I’m looking for an amazing person to be my Chief of Staff
Job Opening: Chief of Staff for Alex Steffen Position Summary: I’m Alex Steffen. My work focuses on the future of humanity and our planet, exploring solutions to the world’s pressing problems. (I’m...
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The Berkeley BART Rotunda and Historic Preservation’s Role in Change
Transportation planners in Berkeley propose to destroy the iconic Downtown Berkeley BART Station Rotunda. This is a terrible idea. It may be a little strange to some of my newer readers to hear me...
View ArticleAfter we solve our these enormous problems, what comes next?
The prize for solving the problems we now face will be to have more interesting problems to solve in the future. Tweet
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Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy: the Good and the Bad
California, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia have signed a new climate action agreement. The document commits the three states and province to work together towards common goals of reducing...
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The One Number You Need to Know
The climate fight has a new clarity, and that clarity can be summed up in a single number. I wrote recently about the latest IPCC report. One key point is that the latest report closes the book on the...
View ArticleReboot the Civic Sphere
“To have great poets, Walt Whitman wrote, “there must be great audiences.” Whitman recognized that great creativity is always a co-creation. The expectation of great work inspires that great work, and...
View ArticleMuch better development, made much easier
A question I often get asked when I talk about the need to build in booming cities to build a lot more housing, quickly, is “What about quality?” Here are a few quick thoughts. Concern for the quality...
View ArticleWhy we need development with scope, scale and speed to make our cities work
A few thoughts about the scope, scale and speed of urban change, taken from another context: I’ve been open about my judgment that that building more housing is the key to making housing affordable,...
View ArticleToo little housing, not land speculation, is what’s really driving up rents.
A note on speculation, taken from a comment I made elsewhere… Speculation is simply a bet that demand will outstrip supply and thus drive up the price of the investment in question. That, too, is basic...
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The timeline of “climate departure” (or, climate chaos is upon us)
I wrote the other day about timelines, and the importance of having a more vigorous discussion of home much time we actually have to zero-out emissions and ruggedize for climate disruption. The answer...
View ArticlePeak Gentrification
Cities won*. The urban revival — as we called it back in the day, when cities still seemed patients with uncertain prognoses — is now history. Cities are not only alive, they’re booming. All around the...
View ArticleEverything I Know Lectures
In case you haven’t gotten enough Buckminster Fuller in your life, you can watch his “Everything I Know” lectures — all 42 hours of them — online. Bucky (though a man of a different age, with different...
View Article“Where You At?” 2013
Posted about this in 2004 on Worldchanging. Almost ten years later, I’m still pondering the question “What would an updated Bioregion Quiz look like now, and what media would it use?” What would the...
View ArticleDark Gray Paint
If you want to try to change the world, you will inevitably encounter the guy with the bucket of dark gray paint. This is the guy who in the middle of any discussion of any new proposal, innovation,...
View ArticleA few rough thoughts on the 1:1 map that is your city
“In that Empire, the Cartographer’s art achieved such a degree of perfection that the Map of a single Province occupied an entire City, and the Map of the Empire, an entire Province. In time, these...
View ArticleWhat pundits don’t say about climate change
The problem with most pundits who opine on climate in passing is that they don’t get the real danger they’re discussing. They fail to realize that expected impacts are not discreet events but systemic...
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How to see nature in a city
Seeing nature in the city; Viennese park. photo: Alex Steffen(Some rough notes about nature in cities…) Urbanization is now the dominant reality of humanity on Earth, and will grow ever more so over...
View ArticlePractical World Peace
Some sage words on big practical goals and planetary thinking: “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the...
View ArticleCynicism is obedience, even if you’re a hipster
Had a few experiences recently of young, clearly privileged hipsters (who I strongly suspect never took up any real political fights in their lives) telling me why we’re doomed, doomed. Ed Abbey was a...
View ArticleThe Future of Sustainable Cities Radio Interview
I had an absolutely lovely conversation with Angie Coiro the other day for her radio show, In Deep. We discussed the future of cities, how our ideas about sustainability are changing and what to be...
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