For the next few weeks, Future Here Now will focus on unpacking, examining and applying the foundations of applied local futurism — the First Principles of the Local Economy Revolution, as I laid them out in this book. These are the fundamentals of what we need to understand and adapt to if we, and the organizations and communities we care about, are going to thrive in the unfolding post-Industrial era. And since there are some new folks here, I figured it’s time for a refresher.
Free subscribers will continue to get generally one post per week, typically the Big Idea essay. Full subscribers will get five different ways to think about each First Principle: Try It On, Big Idea, Signals, What Do I Do With This, and a (temporary) new section, Pushback, which sets that Principle against the things in our daily news that seem to be going the opposite direction. Progress is never a given, and we need to understand why regressive trends are happening and how to leverage these trends to show those regressions for the feeble attempts that they are.
Sound interesting? You can get the whole series for just $5.00 per month! You can’t buy a magazine for that… and how many magazines help you get ready for the future anyways? Slam dunk.
It’s not about buildings or spaces or even, really, economics.
It’s about people.
Most of what we do, especially if we’re working on improving communities, is being done to make people’s lives better.
At least that’s what we tell them. And our bosses. And ourselves.
But how often do we conveniently forget that real, messy people will be impacted by what we do?
How often do we fall in love with the idea or building or program we created, and turn a blind eye to its weak spots?
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