housing and regenerative building
We have a well documented housing affordability crisis in the US. There are not enough homes available to working people, despite enough homes already existing in many contexts. Our housing shortage is inextricably linked with the financialization of the housing market and not just supply lagging demand. I fully believe in the great-big project of shifting our housing stock from private to public ownership, which we can all help-along by supporting commoning practices like social housing, co-ops, intentional communities, community land trusts, and more public space. Access to adequate housing is quite literally a human right.

It feels like this sometimes

I'm very scared of how fast the planet is warming up. Those of us that work in the AEC industries cannot continue to sideshow our contributions to the climate emergency. In the face of a crisis this existential, I think it's our responsibility to practice what folks have started calling regenerative building. It's an intentionally broad term, borrowed from regenerative agriculture, which is similarly an idea made up of a set of techniques. For me regenerative building includes: maintenance, repair, building less, adaptive reuse, bioregional construction, a circular construction economy, bio-based materials, equitable supply chains, and environmental stewardship. Regenerative building inherently prioritizes care and rehabilitation. It follows the logic of "first do no harm."