I write about systems, cities, and the architecture of sustainable development. The frameworks here are open-source and built for practitioners.
We are investing more in circularity and getting less of it. The problem is not resources or ambition. It is the level at which we are thinking.
EssayScenario planning fails, structurally and repeatedly, for the risks that threaten global companies most. Resilience-based systems analysis does something else.
EssayVietnam is building 410 industrial zones. Built as isolated objects rather than systems, they risk locking in a century of avoidable damage.
EssayESG is a financial risk tool built for investors. A sustainability strategy is a transformation roadmap. Mistaking one for the other exposes a company to real risk.
EssayCities consume 80% of global energy and emit 70% of CO2. Regenerative cities go past doing less harm, and actively restore the systems they depend on.
EssayMandatory reporting, double materiality, and the shift from voluntary to enforceable frameworks are reshaping how businesses report and operate.
EssayCircularity alone cannot deliver sustainability. Without a systemic view, a well-intentioned concept distracts us from the goal it was meant to serve.
EssayThe world's militaries and insurers make some of the most pragmatic climate predictions we have. They plan for adaptation, not headlines.
EssayImpact investing moves the deck chairs. Systemic investing changes the ship's direction, transitioning entire economic systems rather than single companies.
EssayNext-generation buildings that raise the economic, social, and physical sustainability of an entire urban area, going well beyond energy neutrality.
PlatformAn open learning platform for systems thinking and sustainability, built around the SiD framework.
EssayEmbedding the value of natural systems into economic ones is one of the few real answers we have to ecological decline. Here is how to accelerate it.
EssayTwo hundred years of utopian city projects, and what they teach us about the ones we are building now.
EssayAt 200 million copies a year, the IKEA catalogue was the most printed book on earth. A three-year systems project changed the global paper and print industry.
BookMore than 150 pages of innovations in sustainable homes, cities, and daily life. Creative Commons licensed.
FrameworkIn 1999 I had one stubborn problem: every sustainability project I touched fixed one thing and broke another. SiD is the way out I built, a framework for designing whole systems, a 468-page book you can read free, and a place to learn the method.