Inclusive Economies ~ Spring 2020 @ MIT D-Lab

Together with colleagues Kate Mytty and Libby McDonald, I'm co-teaching the Inclusive Economies seminar at MIT this Spring 2020 every Wed morning starting Feb 5th from 9:30-11:30a in N51-310, the D-Lab classroom area!

We explore how innovations and market mechanisms can benefit humanity by rallying impact investments, engaging participants cooperatively, boosting equity and resilience, and broadening prosperity. We look at market mechanisms for maximizing participation, choice, and growth; impact investing approaches which are socially responsible and include metrics that matter; cooperative and mutual ownership structures for shared gains; equitable citizen participation in basic and natural resource wealth; and the role of new technologies and methods towards boosting affordability, accessibility, and overall inclusive prosperity.

Inclusive Economies ~ Spring'19 D-Lab Seminar

Together with colleagues Kate Mytty and Libby McDonald, I'm co-teaching the Inclusive Economies seminar this Spring 2019 every Wed morning starting Feb 6th from 9:30-11:30a in N51-350, the D-Lab classroom area! We explore how innovations and market mechanisms can benefit humanity by rallying impact investments, engaging participants cooperatively, boosting equity and resilience, and broadening prosperity. We look at market mechanisms for maximizing participation, choice, and growth; impact investing approaches which are socially responsible and include metrics that matter; cooperative and mutual ownership structures for shared gains; equitable citizen participation in basic and natural resource wealth; and the role of new technologies and methods towards boosting affordability, accessibility, and overall inclusive prosperity.

BrickItUp ~ 3D HouseCraft CAD on Kickstarter!

Our MIT Media Ventures alumnus Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez has launched BrickItUp on Kickstarter!

"BrickItUp is an online platform for creation, navigation and sharing of 3D Worlds. As simple as that. It could be defined as an user-generated content sharing platform for 3D environments. Or an online real-time block construction engine. Or a crowdsourcing environment for 3D information. All of them apply. Want to suggest your own definition? We would love to hear it!"

Participatory Chinatown ~ Gaming-as-Planning!

Thanks to new MIT Media Lab student Erhardt Graeff for pointing me to Emerson Professor Eric Gordon and colleagues and their work on Participatory Chinatown...

"...a 3-D immersive game designed to be part of the master planning process for Boston's Chinatown. [...] you'll then be tasked with considering the future of the neighborhood by walking through and commenting on proposed development sites. Every one of your comments and decisions will be shared with real life decision-makers."

Rethinking Slums ~ Towards Inclusive Upgrading

Thanks to Africa Unchained's Emeka Okafor for Reframing 'Slums' and pointing to Bombastic Elements and spotting this piece by Stretch Ledford on Ajelogo: After the Bulldozers in Lagos...

"Since 1997, Funmilayo Omotosho lived and worked in a market in Ajelogo, a neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. For reasons it has not made public, the Lagos State Government ordered that the Ajelogo market be destroyed during the early morning hours of March 7, 2010. More than 10,000 residents and vendors were displaced. With her business, home, and community in ruins, and with nowhere else to go, Fumilayo still lives in Ajelogo, amidst the ruins of her home and business."

Destroying markets seems like the very last thing one should do in order to improve peoples lives. What the hell is going on here? And here's a similar situation in Mumbai's Dharavi... And in Nairobi's Kibera...

Land Grabs ~ Economist Spots Damning Evidence

The Economist spotlights The surge in land deals: When others are grabbing their land...

"Evidence is piling up against acquisitions of farmland in poor countries [...] When deals [...] first came to international attention in 2009, it was unclear whether they were “land grabs or development opportunities”, to quote a study published that year. Supporters claimed they would bring seeds, technology and capital to some of the world’s poorest lands. Critics, such as the director of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, dubbed them “neo-colonialist”. But no one had hard evidence to back up their claims. Now they do. Two years on, a conference at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of the University of Sussex, the biggest of its kind so far, examined over 100 land deals. Most judgments are damning. [...] What makes land grabs unusual is their combination of high levels of corruption with low levels of benefit. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, one of the authors of the IFPRI study, says that in 2009 the balance of costs and benefits was genuinely unclear. Now, she argues, the burden of evidence has shifted and it is up to the proponents of land deals to show that they work. At the moment, they have precious few examples to point to."

Not good. I wonder can deals be structured in a participatory way such that locals would benefit economically and socially?

China's Hainan ~ Building the Hawaii of the East

Interesting to read Keith Richburg's Washington Post piece, China’s new ‘Hawaii’ drives growth, worry...

"One year ago, China’s ruling State Council laid out a plan to transform its southernmost province into an international tourism destination, or the "Hawaii of the East," as Hainan Island was dubbed. The result has been a 12-month frenzy of construction -- lavish resorts, seaside villas, spas, and a helicopter landing pad, still being built, for wealthy visitors with no time to waste. And then there are golf courses -- plenty of them. By one local estimate, as many as 300 golf courses are being planned for the tropical island, which is about the size of Belgium. [...] The dizzying pace of construction has forced thousands of indigenous farmers off their land, driven property prices up tenfold and higher, and led many residents to ask how much development is too much. “Hainan is a real-life example of that film ‘Avatar,’" said Liu, who moved here 22 years ago to work in the island province’s forestry ministry. “Except in Avatar, they could organize together to fight back." On Hainan, he said, “I don’t have much hope -- nothing can stop this change." Hainan residents and environmentalists say the rapid development is damaging the island’s ecosystem, and they are concerned mostly about the destruction of the coastal forests, which for centuries have served as a natural bulwark against typhoons, tsunamis, and soil erosion. They are particularly worried about the mangroves of Australian pine and rare indigenous Vatica mangachapoi, which has been a protected resource since the Qing dynasty. [...] Huge tracts of the mangroves have been chopped down to make way for seaside hotels and apartments and the paved highways to connect them. Three thousand villagers, including Chen, have been told that they have to relocate to a town 18 miles away, giving up their homes, their farmland, even the burial grounds of their ancestors."

Why are these people not participating in the upside?