a necessary precondition for many activities in today’s global markets. The insurance pool is a critical component of recovery in response to a crisis event. Building a public/private policy for the Earth can produce the discipline essential to answering one question over the next fifteen to twenty years. That question is, “recover from what?” (See Declarations (here).

As cities adapt to climate change on the geopolitical stage, they face unprecedented competition for resources and investment in producing an effective system of urbanization. A new and revolutionary transformational infrastructure is needed to respond to the demand for renewable energy—stability before a rising sea and a path to a sustainable economy. Replacing capital investment in individual resilience projects by nations with a commonwealth vehicle is needed to encompass the Earth.

Eames for IBM

The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses, books, and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process.

Liz Cheney

C-Span is the only place with Liz Cheney’s whole concession in Wyoming. Watch it and make a decision. (here

“No citizen of this republic is a bystander. All of us have an obligation to understand what actually hapened.

We cannot abandon the truth…”

Rep. Liz Cheney

Her mission is to end the Trump provocation and put an end to supporters willing to pander to lies throughout the United States. She should not, and will not stand alone. In the most minimal sense that is a call to pay attention, and over the next few months it is a call for a maximum effort against an impending crisis of lawlessness and violence provoked by an unhealthy one-term president. Wyoming is in big trouble environmentally (water/fire/poverty). The hesitation to pull billions of investment out of that state remains valid, but only through the next two elections.

Her district is “at large,” thus the massive loss to the lies of Trump and his allies in their authoritarian reaction to losing an election and willingness to promote and embrace dangerous conspiracies.  Watch a person “disappeared” by the GOP’s Russian-style politics. Most important watch what she does next. Again, the challenge, onslaught, test, ordeal, gantlet, and sword is thrown. (here)

The Creative Democracy

Political leaders panel
Search “political leaders” for images – the public sphere is vast.

Critical :: Reflective :: Creative

Critical thinking shows that the characteristics of foolishness can be for good or ill. A critical thought such as a laugh of joy or scream of horror functions in the short term. The product of policy in a Democracy is therefore politically incremental and expedient because Democracy responds well to the demands of a presumed representative majority or an established, passionate minority. The short-term response is well-tempered by using day-to-day data to reveal the lack of fairness, equality, and justice.

On the other hand, reflective thinking will reveal the small steps that introduced critical items such as impact restraints to help people in automobiles. The occurrence of resistance to this introduction fell to respect for life at a level higher than individual freedom. Various pragmatic responses to problems, such as vehicular safety technology, separate the knowledgable from those willing to be unknowing as a form of trust. One can understand how the life-first argument can win as an emotional appeal in the arc of creative talk in a Democracy.

At the national level, reflective and creative thought is dying. It was possible to illustrate the horror of impalement by a steering wheel but not exhibit children’s bodies ripped apart by assault rifles. A reason for the loss of reflection and creativity is how Democracy relies on statistics selected to measure the population’s overall well-being, parsed geographically with indicators that reveal distress capable of opening a rift. The data is an aid in identifying foolishness that allows the potential for violence at the critical scale of change yet retains enough shared, well-validated content to encourage a social movement. Here is an example.

Today one can place “an app” into your computer’s operating system. I have two that illustrate the difference between creatively reflective and foolish. Whenever a dollar amount shows up in an online document, the app provides an equivalent of a whole public education budget of a city with “the cost of a Raptor Jet in 2018.” On the other hand, an app is available that will replace the word “millennials” with the term “snake people” on a webpage. The former is useful and verifiable, the other is nothing more than an ostensibly benign violation. The line is blurred here by political leaders. How will it be possible to reveal its dangers to Democracy?

Implementing creative thought encourages influential events at the local level. As “actions,” each step requires the selection of stepping stones for crossing thousands of the data-rich creeks, rivulets, brooks, and burns that feed the rivers that establish boundaries and the commerce of ideas that build the big communication bridges. Unfortunately, the creative Democracy is slipping away for failing to understand a core change agent. When questions of “ends” become questions of values, the question of promoting an issue without reason makes good listening problematic. After that, the natural bullheadedness of non-compliance and lack of compromise between rival values becomes challenging to resolve. Steps to strengthen reason are not used by political leaders.

Therefore, the next and final post regarding the need to improve political reasoning calls for a review of Methods

The Brutality of Change

The brutality in the life and death of rebellious Luke in the 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke” was far less than known to exist in the South if he were Black and where “noth’n can be a real cool hand.” Black history writers must have made the connection as prison segregation ended with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, a reference linking Black History and “Cool Hand Luke” occurred in a New York Magazine Feb 25, 1991 TV listing where Black History 1990 was on at 9 AM, and the film was at noon on Monday. The dire potential of chaos by Lazard is accompanied in the arc of metaphores possible in this film. The sense of strange connection reveals a dangerous cognitive gap in the rawness of it.

RLC
NYM TV Guide Page
New York Magazine Feb 25, 1991

Luke concluded that he was doomed and acted according to that view. Similarly, those “in the house” that proved a global warming problem in 1896 represent a similar communication failure. However, the terrifying issue is acting according to that outlook. Over the next century, the fire in the engine of cheap energy could accept the facts as accurate yet still treat them as intolerable. The Earth can become that unjust prison experienced by Luke or, as Lazard forwarns.

Historically these actions begin as a group of advocates small enough to fit in one house. On the other hand, the global structure of these actions in the digital energy regime begins in thousands of “houses” simultaneously. The world will continue to change “the only way it ever has,” as Margaret Mead notes, but today change for good or bad is possible exponentially in the world.

The Lazard proposition presents a set of facts that describe an entirely new set of fires in the engines of commerce with an equally frightening set of systemic waves of unintended economic and environmental consequences. So, again, I urge you to listen carefully to Olivia Lazard before proceeding. Promoting critical, reflective, and creative thought imagines actions and demands a record of how well they are known as good or bad worldwide.

Defined narrowly, Democracy is “the vote,” and that is all people require if they are safe. It becomes essential if they are fearful. For two centuries, the trust behavior in a Democracy functioned well with cheap energy and labor with little thought of consequences, unintended or not. The brutality on the new energy front will be similar without a very different structure for evaluating change. The failure to communicate or recognize choices that must be made produces the lack of foresight that got Luke shot, and the inability to act preventatively as Lazard encourages.

Blind Spots as Control Leaders

The idea of the Lazard Proposition is to expose blind spots with an aggressive information campaign on global issues. Each of these “spots” carries unique local experiences connecting GHGs with Climate Change. Confirmed in math and science, the laboratory for proof is now the Planet Earth, but like an unjust prison from which one cannot escape, the campaign will not argue causality. Instead, each event floats in the high cost of failing to communicate the importance of one as a member of them all.

The transition to blind spots as control leaders encounters the problem of conflict. First, however, Lazard points to the need for violence reduction measures spread across thousands of political jurisdictions. The minerals listed on the Green Minerals Conflict map below offer a clean-energy future. However, getting them will require massive mineral extraction to get the equivalent of that ball in the mine (left). The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts intense mining due to increased demand. For example, the electric car requires six times more mineral inputs today than a conventional vehicle.

According to The World Bank, a 500 percent increase in mining will occur by 2050 for minerals such as graphite and cobalt. Unfortunately, the impact and effect of these new mining activities have multiple blind spots, all associated with the urgency of demand, leading to violence.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development produced this map in 2018

Mineral extraction processes have a regulatory place within a Democracy similar to oil and gas extraction and processing. The framework for this builds on the quality of transparency in government needed to correct past errors. In business and government, the common denominator is to reduce the occurrence of violence. Two methods are in play at all times to do that. The first is building a manageable capacity for collective knowledge in the common interest; the second is the raw military power to acquire land as a power of the state and wealth to buy expertise.

Locally, Eminent domain serves a combination of public/private economic development ideals. Hundreds of trillions of transactions occur from routine urban improvements to the expansion of Russia into Ukraine. Each one produces “dots” along multiple pathways. On the other hand, the placement of these dots recently became a dangerous force. In addition, and only lately has it been possible to record these dots as exhibits in sets of enduring serial data, proving trends as regressions to the mean and, in some cases, probabilistic timelines.

The Daily Crisis

The following deals with global climate health using two components. The first is the power of machine learning systems, called Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the second is the human capacity to manage. The critical question about AI was when Kevin Kelly asked, “what does technology want? It was then that AI separated from its human counterparts. Imagining all aspects of AI entities and observation systems is due to a robust and durable memory that links laptops to quantum panels. The AI design replicates in ways similar to Richard Dawkins’ description in The Selfish Gene. How the miasma of personal experience becomes part of our consciousness aids in automatic responses, most of which are genetic and shared by everyone and every living thing.

Given this bifurcation of information processing, the second component would be composed of leaders capable of standing on facts with enough charisma to produce trust and say, “mining here is OK, there it is not.” The power of enforcement is the blind spot. Here we will find many social groups attempting a system change. The practice presents multiple implications for governance in a Democracy as its leaders confront a series of relentless crises.

Using blind spots as control leaders will define a genuinely systemic, peaceful, and nonviolent foundation for building bridges to a safe future. Not doing so produces intolerable indifference to human suffering. The example all can imagine is how national policy responds in today’s communication economy. Imagine the difference in the policy response if events such as the demonstrations in Ferguson, MO, occurred in fourteen cities during the same week in defiance of local authorities outfitted with surplus military equipment and a large vaguely regulated group of “militias” joining in the proceedings. The policy shifts from a local issue to a national unease in the global shadows of civil war and outright aggression.

What to Do, What to Do

First, create a trusted regime of science. Second, use that trust to build a public-good system with a global decarbonization agenda as a matter of healthy human survival and mitigate inevitable conflicts by location during planetary breakdown events. Third, to do this, it will be necessary to change business economics radically, and fourth, with these in play, promote specific innovations supporting three actions during the reversal of the oil/gas extraction industry:

  1. a steady decarbonization system to assure global environmental integrity with some
  2. big advances in ecological diplomacy and unique new law with a variety of
  3. corruption elimination services with powers dedicated to protecting habitat.

Your sense of hopelessness in Lazard’s recommendations is real.

Total prevention of geopolitical competition is possible with a new foundation of human security in the era of globalization. Exposure to blind spots in responding to this obligation can reveal the pathways that prevent climate-disrupted futures as cascading events. Identifying these ” blind spots” are those that remain aimed at the darkness of failure and lack of transparency.

Yes, it does seem impossible. However, supporting the individual as a member of a change agent group can have powerful consequences in the ongoing globalization process. What is needed is a “so say we all” moment. The means to that end may begin with a few language specialists and the focus of our next post — The Creative Democracy

Unspecified to Self, Unexplored by Others

The key to effectively using a stepping stone such as voting to get across a data stream is recognizing the necessity of balance, which leads to other conflict-reducing efforts.

How does a Democracy successfully serve the structures of social membership in forming a national identity while sustaining the right of difference?

A broadening sense of “existential crisis” occurs among the knowing people. Data gives them proof based on global-to-local factors such as climate extremes and the equally local-to-global experience of winner and loser economics. To succeed, American Democracy needs a new bridge-building system. The one explored here produces the following mandala for us to enjoy. Geometric presentations of thought and meaning present the psychological work of humans unknowing. Those with words tend to say “follow us, we know the way” to focus their attention and form groups.

Regenerataive Mandala

Here is an excellent example of the thinking required regarding the unknown to self and unknown to others often referred to as the Johari Window situation that Lazard calls blind spots.

Getting Luke

Hundreds of maps using remote sensing satellites and streaming data on the ground put observers such as Olivia Lazard into a global orbit, able to see graphic representations of a warming ocean and the growing incidence of damaging events coupled with a profound recognition of multiple layers of international power structures. All of the measures of all things physical that one can imagine are possible with these observation tools. The stones offered by Lazard set a path toward establishing a new goal for Democracy.

Routine reference to “reduce consumption and maximize well-being” is met with “we ain’t doing that” for the lack of viable demonstrations outside a monastery. Thousands of people such as Ms. Lazard present the grist for developing a new participants pool for producing additional proof. The examples presented below remain lost in the din associated with lies and gross assumptions that create objective proof, such as unjust prisons. If one of those prisons becomes the Earth, the problem has a name: Getting Luke.

The twenty-first century is faced with changing the structure of trust due to the construction of bridges to a new energy regime and decoupling the engines of economic growth from GHGs toward new sources. However, the confidence promised by technology is not hopeful. It is evolving into a terrifying repetition of history. Therefore, I urge, insist, implore and beg readers to examine this issue for an eighteen-minute talk on TED. Then, please follow that experience with four minutes of a scene from the Cool Hand Luke movie.

The next post examines these two media experiences. The analysis sought asks how many “Cool Hands” are out there exploring the blind spots of the global order. Next, The Brutality of Change recognizes the foolishness of catastrophic resolution policy.

MacArthur

The MacArthur Foundation

MacArthur Fellows Program

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation support creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks, building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. MacArthur is placing a few big bets that truly significant progress is possible on some of the world’s most pressing social challenges, including over-incarceration, global climate change, nuclear risk, and significantly increasing financial capital for the social sector.

President John Palfrey defines the values that drive the Foundation and remain accountable to the community. It is also the approach every narrative in search of resources should include. 

Creativity encompasses innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies that will have a meaningful impact on large and complex challenges. Bring them inventive ideas that support the creativity of individuals and organizations.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion The Foundation sees Diversity as the characteristics that make people distinct. Equity as treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement while eliminating barriers that have prevented the full participation of some individuals. Inclusion is an environment where all individuals feel welcomed, respected, valued, and feel a sense of belonging.

Compassion is central to respectful and compassionate interpersonal interactions with kindness and caring, reflecting the foundation’s recognition and understanding of integrity as the act of behaving honorably. It is a commitment to sound judgment, honesty, dependability, and accountability. Finally, life-long learning is the practice of seeking new understanding, knowledge, and skill with values acknowledging continuous lessons from staff, grantees, partners, peers, and communities.

Environmental Works

Environmental Works is a nonprofit Community Design Center directed founded in Seattle, Washington (1997). EW’s long track record has proven to be pivotal in all areas of need in the Seattle area. For example, the design-resource library for sustainable, affordable communities developed by EW was instrumental in reducing the stormwater impacts and increasing overall energy conservation practices in vulnerable communities.

EW is organized into four studios: housing, community facilities, landscape, and special projects. Each studio is headed by an experienced architect with more than twenty years of experience. It is a nonprofit full-service landscape, and architectural firm that responds to projects that the for-profit architectural community agrees would be unprofitable. This community also recognizes that a substantial record of sustainable practice, material use, and cost impacts of this public service-based agency has been of value to community needs throughout Seattle.


Good Listening

The practice of making logical arguments in Latin began well over 2,000 years ago. Latin arguments used to persuade toward the negative are as follows. Please avoid their use.

Argumentum:

  • ad hominem – the appeal to personal prejudice
  • ad populum – an appeal to mass emotions
  • ad misericordiam – an appeal through the exploitation to pity
  • ad baculum – the application of brute forces – “to the club.”
  • ad crumenam – an appeal to money, “the purse.”
  • ad verecundiam – the playing up of prejudice
  • ad ignorantiam – stress upon ignorance
  • ad captandum vulgus – a dishonest argument to “catch the crowd.”

Comment

The Standard of Risk

This is an odd post to do at this time. The thoughts of all on Eastern European theaters have only moved a bit north and west of the Middle East. There is more war-detail. No real loss of enthusiasm, but more emphasis on atrosity. I sense dread, but it is not as serious as thinking about my kids, old friends and how tired everyone seems to be. To dig into it, I began this long essay on perspectives. It is unedited. It will be a string of thoughts to come back and review, edit, remove and start again as so do we all.

RLC – Occupy

Urban planning is full of socially conscientious jargon: sustainability, diversity, social action, consensus-building, anti-poverty, ecologically sound, and a recent favorite, decarbonization. Many planners think that planning should be a tool for allocating resources to eliminate the significant inequalities of wealth and power in a society. That sounds more interesting than maintaining and justifying the status quo. It is a popular approach in social science schools of grad and undergrad universities. Thus the charge of a liberal bent. Change is motivating because learning to manage it is encouraging. The motive is reasonable, and it feels right to stand before that massive billboard demanding “A Fair and Just Society.” On the other hand, a drive down a road with that notice includes another. That billboard will always say, “It Will Never Happen.” Why? Progressivism and neoliberalism function in policy as if the proponents were mortal enemies. That is not the case. They are siblings of the same parents who want to keep the kids under control and uncorrupted, especially during a divorce.

When the public attempts to serve ordinary people, the task begins with laws governing the ability to trade freely in a “free market” and a public policy to fill gaps. Democratic solutions to problems become difficult when these two processes define the other as corrupt. For the planner, the control power builds on reforms of past errors in these markets. Buildings fall and kill people – write a safety code. Land uses poison land and lungs – legislate to protect the environment. Much can be done to either embrace or obscure failures. A property is taken by law and redeveloped by public/private partnerships to erase failures blandly defined as entropy. In all of these instances, clever T-shirts that say things like “Blight Me” or “There Is No Planet B” sell very well, along with resistance to a lawful change by lawful means. When these disruptions happen, you have met the parents attempting to distinguish lies from truth.

The Process for Corruption

The quick answer to the “lies” problem is that only the demand for currency and not cash alone will support intangible assets such as health, welfare, and safety. It is the demand that counts. Whether represented by T-shirt sales, or flipping property, the process creates openings during and after the push and pull of a reform movement. The intent is to capitalize on the obstacles used in resistance to “the state” and when it is “the state.” When that happens, you have watched the parents at work on practical matters of intelligence. However, the accompanying values determine likely pathways along the historical arc of questions of currency encountering parental guidance.

Those born after 1944 and before 1965 in New York City accept and understand how truth began to disappear worldwide. For New Yorkers, the disappearance has a date. On November 9, 1965, New York City suddenly lacked electric power for twelve hours, trapping about 800,000 people 2019 now reveal to New Yorkers that these disruptions are part of a continuum. Although this example, among many others throughout the world, is given a specific tipping point, the causes remain meaningless. These many failures have one reason – the rise in the demand for power coupled with systems of organized lying. The ensuing malaise has “tells such as the inadequacy exposed in, “we are doing the best we can,” or the hypocritical “thoughts and prayers,” sentiment.

National Archives and Records Administration 1944

Nevertheless, the “switch-trip” part of the truth on the cause of events such as a massive power failure remains a source of assurance, if not meaning. A mere nod to the web entangling every person plunged into a sudden market failure and crisis reveals the survival instinct among those with political capital and those without it. Social scientists recognize psychotic elements in the survival instinct embedded in ordinary people can also be found in large corporations as they continue to enlarge.

The defining measures for a reduction of sanity include lack of remorse, unassailable leaders, disturbingly globalized economic structures, and resistance to comprehend the experience of others when damaged. Even war offers this unhopeful truth. With the enforcement of laws and regulations, the public is responding to disruptive behavior only to discover the impossible task of detecting future errors. Hence, the action creates a condition of contrast and comparison necessary to publish new law. That is the parent. The next question is about the currency of that parenthood.

The Mask of Persuasion

The desire for control over creating something that every human on the planet would pay ten dollars to acquire is arousing. Is this feeling similar to “love thy neighbor?” Both motives are undeniably human. But sadly, The Mask of Sanity (here) is on both sides, offering cash and currency. The free-wheeling explorations of the global capital mask are brought under political control all of the time, but not for long periods. These ventures cover the demands of social justice ideas routinely. Yet, the desire to get ten dollars from everyone every day to use a widget remains inevitable.

Despite the production of vast imbalances, recently expressed as a series of dirty little wars, ultimately just war prevails for the lack of headway on other fronts. Progress by its Latin origin would be a combination of pro and gradi and translate to for the stride. The proverb — the road is made by walking is a personal expression of that kind of need for change. The desire to get to a new place or resolve differences through negotiation and compromise unavoidably involves the reallocation of a resource. The walk is through a government willing to enforce standards. The policy examines this demand for change based on risks such as lawlessness, disparate causes, and violent methods—all events representing good reasons for being conservative.

The analysis of Ludwig von Mises (Bureaucracy 1944) and Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom 1944) describes today’s neoliberalism. They characterize the risks associated with FDR’s New Deal as a welfare state expression of communism and ensuing totalitarian control. Hayek’s book sales and the attention of the wealthy, fearful of powerful governments tuned by war, led to the Mont Pelerin Society, an organization dedicated to neoliberalism in 1947. Under these historical conditions and compassion for the status quo, the political aim embraces the spirit of reform. It is a foil against risk factors. A modern social reform will always look to a standard for justice in this granular context of the law built on the inadequacy of measures from one group to the next. Thus, the “he said, no, I said” context believes persuasion is the priority, not fact.

From refugees to American homeowners, the focus on distinct groups (regions) sees resourceful individuals, corporations, and governments agreeing to mitigation regulation, watchdog administration, and planning. Hence, since 1944, the advent of exquisitely refined measures with terabytes of data per issue. Each can measure system conditions in continuous change from one state to another. The first test of this new order has two words – global carbon.

From 1939 to 1944, the spectacular industry growth in steel, rubber, aircraft, munitions, shipbuilding, and aluminum became possible due to the infusion of public capital from 1933 to 1940. During these two periods, it was possible to build a public investment argument to resolve the excesses of business practices in response to an economic collapse and include the stimulus of a massive war in Europe.

Similar to the climax of the industrial era, the technological revolution became equally exponential. An excellent example is the number of internet users at three million people1990 became nearly two billion by 2010 and four billion in 2020, representing over 50% of the earth’s population. It has occurred before, but this was the first time it was global. The macroeconomic impact was recognized early by Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas Jr. in 1995.

“For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth… Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.”

Robert E. Lucas Jr

Parenting

Every parent knows that when you take a kid’s stuff away, privileges, or worse, their phone, or demean their political outlook, all hell can break loose. Setting milestones provide the mitigating factor to this crisis. Examples would be grounding for a week, reduced allowance, or driving privileges for a month. Parents can be very creative when controlling the household until they fail. The parents we are talking about here are very close to losing control of the kids. Very close, but then I came across a video blog by Anderson Cooper on the entire concept of parenthood. As it turns out, his quest to be the best parent possible offers valuable insight into the metaphor used here on the meaning of liberty in a free society.

His first thoughts involved the newness of parenting and the seriousness of doing it well. His first post introduced his desire to have conversations with other parents and people who offer advice. His first interview was with Janet Lansbury regarding her insight into parenting.

Kids’ personalities are constantly growing, and they should be observed and related to as persons. All parents have a unique relationship with kids. In this sense, it is the most private and most public of human relationships. Lansbury quickly clarifies the importance of the differences between parents and children, all parents and children of all ages, their caregivers, educators, and scientists. 

The rate and absorption of content in these relationships vary in these relationships. The example given is when a baby reaches for an object. A parent might seek to give it to the child. Being mindful of differences suggests other interests, such as seeing fingers, feeling arm motion, or cloth texture. From the beginning of a relationship, it is essential to not “rush” and consider combinations of perceptions.

Cooper’s inquiry then turned to how vital talking is in this relationship. From describing individual actions to making emotions known, the brains of young children function almost exclusively on sounds. The endeavor absorbs those that are inclusive and personally engaging from other sounds that are less so. At this point in the conversation, the idea of “braving the silence” came up. Like not rushing to give an object to a child, silence in a conversation is equally important in these relationships knowing the kids are not parents. Cooper noted it was a journalism technique to wait and listen for more during an interview to gain information.

The example was how can a new kid not change everything when parent-child becomes parent children. The silence helps to more openly welcome the unstated feelings of change that represent new levels of change, such as confirming being upset about this change in awareness.   Confirmation bias remains a confirmation confirmed in the relationship.

As most aunts and uncles will confess, it is easy to wind up the kids with the excitement of play itself. On the other hand, stopping play confirms a unique power component. As the parents will tell the aunts and uncles that the kids are not adults, parenting represents the initial relationship model followed by many others. When it is time to stop play, recognize “the courage to confirm” balance in building a life for the kids outside of the parent relationship is preeminent.

Cooper then turned to a parent and colleague, Clarissa Ward, on the challenges of being a working parent. This portion of the interview hinged on media communications with kids instead of the warmth of a parent’s personal space. When separated, the parents are in pain. On the other hand, the deep emotion comes from knowing the kids are not. Despite the separation, parents struggle to discover what is best for their children. Nevertheless, if the kids still feel love, are being held, appreciated, and sense stability, the parent’s comfort remains strong and perhaps survives the entire journey.

Government

Because it was Anderson Cooper, it felt appropriate to replace parents with governing and the kids with the people as a schema on parallel analysis to determine the number of components needed to uncover the underlying structure of a large set of variables. So the following is a drill down on finding the government and people within a parent and child metaphor.

His first thoughts involved the newness of governing and the seriousness of handling it well. His first post introduced his desire to have conversations with other governments and people who offer governing advice. His first interview was with Janet Lansbury regarding her insight into governing.

People are busy forming their personalities and should always be observed and related as persons. All governments have a unique relationship with the people. In this sense, it is the most private and most public of human relationships. Lansbury quickly clarifies the importance of the differences between the governments and the people, all governments and people of all ages, their caregivers, educators, and scientists. 

The rate and absorption of content in these relationships vary in these relationships. The example given is when a baby reaches for an object. A government might seek to give it to the child. Being mindful of differences suggests the potential for other interests, such as seeing fingers, feeling arm motion, or cloth texture. From the beginning of a relationship, consider combinations of perceptions and not “rush.”

The subject then turned to how vital talking is in this relationship. From describing individual actions to making emotions known, the brains of young children function almost exclusively on sounds. The endeavor absorbs those that are inclusive and personally engaging from other sounds that are less so while separating the parents and kids, governments and people.

At this point in the conversation, the idea of “braving the silence” came up. Like not rushing an object into a child’s hand, silence in a conversation is equally important in the relationships between people and governments. Anderson noted that the braving silence technique of journalism, to wait and listen for more during an interview, often gains essential information.

An example was how new people (siblings) change everything is when silence helps to openly welcome the unstated feelings of change. The unsaid parts represent new levels of change, such as confirming being upset about this change in awareness.   Confirmation bias remains a confirmation confirmed in the relationship.

As most aunts and uncles will confess, it is easy to wind up the people with the excitement play itself. On the other hand, stopping play confirms a unique power component. The government will tell the aunts and uncles that the people are not adults, and the government represents the initial relationship model followed by many others. When it is time to stop play, recognize “the courage to confirm” balance in building a life for the people outside of your relationship as the government is preeminent.

Cooper then turned to a parent and colleague, Clarissa Ward, on the challenges of being a working parent. The conversation hinged on the “coldness” of media communications compared to the warmth of personal space. When separated, the government will experience severe pain. But, on the other hand, a deep emotion comes from knowing that the people are not. Despite the separation, parents struggle to discover what is best for their children. Nevertheless, if the kids still feel love, are being held, appreciated, and sense stability, the government’s comfort remains strong and perhaps survives the entire journey.

Robert Gutman

Robert Gutman

In an all-encompassing life of research and study of the architecture profession, Robert Gutman (1926-2007) published a continuous critique of the state of that profession in a variety of well-grounded essays. It began with a 1965 research grant from the Russel Sage Foundation to explore interactions between architecture and sociology. This inquiry remains open and unresolved.

Architecture is driven by the “status” associated with design in an advanced capitalist society. It can be described as high or low, quality vs. the lack of it, and as a condition that expands to include entire neighborhoods, new and old, restored and gentrified, diverse or isolated, and most recently environmentally terrified.

Proving the Negative

Why do people demand proof, verified, and vetted facts when it comes to making changes in the quality of life in a community but do not apply similar demands to the ghosts and gods of change? Are these not the most dangerous in the world? Are these ghosts not swirling in the fossil fuel of war and terrorism? These are known forces. Why the lack of will to fill the gap between these ghostly and the general expectation that a better world is possible? Gutman saw the raw subjectivity that insists the builders are doing well and called it false. As Robert Gutman put, there is,

“an unreality of the espoused view of the world of practice is perpetuated by the profession itself, by the schools, and to some extent by the architectural press, and these distortions make it more difficult for architects to deal creatively and constructively with the problems which the profession faces.”

Architectural Practice – A Critical View 1988

What is the market for design among people who don’t believe they can afford it and have no respect for it? Are they correct? The provision of design resources is the initial architectural service and the entire built environment by extension. Do we accept that low- and moderate-income people represent an invisible segment in that market? The market exists with personal capital and credit. Others could be served, but only if serious gaps are acknowledged, and new values recognized.

Rarely will community organizations find themselves like a paper in the top drawer of a desk where there is proof can they have the answer to the problems of their community. Instead, a nonprofit institution may find itself responsible for a combination of services meeting the needs of vulnerable families. You will often see them as accountable for producing and managing affordable housing and community facilities. Yet, you may also know them working under poor or deteriorating conditions made tragically complex by meager, sporadic assistance.

To open that desk top, they will need built environment professionals to respond to their needs in a far less autonomous way. Unfortunately, architecture and those who study the structure and functioning of human society remain indecisive associates and silent to the indifference. Gutman, however, countered as a teacher by encouraging a significant segment of future architects to recognize that a form of architectural resistance, regardless of the disturbances caused, can help people demand a better world. These acts create a battle between design as fulfillment vs. corporate practice where the function is all that matters, leaving the work of realization to others. 

Sustaining design as a resource for finding complex solutions to complex problems recognizes that design and architecture can lead the way. There will always be projects that have the potential to shift the status of architecture toward comprehensively better places. What is needed is a set of self-renewing political acts and the institutional continuity of a design purpose in a community.

The technique of creating a drawing to envision a future or align intention is one of humanity’s most significant accomplishments. When done well, the design practice formulates what needs doing, and it has been so for thousands of years. In creating environments, whether raw survival or human actualization, the need is increasing among the invisible clients, and like refugees, altering the structure of demand. The entrants to the profession are undersupplied in this sector, often relegated to second-class status within the profession, yet this is the area of greatest need. It is vital to alter society’s perception of the architect as one with short-term relationships in a community. It is time make design a permanent institutional presence in underserved communities and make them as purpose-driven as a public school.

Every urban region’s density and structural complexity are too siloed into rigid regimental structures and components to manage. However, these parts need to be recognized and defined as a whole by a local institution with the primary purpose of structurally understanding all of the connective tissues that make it part of a city. Therefore, this institution needs to be in a community as a permanent entity to ask one question until answers are produced. What is our design? How do we create and renew ourselves?

The Opposite End

In February 2022 an opinion article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy was offered to its readers entitled: Will More in Philanthropy Adopt the MacKenzie or Melinda Approach to Giving? The term “end of the scale” is used to describe the power expressed by dollars in trillions, because the quantity and management of these huge fortunes have produced an “opposite end” or a new extreme to examine in the world of charitable giving.

First, the amount of cash involved is truly unfathomable but highly transparent via the Melinda Gates approach, and Mackensie Scott describes her approach to giving by saying her researchers and administrators form a constellation “attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”

The graphic below is a description of the Gates Foundation transparency by Wouter Aukema (here) as drawn from the foundation’s highly accessible database access (here). In Mackenzie’s blog, there is a list of nearly three hundred organizations given grants,($8.5 billion ), the suggestion that ongoing gifts may not be public, and the recipients will be trusted.

The article closes with the “end of scale” elements that alter the traditional approach to the presumed partnership between vast wealth and the challenge of the 2010 Giving Pledge (Gates and Buffet) First, grants are made based on trust. Second, the cash is unrestricted, but the third end-of-scale element is the expectation that the funds reflect the problems the grant is addressing by directly benefiting those who experience those problems.

The Not for Profit Architect

Community Design

Community Design’s institutional development history began in the 1970s (here). Its practitioners continue to bring a transformational idea to community development by investing time with people at very early stages regarding the design of everything, of all places in which they live and work, as vistas, rows of buildings, gateways, hallways, entrances, and portals through which life occurs. The result of this design approach has planners and architects on an entirely new path to advance the community development field through design — a practice through which all cultures embrace discovery.

The philanthropic community continually improves its investment structure with resources that defend against threats and uplift the human spirit. The choices are many, improved educational opportunities and enhanced anticipation of economic shifts that leave people behind, including incentives and subsidies to level “the playing field.” These and many other investments in people are vital. But why leave the physical environment where these advances must occur to individual projects and urban landscapes defined by pre-supposed functions in poorly thought-out places? An investment in Community Design has become essential as it is greatly needed.

One aspect of the need to take this position examines the trillions of charitable dollars flowing into the world economy. In a brief examination of two huge foundations (here), the list of recipients can be discovered to have acquired millions of these dollars. All of them expect to function in physical environments that are inadequate and crumbling around them, and not one dollar could be found in The Report aimed at the professions expected to help them build for change. The quality of the physical environment is as much a clear community design problem as it is to uplift the human spirit. The agents expected to be responsible are woefully unprepared. Community Design offers answers.

Form Follows Feeling

Community Design is a practice that builds visions for the future in neighborhoods. It builds confidence in the capacity for change. It is a power that shows community leaders, emerging leadership, and ordinary people how to align their interests to one modest goal that everyone can share – creating a beautiful community.

In New York City, developers get added square footage as a supply-side incentive for affordable housing, known as mandatory inclusion. Other approaches look to demand-side subsidies to reduce economic disparities and support diversity. Unfortunately, these points of view are solely monetary decisions. As a result, there is very little design thinking beyond building height, bulk, and sky exposure.

On the other hand, the design process provides a more vital understanding of development and control points in every imaginable aspect. When design thinking combines investment in people and places for social action, public engagement improves. Discovering a sequence of design innovations and integrations for creative use is a clear alternative to a predefined bulk with a function.

Innovations in Community Development

Architects interpret individual structures or combinations of places as a fabric that reveals a dimension of emotion and a capacity for insight into the human spirit and condition. Buildings transcend generations; structures decay, renew and adapt to ideas that form the design of a community many times over and for many generations. Vast physical areas are in constant physical change. Housing, schools, childcare centers, police and fire stations, shopping districts, parks, playgrounds, and places for worship fit as forms with functions along pathways. There is a design, but does the community see it, have a sense of control, and like or dislike the places surrounding them daily?

Here are a few examples of the innovation in design thinking made possible through design as it engages a community

More examples are needed that reflect the ideas below

  • Resources to regularly engage people in shaping strategy or discussing choices are routine and well-understood public engagement activities. However, the design effort to give shape to a place for these discussions is still haphazard.
  • Testing the viability of new program ideas or getting existing programs and services to scale for more significant impact is a common requirement of nonprofit organizations. However, community design is a valuable inclusionary testing process in determining choices and is rarely used to its potential.
  • Nonprofits are asked to evaluate new business models and earned revenue opportunities to sustain impact. Resources to examine the physical aspects of the ideas are rarely funded.
  • Design assists in aligning decisions, comparing material resource selections, and action plans based on days, months, and years to bring a strategy to life. Why do these services unexamined?

More examples are needed that reflect the ideas above with one added thought.

Design Democracy

The Kettering Foundation, among several others, is a possible resource for design centers. It is a “protected” list and leads to a directory (here) of highly successful nonprofit firms. It is protected because of the attacks from for-profit firms. The Kettering Foundation, as an example of this content, expresses a singular purpose by asking, “what does it take for democracy to work as it should?” So naturally, a short question deserves a brief response from the community design point of view.

Keep your imagination focused because we are in times that test our eyes and ears. Our imagination of the vote proves we can have expectations, but every community gets a different test. Let us explain.

A vote is a test that fills in what we think is there but is limited by what we are expected to be in two, four, and six-year cycles. To pass or fail, yet grow, we learn to take the test of others as our own and work to become mates as if we were on a ship. Safe harbors such as your city or neighborhood offer time for preparation and a purpose, but to stay there is to fail a journey of unlimited tests that stretch from a front door to an equally fragile solar system distinguished only by the passage of time.

Whether that ship is the earth in the cosmos or a small boat in the ocean’s current and wind, the thinking we use to define the problems does not help solve them. Democracies work as they should when they take tests of our thoughts and the validity of our ideals through action. The first test is the vote, and the second is on the value of one voice, “the committee of one,” and of the many in all forms that engage generations of thought and policy from dry runs to building something.

Tests work as standards in the teaching/learning situation. They can be diagnostic regarding proficiency with a subject. They can be internal or external, objective or subjective but always fall to the hand of a final arbiter. In the case of a democracy, that would be the law. In matters of law, one or more legal tests help resolve the propriety of law as enacted. However, in the context of a congressional hearing, discovery, or other legal proceedings, the resolution of specific questions of fact or law now hinges on the application of valid assessments disregarded by the manipulation of rules. For democracy to work, replace the poor use of rules with final tests and an arbiter. The future of democracy is part of the American experience with oppression. This is most commonly considered a thing that happened and far too rarely as a thing made by us continuously and therefore demands Democracy.

Design Centers

In applications for financial support, we believe the “made by us” is an area where design and architecture skills offer enormous resources. It can advance democratic processes by establishing a community design practice as a bedrock institution. The vast physical landscape of the urbanized world is a product of planning and design professionals that do not control the outcomes envisioned by their masters, investors of capital. Establishing a community design practice in urban areas represents balance in analyzing the as-built environment, its preservation, and the impact of new build practices on what is standing. It is an evaluation through demonstrations of creating places that are beautiful for everyone in the eyes of all. This is the “behold” design challenge from the “front door” outward on the third rock from the sun.

“Where would we be without the agitators of the world attaching the electrodes of knowledge to the nipple of ignorance?”

John Lithgow

Nathan Cummings

Kavita Nandini Ramdas has departed after four months as president and CEO of the $473 million Nathan Cummings Foundation. If a social justice movement person needs help, have them look at their grant guidelines(here). The website has a “partner search” engine. I put in architecture, project, and “inclusive clean economy” from a drop-down menu to get a list of funded groups. One was the Auburn Theological Seminary. General Support $500,000 over 24 months in 2020 for its national programs that build the capacity of faith leaders, activists, and social movements.

Updates

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

The program areas (here) offer several places of interest to Design Centers if they have some legs. Look at Democratic Practice and Sustainable Development and their China program, to a lesser degree, the Culpeper Arts & Culture, but worth a look.

Rockefeller Logo

The Chinese government has been responding to complex carbon challenges. The RBF’s grantmaking seeks to assist these efforts. For example, look at Shenzhen GoalBlue Low Carbon Development Promoting Center, a project to influence consumer behavior to promote sustainable, low-carbon consumption.

The democracy program looks at innovative strategies for participating in governance, transparency, and accountability practices and institutions to achieve social, economic, and racial justice. Grassroots isn’t their style, so an outreach partnership with RBF-funded outfits like The Roosevelt Institute (100K) would be a good step. See RI’s video (here). Angle – what can a “think tank” do for Sunset Park?

Same on sustainable work – practical approaches model support for a range of actions to address the threat of climate change, such as clean energy at local levels (e.g., micro-grids, other innovations). In the arts, the strategy would be to find and support local artists focused on the diversity of Sunset Park.

No funding is anything that suggests funding individuals, only public sessions using the Pocantico Center, no youth funding, no capital expenses, lobbying, tickets, or tables.

Resource for Community Design

Perhaps the best way to ensure a smooth path forward with a nonprofit practice in architecture is to examine Form 990 of a similar organization with a long history. The Report recommends a short way.

Download the latest IRS filing of Asian Neighborhood Design or a similar group with a few decades of practice. Then, ask your nonprofit tax specialist to examine and advise your offices regarding the findings of their controller in your annual fillings. A developing directory of Design Centers will be found here.

The following resource is organized in service to the nonprofit organizations serving New York City with programs focused on the upland communities of the Brooklyn waterfront, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Outer Bay of the Port of New York. In putting it together and managing it daily, members of The Report and its students of philanthropy have paused to consider one question. Very few resources will be found that focus on Community Design. Yet every neighborhood is a product of urban planners, architects and engineers involving decades of change. These physical environments hold the entirety of the human experience and every individuals outlook, sense of self, and security with every step. For this reason, the central task in the use of this resources is to comb these resources to find new ways in which the places in which we care for one another is recognized in new and unexpected ways regardless of economic status.

The best place to start fresh is to get a digital subscription ($109 [? Smartphone cost per month]/yr.) for unlimited access to the website archives data with some analysis (here). In addition, the entry includes a power tool called the GrantStation (here), nonprofit adviser webinars, and newsletters. The objective is to work on a concept for each of the following and decide if it is worth anything. A pitch comes after asking why, who, and what.


The Scherman Foundation has funds helpful to community-based organizations. The grants average $45K strengthening communities” program.


Don Chen is the new $1 billion seven degrees. The Surdna Foundation provides “general support” to some of their long-term grantees and openly states the need to develop a long-term relationship. They carry three priority areasInclusive EconomiesSustainable Environments, and Thriving Cultures. The Grants Database (here) is the best way to see what attracted program officers in 2022.


The Charles H. Revson Foundation has an Urban Affairs section (here). The grants support nonprofit organizations’ programs with “design innovations” for meeting a community’s needs. Projects that maintain and join independent cultural traditions can be seen in new civic spaces, revitalized libraries, affordable housing, and creative urban stories. Grants ranged from $45K $2M.

 The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s interests include an analysis of the merits and faults of assets in high-poverty neighborhoods that require new forms of investment reform or development in two areas of funding Community Change (Community Development). Economic Opportunity (Employment, Education, and Training)/ The average grant was $84,000 in 2017 out of $93 million [? Large city office building] to projects and activities that support children, youth, families, and communities.





Maura Pally, executive vice president of the Clinton Foundation, will be as executive director of the Foundation. Founded in 2007, the Blackstone Charitable Foundation creates programs that enhance entrepreneurial ecosystems. What that means is in 2010, the Foundation announced its Entrepreneurship Initiative, a global commitment to advance business networks (surprise?)

One interest was the fund the Inner-City Scholarship Fund provides tuition assistance to underprivileged students attending schools in the Archdiocese of New York (see video here).



Abelard Foundation

Pitch

SJSW and its director are dedicated to this cause and have a priority interest in using urban planning and architecture as a path to a more equitable society. 

Why

The Foundation is part of the Common Counsel Foundation and has a “grant portal” that requires a tax ID, website, etc.  (here). Have a look to see if we should develop contacts.

Who and What

The Foundation prioritizes projects in their first years of development with budgets less than $300,000. They must be grassroots groups and community organizers striving to establish a more equitable society.

The constituents of Abelard East’s grantees are poor and low-income people seeking to affirm their civil or human rights. These include, among others, the disenfranchised, immigrants, workers, people of color, the disabled, and others.


The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? 

We have a better question.  Why have urban planners and architects been excluded from the design and implementation of a democratic process? Perhaps another way of examining the phrasing of this question would be to ask questions about foundation policy serving design interests or to determine why the architectural profession fails to seek a public no larger than a possible client? That is our insight into defining the problems of democracy, and the experience of these problems working with people on the broad physical conditions of their existence and how these components contribute to the health and well-being of every family and household of a neighborhood.

The possibility of exploring a community design research project is explored (here) under the heading “The Not for Profit Architect” as a social enterprise in architecture.

The Graham Foundation

The Graham Foundation is well known for its contributions to the work of architects and designers as thought leaders. In recent grant programs, grantee projects (research), and public programs (social advocacy) The Available City program Chicago Architecture Biennial (Sept – Dec. 2021) revealed that some thinking never changes, fails to develop, and feeds on the most lasting problem of our time.

The video below describes a recent public program initiative of the Graham Foundation. As one involved in projects exactly like those below, only a half-century ago. The shock continues to be nothing has changed. It is as if I am watching a time loop with irrevokable power.

After watching it is easy to rationalize my experience and theirs. The vacant lot conversions of my New York past are now well-institutionalized community gardens or taken city-owned land absorbed into more extensive projects such as a head start center and housing. I wrote of one example in Brownsville, New York (here).

Another part of the surreal time loop feeling of “now it is all happening to you” is more critical regarding the essential sadness beneath the optimism of The Available City video. It is for the lack of robust, institutional stewardship of the built and “to be demolished” environment this is capable of reforming real estate development as a process. The lack of that stewardship allows the renewal strategy to be little more than restocking a supermarket shelf with packaged and processed, nutritionally neutral foods. Or, it could be worse than that. It supports development practices that are pleased to support a vacant, lead soil lot for a modest community garden or some adventure play. Oh, and a vague hint of change.

The sadness is that these are earnest attempts to create a new life. They reflect the possible elimination of poverty with further use. The design builds on a grand purpose, recalling the loss by considering rebirth. Yet, to this day, the despair remains. It is limited to vegetables or keeping a playground safe amidst the chaos of the vacant lot neighborhoods of Chicago or those of Brooklyn. It was not enough then, and it is still that way.

The Theory of Change

Combining ideas about systems of thinking needed to explain something is based on principles independent of the thing to be explained because they involve feelings and therefore values. On the other hand, direct actions seek to make someone or something different. The acts alter or modify an existing condition into a new one.

The banners in the above graphic on the “Theory of Change” combine ideas with action applied in various institutional settings. It is a discipline worthy of routine use in achieving long-term goals. Community feelings are the vibrant heartbeats of change or the lack of it. Perhaps this is why the phrase “community design” is used by the architects and planners interested in social change to describe the creation of a successful design. It is a quesion of the relationship and the “arms length” selection of a working relationship.

RLC

Interventions

The goal of philanthropic investment in supporting community vibrancy, financial sustainability, and resilience integrates three fundamental objectives:

  1. To magnify local power to address this generation’s pressing societal and environmental challenges to equitable change
  2. To implement strategies and programs to make self-sustaining organizations possible with solutions developed in partnerships with financial asset associates.
  3. To confirm new and traditional investment models that break down portfolio and grantmaking barriers to reduce the conflict of interest between short-term impact and the desired permanency of inclusion, diversity, and equity.

Of course, these are not the only objectives, but they can be measured. The purpose of an intervention is to bring about an outcome. For example, in community design, the construction and rebuilding of physical space is an intervention in a communities life. But unfortunately, terminology can get people hung up. For example, the production of tall residential buildings in a community yields a variety of emotions. Understanding a community’s experience of this as an intervention is an excellent example. In it, the relationship between community and design becomes extant. However, another less complicated example would be helpful regarding a desire to produce change instead of reacting to one.

“In ten years, the number of children from impoverished backgrounds that become successful students and citizens will be doubled in community-X to help meet broad citywide diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.”

When stated as a long-term goal with implied objective components (i.e., defining “successful student,” “impoverished household.” “doubled”) establishes a base criterion. That done, a set of possible actions can become strategic.

The next step is to provide a structure that will prove a proposed intervention is working. The desire for change lacks meaning without an empirical basis along the path to its achievement. So a tactical prototype could be “after-school programs.” The steps following this decision would be to create a managing policy and a supportive work plan involving students, faculty, space, and material resources. In addition, the spatial and project design for the program would take active shape with a sense of priority regarding implementation.

Why a Theory of Change? (TOC)

Kurt Lewin’s work as a psychologist initiated a strong understanding of human cognition combined with social change. His work became a significant interest of the Aspen Institute (Roundtable on Community Change). As a result, Aspen is credited with the broad dissemination of TOC and its wide acceptance. While it began under the auspices of Aspen in the 1980s, the body of work “in the field” over the last forty years has produced well-received and practical examples of TOC efficacy.

A global leader on TOC implementation is Actknowledge – a nonprofit organization in New York City. The founder of Acknowledge, Heléne Clark, has helped expand TOC from its early beginnings to include the Center for Theory of Change to provide additional training and education resources worldwide.

In 2007, the first web-based processes offered by the Theory of Change became available. Since then, it has drawn nearly 25,000 registered participants. The impressive list of Acknowledge TOC clients is (here) for review. In addition, a series of publications are available (here) for further reading. Also, there are a variety of spin-offs. One example points to the Theory of Change compared with the Logic Model used by ASAID (here) and more broadly (here).

The logic method is linear. It is used to extrapolate and optimize what exists as knowable. The process is functional, but there is an alternative. Design thinking offers equally practical processes by which concepts develop through a feedback loop that includes verifying measures yet involves a wider range of participants. 

Applications to Planning, Design and Architecture

Since Lewin’s founding work and the investment by the Aspen Institute, the Theory of Change is recognized today as a revolutionary contribution to social change because it is counterintuitive. TOC is an alternative to the prevailing thought that following specific indicators such as prescribed functions will lead to a design program. However, the sole use of “indicators” or “outputs” are not sufficient contributors to long-term social change as a process.

Implementing TOC is supported by the  Four W’s — asking who, when, where, and why, followed by how. The answers help define a change in the context of feelings — asking how injects that emotion into a place. As a thought experiment exercise, asking why with a minimum of five responses also produces tangible results. Working with a community to gain information specifying an experience with change (also known as the Big What?) has significant implications for the end products created by design and architecture. TOC offers an excellent pathway. Here is another example.

The experience of travel is a helpful example to share regarding the practice of goal setting. Simply traveling is one aspect; however, it is very different when feelings and destinations allow for distinctions. For example, heading for Alaska requires significant differences in thinking compared to the Philippines. Getting to those differences and back-mapping to a present location offers many preparation planning and action choices with a place and a time.

In social change, it is crucial to develop a similar set of specifics to produce the needed perspective — it does seem counterintuitive to work backward from the desired outcome. Social change succeeds when the practice commands a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures. A well-known New York urban planner often quotes Yogi Berra, “You have to be careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.”

The example of the after-school program would require several specific quantities (attendance, grades, testing, grad rates) followed by results in the post-education experience of former students in the long term. Of equal importance, however, is the quality of experience. The feeling of getting to a destination. Here is one example of TOC’s impact on design. One fieldwork TOC effort sought to discover meager attendance rates in a Manhattan elementary school. It proved not to be the cause of parental or teaching behavior initially considered a function of the problem—a fully applied TOC process discovered it was the school’s adjacency to a high school with abusive students. The design solution – alter the design using time and the pathways. Initiate efforts at the HS level to effect change.

The contribution of TOC to the practice of community design is its emphasis on “long-term” when the goal is to achieve a social change as an outcome. Even randomized surveys of human opinion ironically prove that people lie on surveys. A typical example is that many people will say they practice recycling compared to the far lower percentage of actual household recycling. The TOC message is that it is difficult to measure an attitude accurately, but it is possible to measure observed behavior correctly.

Endnotes

Lewin’s 3-Stage Model of Change: Unfreezing, Changing & Refreezing. (2012, September 11) is available in (here).

In addition, two publications for downloading from Actknowldege examine goal formation and back mapping as a process for selecting short, medium, and long interventions to achieve outcomes. Theory of Change Technical Papers (Dr. Dana H. Taplin, Dr. Heléne Clark, Eoin Collins, and David C. Colby) and Basics, A Primer on Theory of Change, (Dr. Dana H. Taplin, Dr. Heléne Clark)

Don’t Look Up

It wasn’t mortifying George, it was liberating! www.monbiot.com

For every concerned adult, it is the same old story and it can cause emotional collapse.

“I was reminded of my own mortifying loss of control on Good Morning Britain in November. It was soon after the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, where we had seen the least serious of all governments (the UK was hosting the talks) failing to rise to the most serious of all issues. I tried, for the thousandth time, to explain what we are facing, and suddenly couldn’t hold it in any longer. I burst into tears on live TV.”

Losing It Posted: 10 Jan 2022 02:20 AM PST. Following is what reminded him of tragic pointless action.

The incredulous air of a planet death film. We die slow, so duh! The planet can too. ACT!

How do you process bad news? What is your sense of urgency? Have a look at: “My Represent Us Story,” and the “Unbreaking America” video with Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Silver. Nearly two million people saw it by February 2019.

The following 12 minutes is the answer.

It has succeeded west coast and northeast. Our friends in Michigan, Nebraska, Arkansaw, Missouri, and all over the South are working. Are you? It is just 12 minutes. Get the verticle line answer.


New York, NY Metro COI

The argument for hearing out a democratic socialist will occur because we are headed there anyway. There are many reasons for this evolution of social governance in the complex urban community. After WWII, American people will remember that their parents or grandparents could purchase a new car every year; wages were strong and ahead of inflation. Their employers and unions negotiated good health insurance services, supported public schools, and helped with their children’s higher education goals. Well-supported retirement plans were common. What we do not remember is everything between WWI and WWII.  It is remembered as the Great Depression, not the hundreds of big government programs and policies that pulled ordinary people out of desperate times. Historians document this shift in America well, but it has faded from the American culture to become an unknown.

  • Francis Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man 1992) In this work, he does not neglect to say there will be a century or more for globalization to establish liberal democracy. Nor will this tumultuous century inject greater prosperity into the world easily. The trade and communications economy could bring the world close to peace and prosparity, but only if Reinhold Niebuhr was wrong in 1932 (Moral Man and Immoral Society).

Social Democracy

Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri, a geographic information system software company approaching $6 billion in assets since its formation in 1969. Thanks to rapid transformation in every aspect of digital technology, it is possible for an ordinary person to examine the availability of complex data sets by location. Jack’s interests are global, yet he is one of the people that fully understand that people will think local. It is about their front door and acting accordingly for events such as the welfare of their children. Take a few minutes (here) with his presentation ongoing global to local.

The Child Opportunity Index (COI) map is an excellent example (here) and is pictured below. It is calculated based on Education, Health & Built Environment, and Neighborhood Social & Economic Opportunity indicators. The Kirwan Institute published this research free and online because it works to create a just and inclusive society where all people and communities have the opportunity to succeed. For more information, visit their website (here).

It is developed here as a link shared with a discussion of a large housing development project near Flushing Creek in Queens. The need for this development to recognize related community development interests (e.g. childhood opportunity) is clear. What is not evident is whether the development will displace those young people, or bring them the future.

Point Layers

Polygon Layers

Housing + Transportation

The ESRI resource brings data to people, freely and without cost. It is not a service offering answers to problems, it is an invitation to people to recognize their power. In the example below the people of Flushing, Queens, and a large section of New York City do not need an automobile. What they do need is a high-quality investment in the subway and related mass transit system to be competitive with private transit. The people of NYC are the low-carbon emitters, however, they are not well represented.

Remote Sense

Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri, a geographic information system software company approaching $6 billion in assets since its formation in 1969.

The technology to watch systems deteriorate and thrive at the local, regional and global level of observation is available. Jack illustrates the power of geospatial data in a mere six minutes. Still, the solution offered is frustration personified, but only if the tragedy of the commons moves from the pasture to the planet. or the alternative (here) “let’s all work together” is realistic.

Without a doubt, he expresses a powerful sense of urgency. It is worrisome, but Jack sees how geography has a way of combining the self-interest found at every doorstep with the regional thresholds of common interest and, after that, the hope of a global capacity to manage change.

The technological capacity to combine orbiting remote sensing tools and the somewhat ominous ability to predict land/ocean uses as they change is astounding. In addition, Esri’s interest in supporting open source business and pubic agency planning and development data is comforting.

With regular programming and artificial intelligence mapping and analysis, Jack calls upon all people and organizations to the geospatial platform. He sees it as a central tool for understanding local, regional, and global conditions as one with the power to improve planning, policy- and decision-making on the ground in every “layer” imaginable.

Do you or your organization use a GIS system for making decisions in an area of public interest? Examples are housing, public safety, air, and water quality, tenant organizing, public markets, food deserts — you get the idea.

If you are unfamiliar with this resource, consider opening a public account where information is made freely available by ESRI with the help of local, regional, and national organizations. Have a look (here)

An example from a member of The Report is available for review (here).

    Please Respond

    The White Chair

    The White Chair Prompt

    The photographer’s relationship to architecture equips us with a possibility — an agreement of care for the immense impact of density on human life.

    The artist’s eye on urban density requires an exploration of beauty with the planet in mind. Michael Wolf’s favorite photograph of Hong Kong (here) may not be this landscape from his website homepage. Still, it reveals the opportunity for reflections on intensely urbanized life and the wildness of that white chair. With his help, one can explore a series of graphic landscapes (here) that force quality of life thinking with visceral effect. The sense of humanity in his pictures discovers shades of life’s transparency (here). His portraits reveal the beating heart of society.

    Imagine the white chair as an opportunity to gain perspective on the purpose of architecture. What do we reveal if the spread of these apartments became small buildings spread across the hills and valleys below? Is it possible to slip into the ground space among these structures to discover an abundant sense of warmth and protection, art and entertainment, education and training, fresh garden foods, children laughing, the soft bounce of a ball? Are the hallways, corridors, doors, and elevators equally comforting? These questions dismiss judgment of architectural mass for a higher level of contemplation on the quality of dense urban life.

    Startups

    Startups are efforts to plan and deliver a new project, program, product, or service under conditions of uncertainty. To examine the precariousness implied, pay close attention to five well-recognized organizing views   They are known to business development interests in every field. Software services dominate today’s startup business market, but these systemizations of the entrepreneurial spirit probably date to when someone imagined a potter’s wheel becoming a vehicle.

    RLC

    Here are those five views:

    Entrepreneurs are 1) everywhere 2) most have management skills 3) and they are subject to “validated learning.” (?) Therefore, the fourth and fifth views focus on 4) implementation as a “build, measure, learn” sequence but rarely are they well informed by 5) innovation accounting.

    If you hit that “? link,” you took a peek into the twilight zone of management gurus and a vast array of elegant maxims for ending uncertainty. One of those clever maxim gurus, Eric Reis, The Lean Startup made enough sense to hold a strong place on the NYT Best Seller List (roughly 5-10K sold per week to get on the list, then rising to #2). You will also find his approach transferable to the nonprofit, NGO world. The following is how we read it from that point of view.


    Deem it possible to create ventures for an idea in short precise cycles. In that case, the institution, business, or industry size is not relevant. Instead, the key to using these views for a project is to notice changes, savor them and validate what was learned. A startup can perfectly or poorly select the metrics for deciding. Some of the most common are linked below that focus on the more agile sequences.

    The startup strategy may seem obvious, but it varies significantly by the project or product sought. The traditional steps are 1) setting the requirements, 2) with specifications, to 3) begin design.  As these steps occur, they make the problem and the product solution prominent in the mind of individuals.  With this comes the confidence to 1) implement, 2) verify with modeling, and 3) test for maintenance and usability issues. Finally, the practice of fully recognizing the problem/issue leads to trusting the intended solution as understood equally. Unfortunately, these concluding steps tend to involve unsatisfactory participatory bargaining frameworks, even with oneself. To prevent these malfunctions from destroying the whole, innovation accounting is essential, especially to “startup” initiatives. There is a useful introduction to the novelty implied by this phrase from Reis (here).

    What is the Account?

    The release of a project/program into “the wild” may deploy many iterations for acceptance, rejection, and eventual dismissal into the market and a life of use destined to fail or soar. Trying to understand customers with specific consumable solutions (Joost vs. YouTube ?) share this unknown destiny. The effort to inject something into the world, even if it is a singular, unique item, hopes for approval marked by an exchange. Thereafter, the use and enjoyment, or how likely it will be dismissed or displaced by a competitor, is less concerned. Only the uncertainty seems sustainable. Nevertheless, the practices described above are reasonably successful when the solution and the problem are well known and similar to past endeavors.  Injecting the lasting practice of discovery into the “account” requires a diversified approach.

    All the iterations of a known solution from the horse and carriage to a self-driving car led to this brief tale on innovation.

    Leaving the country estate, Sir Alfred Reid passed out while driving his carriage. He awakens outside his London home, surprised he stroked his horse and stumbled off to his bed. Thereafter, he was happy to tell everyone that he had a good-pony-solution or GPS.

    Getting to transformative innovation in transportation doesn’t mean putting everyone into Sir Alfred’s carriage. Instead, this tale represents a singular feedback failure. However, even though creating systems as functional as a horse’s pathway memory appears to be today’s advanced technology, it does not. It merely presses for a known and comfortable solution. Moreover, it ignores innovation accounting disciplines in preference to the useful comforts of validated learning. Finally, it fails by not understanding the customer, only the product. The account is a practice that maintains a reckoning with customers as immediately as possible. In this century, the open-ended practice of dropping sparkling objects ere the consumer’s eye is one of the most self-destructive mistakes to social and environmental well-being ever made. Reis argues it is for the lack of revolutionary innovation. We agree.

    What is Innovation?

    Successful innovation has two sides of a coin. One moves quickly to understand conditions in short-time sequences. The other side uses data from these compact arrays that define relationships. Thus, two sides of a coin establish opportunity, but you have to move like Mario with new data. (?)

    How? First, with your product or service, create a clearly established baseline composed of a minimally sustainable/viable product (MSVP). Sustainable means undamaging to future generations, and viable, in our opinion, means “not dead yet.” Couple the MSVP with the ability to measure customer utilization and behavior as it occurs. Next, collect the short cycle data and measure each trial. Savor the metrics in these cycles, but know they must be carefully selected.  

    No matter how innovative, a point of diminishing returns occurs. If attention is only paid to the first two components of the accounting effort, trouble will brew.  The final benchmark, therefore, becomes knowing when to pivot or persevere. Despite the uncertainty of this decision, recognizing the third side of the coin is critical during this process. The pivot or persevere side is the one on which it spins. Here is one story of the “when, where, and why” of a pivot.

    In the mid-1980s, a well-known university architecture and urban planning program offered its students two studios entitled Community Design and Social Action to be taken sequentially. The courses were supported by a small administrative office that vetted requests for planning and design assistance from local community development organizations throughout the city. One prospective client approached the office with an idea for an extensive training and education center. The center would heighten the skills of volunteers from neighborhood associations and the staff of community-based development corporations.

    The Community Design course provided the planning and research for the concept. Within fifteen weeks, the idea of a training center proved positive, as confirmed by a study of community needs, availability of participants, and a line of probable funding for training people. However, capital for a new or rehabilitated physical location was not available. As a result, the client’s dream of a bustling center of social change agents faded. New questions were asked in the next fifteen-week Social Action cycle. Is space of any size available to demonstrate the training idea? Eventually, a location previously thought of as undesirable was re-identified. It was small but in a convenient location. It represented a minimal but sustainable opportunity. At this point, a clearly identified program baseline was defined. The product became the design and construction of a flexible set of inexpensive, lightweight tables and vertical surfaces adaptable for small-group workshop areas and moderately large presentations.

    Tools for Resilence

    The first distribution of sequences occurred in fifteen weeks, involving traditional steps. The project could have produced one process: presentation drawings for an extensive training center design along with a hearty handshake and a good luck smile. However, the metrics to demonstrate successes/failures would have been obscure. So instead, the Social Action component in the ensuing fifteen weeks asked to identify a minimally sustainable product. It was assigned metrics and benchmarks to sustain a record of accomplishment lasting years. In this process, multiple layers for understanding “the customer” occurred in just thirty weeks. The project selection process for access to this planning and design resource used a detailed online questionnaire. In brief, it incorporated the organization’s characteristics, the type of assistance requested, background logistical data, timeframe, names of committed participants, mission statements, and extra-investigative elements. It was the minimum sustainable product for establishing essential data to define opportunities for a close customer relationship.

    The project began with students, faculty, and a client/customer. The customer/client transformation into a training director was possible because the initial selection and interview process and research confirmed the client’s skills and experience in attracting customers. In this training center case, a modest effort was launched with volunteers and staff. Unfortunately, the process came face-to-face with the spinning side of that coin, and rather than persevere in hope. There was a pivot.

    In the decades since this example, the capacity for a deep exploration of the relationship between technical assistance needs of all kinds and the desire of leaders to improve the quality of change is available for development. It lies in a vast digital matrix for expediting the delivery of products and services with a built-in capacity for rapid change. With the thirty-week sequence, including uptake and administrative follow-up support, this customer joined a growing movement of nonprofit local development corporations, community-based organizations, businesses, and companies dedicated to mission-driven change in metropolitan areas.


    Draw Conclusions

    Feedback is best when it is unhesitating in a social setting. However, moving quickly from idea to building and measuring, gathering data, and leaning back into a conceptual idea should also be immediate. Developing a digital backbone for networks is extremely useful but demands new techniques. The links below can be explored for ideas on how to gather and share data on a platform.

    From the fine artist or artisan to the builders of the new, new thing, the content of a post-product relationship varies dramatically. These relationships are vital but can be as simple as “how is that ‘it‘ working out for you” to the millions of data queries accessible by grouping values that aggregate items using the discrete categories of mathematical functions. Functions such as arithmetic mean, median, mode, range are available to anyone that decides to count things and, with their customers, build a platform to do so. A startup can establish a relationship with all those interested in acquiring a mutually useful set of products or services with prepared resources. These systems can focus on money solely, but the metrics are available to include other views such as those expressed by the term 3BL (?).

    Whether for a social change training center or alternatives to a self-driving pod, the practice of innovation demands a careful selection of metrics. Moreover, the choice to engage in social change training or urban transportation engineering requires interacting with people and serving investors of all kinds. The following links will take you to a set of choices. Some of them may be uniquely suited to your program, project, or product development. Most will not. The options are many to choose from. They tend to focus on digital products. However, even the smallest product and service endeavor will have a digital existence. Transcending the customer-consumer model begins with the challenges of mutuality, transparency, and environmental intelligence. Understanding new and extraordinary ways to establish reciprocity in the exchange is the central provocation.

    The following needs vetting. Each link is a rabbit hole to peek into for one reason. A fast sequence could list clients to compile a customer/client archetype and possible recommendations and referrals. A fast measure could be to prepare a split test occupied with a fast build unit test. If you have a website, you have an SQL database subject to refactoring. As mentioned above, these are rabbit holes. Choosing by adding information is not.

    We are interested in personal reactions and recommendations useful for NGO B Corporation efforts. If you have some to share, please use the contact link (here). For example, becoming a Certified B Corporation® (here) does not refer to tax status at all; it describes a business with a particular mission to promote the public good in certain ways. Another post (here) examines New York City B-Certified businesses and seeks reviews.

    Fast Sequence

    Fast Measure

    Fast Build

    B Corporations

    The B Lab Company (B Lab) is a nonprofit (IRS Form 990 N.E.C. (W99) that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good.  Located in Berwin, PA (EIN20-5958773 its mission is “to change the operating system, culture, and practice of business so that all companies compete to be best for the world.  In 2020 it self-reported about 12M in revenue and 10M in expenses (Guidestar).

    Is B Corp Certification Worth It?

    A Certified B Corporation® (here) does not refer to tax status; it describes a business with a particular mission to promote the public good in certain ways. B Corp Certification measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance. The B Impact Assessment evaluates and verifies operations and business model impact on workers, community, environment, and customers.

    Transparency and accountability requirements are used but do not prove where a company excels, however it commits a company to the long-term changes in a company’s legal structure.  A true Benefit Corporation is formed under state law. A list of NYS statute-produced corporations (here) does not include businesses with B Lab certification.

    Public authorities have the power to create subsidiary authorities without additional legislative authorization. An example is 2007, the Empire State Development Corporation, (ESDC) dissolves 13 of its subsidiaries and merged 25 others into a single holding company and still encompasses many subsidiary organizations. While major public authorities can only be created by special legislation, many local development corporations have been created under the General Not-For-Profit Corporation Law as Local Development Corporations (LDC). They function in much the same way as other public benefit corporations and public authorities, but do not need to be established by specific state legislation and like businesses seek B Corp Certification. The speculation is the surge in interest seeks to soften the negatives associated $1.5 trillion tax cut package in 2018. Even B Lab posts an apology for certification delays.

    Should a new startup seek a B Corporation Certification as a means to link other studio and production activities?  One way to find out is to look at the current group that has certification in New York. Using the B Lab directory the following selection of B Corporations based in New York City and nearby areas can be explored. The image to the right exhibits a selection from the B Corp directory. Use it (here) for individual searches not found on the list to the left. Reviews are requested and held in confidence. Use the contact link (here).

    Income <=>

    Obama defines the problem extremely well.

    He actually answers the question about how and why we are in this fix.

    This one looks at implementing a political agenda to reverse the trend where self-interest economics has lost its ability to reinvest. This is thirty minutes on the growing demand from the ordinary person for progressive solutions. The business community had better get involved.

    EPA Saved Cities

    11 Ways the EPA Has Helped Americans

    March 17, 2017 by

    This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com.

    The budget proposal Donald Trump’s administration announced yesterday will slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s funding by nearly a third, crippling an agency that has played a key — but often unnoticed — role in American life for nearly a half-century.

    The main target of the president’s ire seems to be the agency’s programs that address climate change. “We’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said at a press conference. But cuts so large won’t just affect climate change-related programs — they will trickle down, affecting all of the agency’s work and the state environmental protection offices it supports.

    Even Scott Pruitt, Trump’s climate science-denying EPA administrator, seems to feel Trump’s cuts go too far. When an initial budget proposal surfaced slashing the EPA’s funding from $8.2 billion to $6 billion, Pruitt expressed concern about the effect a reduced budget would have on programs aimed at cleaning up and repurposing toxic and polluted sites, a function of the agency that he supports. The New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and Coral Davenport report that Pruitt lobbied Trump to rethink the cuts, but his appeal, apparently, didn’t work: Trump’s finalized budget flouts his EPA administrator’s wishes by calling for even deeper cuts than initially proposed, slashing the agency’s budget to about $5.7 billion.

    That budget isn’t final. It will still have to get through a Congress where even Republicans who have staunchly opposed the agency in the past are worried about what the funding cuts will mean for their districts. So, given that some in Congress might be deciding if and when to take a stand, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at some of what the EPA has accomplished over the last 46 years since Richard Nixon signed an executive order in 1970 bringing the agency into existence. These successes were, almost unanimously, won despite the strenuous and well-financed objections of recalcitrant polluters, and are, almost unanimously, now taken for granted.

    1. Patching the Ozone Hole

    Remember the ozone hole? We don’t really either. But ozone concerns were front-and-center in the ‘80s when, frighteningly, scientists discovered that pollution was causing the part of the upper atmosphere that protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to deteriorate. The issue came to a head when, in 1985, British scientists announced that an expanding hole had formed in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

    The president at the time was Ronald Reagan, a zealous proponent of deregulation who did not seem to have strong feelings about environmental protection. But he surprised his advisers by vigorously backing the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty between 197 nations that banned chlorofluorocarbons, a chemical that was used as a refrigerant and was also found aerosol sprays, and was to blame for the hole. (Why did Reagan take up the cause? No one is quite sure. One theory is that Reagan’s own experience with skin cancer made him particularly sensitive to the topic.)

    Once the Montreal Protocol was signed, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to give the EPA the power to enforce a ban on chlorofluorocarbons and protect the ozone layer. The agency’s success in doing so, along with the efforts of environmental regulators worldwide, helped the hole begin to repair itself — and also, it turns out, lessened climate change. Though scientists didn’t realize it at the time, chlorofluorocarbons contribute to global warming. If not for the Montreal Protocol, climate change’s effects might be twice as bad.

    2. Cleaning up America’s Harbors

    When the EPA was created in 1970, the water around America’s cities was in a notably different state than it is today. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was, famously, so thick with combustible industrial chemicals that it often caught fire. Manhattan was dumping some 150 million gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson River each day. Around the same time, a failing wastewater treatment plant in Boston was also spitting out huge amounts of sludge, leading health officials to warn that anyone who fell into Boston’s Charles River or the harbor it emptied into should go immediately to the hospital to be assessed by a doctor.

    It was the EPA’s job to deal with these problems. The Clean Water Act of 1972 charged the agency with cleaning up America’s waters, and provided billions of dollars to do so. Among other responsibilities, the EPA was tasked with laying down minimum standards for wastewater treatment before cities could release it. The EPA was also responsible for regulating city sewer systems so they didn’t overflow, spilling sewage into the streets during heavy rains.

    This made a big difference in America’s cities. New York brought a large, new sewage treatment plant online in 1986, solving Manhattan’s dumping problem. In Boston, a series of lawsuits prompted federal action. “Secondary treatment of sewage is a national standard, which means no more Boston Harbors,” said Union of Concerned Scientists President Ken Kimmell, who, as a former commissioner of Massachusetts’s Department of Environmental Protection, worked hand-in-hand with the EPA to clean up the water around the city. Boston Harbor is now one of the cleanest in the country.

    3. Cracking Down on Lead

    For years, industrial players who used lead fought regulation, with disastrous effects for Americans. A 1985 EPA study estimated that as many as 5,000 people died each year from lead-related heart disease. Tackling lead poisoning was one of the agency’s founding agenda items, and it did so over strenuous objections from the industries that put it in their products. The metal is now virtually illegal, leading to dramatic improvements in public health.

    Legislation in the 1970s effectively banned lead from paint, and a 1985 EPA order required that the amount of lead in gasoline be cut by 90 percent by the following year. Five years later, a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act demanded that lead be completely removed from gasoline by 1995. The EPA also reduced the amount of lead that could be emitted by smelters, mines and other industrial operations, leading to an 85 percent decrease in the amount of airborne lead pollution between 1990 and 2015.

    The effort, of course, was imperfect. A December 2016 Reuters report following Flint, Michigan’s lead crisis found 1,100 areas around the country where lead levels were regularly four times what they were at the peak of Flint’s contamination. Many, like Flint, were in poor regions neglected by state and federal policymakers. Unlike other toxic chemicals, lead does not break down over time. But the agency’s efforts did have an enormous effect. A 2002 study found that the level of lead in young children’s blood fell by more than 80 percent from 1976 to 1999, and that IQs increased as a result.

    4. Making the Air Safe to Breathe

    The agency also cracked down on other forms of air pollution, leading to a decrease in particulate matter and chemicals in the air that cause asthma. Their efforts meant a visible decrease in the smog that often choked cities in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

    To do this, the agency cracked down on vehicle emissions and the pollutants coming from the smokestacks of factories and power plants. As the number of miles Americans travel per year has steadily climbed and the amount of power Americans consume has grown, emissions have fallen.

    That saved hundreds of thousands of lives per year, and meant millions fewer cases of asthma and respiratory diseases. According to a peer-reviewed EPA study, these regulations in particular meant 165,000 fewer deaths per year in 2010 than in 1990 and 1.7 million fewer cases of asthma. One recent study found that, thanks to these air pollution controls, children in Southern California have lungs that are 10 percent larger and stronger than children’s lungs were 20 years ago.

    5. Cleaning Up Industrialism’s Legacy

    Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, residents of Love Canal, New York noticed an odd smell coming from the 99th Street School. And they noticed that odd things were happening too: Childrens’ sneakers melted to the pavement; dogs burned their nose when they sniffed it. Turns out, the school was built on top of a toxic waste dump. The “canal” for which the town is named was filled with toxic waste by the Hooker Chemical Company for three decades — 22,000 tons in all — before, in 1955, the area was paved over and a school was built on top of it. The chemical company had sold the property to the city for $1 — part of the deal, the “Hooker clause,” was that the company would not be liable if anyone got sick or died in the school.

    When residents of Love Canal uncovered this sordid history, it provoked national outrage. Efforts to regulate toxic chemicals had already been in the works — in 1976, Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as part of an effort to respond to concerns about illegal, toxic dumping, and the Toxic Substances Control Act, which gave the EPA the authority to protect public health by regulating toxic chemicals. But in 1980, largely in response to Love Canal and other toxic disasters that garnered headlines, Congress established a program to make use of a “superfund” that would clean up America’s most toxic places, and throughout the ’80s the EPA put the money to work, cleaning up heavily polluted sites from landfills to oil spills, factory fires to sludge pits, throughout the US. A program for less-urgent but still important cases, the Brownfields Program, was launched in 1995, tasked with cleaning up sites where contamination was an impediment to putting a vacant property to better use.

    These programs, taken together, amounted to a formalized, government-supported environmental justice initiative, improving toxic sites that were unjustly distributed across America’s poor and minority neighborhoods. But, in recent years, shrinking appropriations from congress have slowed cleanup efforts.

    6. Making Water Safe to Drink

    In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, giving the EPA the ability to regulate the water that came out of Americans’ taps. The agency ended up banning more than 90 contaminants from the water supply and cracking down on companies whose business practices poisoned Americans.

    The EPA also issues “revolving funds” to communities to for improvements to the infrastructure that brings water to homes and to water supplies.

    7. Controlling Pesticides

    The EPA has also played a role in regulating pesticides, which helps keep our food safe. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, a law that dates back to the Progressive Era, was put under EPA’s responsibility in 1972.

    One of the agency’s first acts was to ban DDT, a pesticide that first came into use in the 1940s but poisoned wildlife and humans as well as bugs. The chemical’s effects were, famously, documented in Rachel Carson’s 1962 New Yorker serial Silent Spring, but the chemical industry, lead by Monsanto, fought bitterly to keep it in use. The EPA’s decision to ban it was a major environmental victory.

    8. Attacking Acid Rain

    We heard a lot about acid rain in the ’90s but don’t so much anymore. Congress took up the issue in 1990 — George H.W. Bush had, in fact, campaigned on addressing it. Despite opposition from electric utilities, Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act so that the EPA could regulate the chemicals that were to blame: sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

    It worked. “Despite the doomsday warnings from some in the power industry that the regulations would cause electricity prices to spike and lead to blackouts, over the last 25 years, acid rain levels are down 60 percent — while electricity prices have stayed stable, and the lights have stayed on,” former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote in 2015.

    9. Paving the Way for Indoor Smoking Bans

    Back in 1993, the EPA, in response to overwhelming research, classified secondhand smoke as a pollutant likely to cause cancer. At the time, this position was braver than it might seem today. Tobacco companies had waged a multidecade-long campaign to keep Americans smoking by questioning the link between cigarettes and cancer, even going so far as to suppress their own internal research that indicated otherwise.

    The following year, tobacco CEOs admitted in testimony before Congress that cigarettes were dangerous, though their lobbying efforts against regulation would continue for years (a PR effort spearheaded by, among others, Myron Ebell, who resurfaced on Trump’s EPA transition team). But the EPA’s decision prompted a wave of city- and statewide indoor smoking bans; the majority of states now have them in place. And in the decade and a half following the EPA classification, the number of Americans who smoke — and, in particular, the number of high school-aged Americans who smoke — decreased dramatically.

    10. Building a Cache of Public Data

    One of the EPA’s greatest resources is the vast supply of information it has collected over four decades, some of which is available to the public through the internet. This data provides excellent documentation of the threat posed by climate change, but it isn’t limited to that. Spread across dozens of databases, the numbers include such information as the chemical compositions of various toxic pollutants and the locations in the US that those pollutants affect. The databases document the trends in air and water pollution, acid rain and the health of beaches and watersheds. It tracks which companies have been inspected and cited for enforcement.

    Scientists are worried about the fate of this data under Trump, and have been scrambling to preserve it. “There is no reason to think the data is safe,” Gretchen Goldman, a research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, recently told The Guardian. “The administration, so far, hasn’t given any indication it will respect science and scientific data, especially when it’s inconvenient to its policy agendas.”

    11. Beginning to Address Climate Change

    The US government’s effort to address the greatest climate threat to face the modern world will — at least for the time being — be cut short. But during Barack Obama’s second term, the EPA began the work of figuring out what serious US efforts to address climate change would look like. In the face of an intransigent Congress, Obama ordered the agency to take the lead, and under Administrator Gina McCarthy it did, drawing up plans to, among other things, raise the number of miles per gallon gas vehicles were required to achieve and to cut pollution from US power plants.

    Both of those initiatives will be tossed out by the Trump administration. While they were on the books, they were enough of an indication of America’s commitment to dealing with the climate crisis that other large polluting nations — notably China — came to the negotiating table in good faith. That lead to the Paris Agreement, a pact that the US looks likely to either pull out of or ignore, but that the world appears likely to continue to uphold without us.

    David Steindl-Rast

    The differences between fully institutionalized poorness such as that established by prisons or prison-like conditions are often countered by the cultural experience of modest, joyful lifestyles of poorness. Another difference is how being poor is defined by subsistence. It implies a dependency on the acquisition of necessities: water, food, shelter, and security. However, does meeting these minimal requirements translate into the opportunity to achieve emotional and environmental intelligence?

    The means to an emotionally sound, intellectual community is a subject worthy of development but oddly thwarted by anti-subsistent demands that say meeting basic needs cannot generate the opportunity for self-actualization unless one becomes a Benedictine monk with an institutional history dating to 529 A.D. Maslow’s hierarchy is well known. Yet, these benefits appear to be overwhelmed by a completely unknown (or poorly understood) set of disruptive factors that support various social pathologies that prevent a more broadly based public achievement.

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is cae80-subsistent-1.png

    References to research on this subject that extract the contributions of architectural space to the causes associated with this issue are needed. One of the “bridges” extends from architecture that serves the monastic life. David Steindl-Rast is part of the Benedictine tradition. He has unique insight drawn from a lifetime. He finds the freedom from fear is a good place to start by recognizing it as a choice, not a condition, but only if we stop, listen, and go to the references of the surrounding space. A fifteen-minute TED talk on the idea of gratefulness offers an appealing introduction to the problem.

    Federal Agents

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 7252a-dotsinarow.png
    Project Question: What is the strategic relationship that links each of these cabinet positions.

    Established in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the Cabinet’s role is to advise the President on any subject he may require relating to each member’s respective office duties.  Diehard political scientists examine the Archives on the agencies for comparison.  

    The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments; the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General.  Here is a slightly larger list to explore.  Connect the dots.

    Denise Meadows

    The Club of Rome and the Smithsonian Institution’s Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet hosted a one-day symposium on March 1, 2012, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Limits to Growth.


    The first report to the Club of Rome was published in 1972, and sadly the book was followed with vilification. By 2012, the scenarios offered proved correct, and two truths have become evident. First, there will be a managed solution by putting a price on GHGs and creating new energy solutions. Second, this is a bet made with one assumption.

    There will be a series of catastrophic resolutions with severe social, economic, and environmental “chaos costs” in the world to create needed change. Whether it is small or big business or national or local politics that provides the urgent action needed is of little consequence because it is too late to achieve sustainable development for five main reasons.

    • Public discourse has difficulty with subtle, conditional messages.
    • Growth advocates change the justification for their paradigm rather than changing the paradigm itself.
    • The global system is now far above its carrying capacity.
    • We act as if technological change can substitute for social change.
    • The time horizon of our current system is too short.
    Dennis Meadows

    The term resilience is more common than sustainable for these reasons. The actions called for fit into what business and governance believe they can implement in their self-interest. Dennis Meadows’ investment in getting us to accept “resilience first,” like “fix it first,” gets our ducks in order.

    The estimates for a stabilized and sustainable world called for about 3% of the world’s GDP. Resilience will cost more than that, but now there is no choice.  Resilience is a metaphorical “wall” that organizations such as Global Footprint and the Club of Rome define as the overshoot problem.

    This assessment only began one generation ago, and the ability to get traction on change or the least purchase of the metaphor requires a new growth paradigm instead of a limit. A dramatic term for drawing a line around a place could describe the whole earth or a small town.  Nevertheless, once done, it becomes possible to construct an earnest per capita analysis inside that line to form the urban sphere. Per capita analysis is an excellent measure for comparing the needs and behavior of individuals, groups, and societies that create demands on natural resources. We learn to develop in extraordinary new ways from our personal social, economic, and cultural places. As a friend says on this, you can “parse that to the bank.”

    Limits To Growth

    Chart Sources: Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W.(1972) (Linda Eckstein)

    How does density fit in?

    • Density reduces the cost of essential resource delivery
      • water, food, energy, and material goods
      • resource transit from places to place
    • Pollution and toxic waste functions
      • are reduced per capita and
      • high volumes are contained for advanced treatment.
    • Density reduces “chaos costs” and increases resilience
      • it integrates renewable energy structures/systems
      • sustains natural habitats and can stop open space fragmentation.

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