Table of Contents
What You Will Do
- Use ecological principles to guide how we understand and participate in local and global economies.
- Examine the structure of some alternative economic movements and practices.
- Map economic sectors, on your site and in your community, and begin to understand how to address, channel, an predict the economic patterns in your design.
Alternative Economics 101
This section by Lucie Bardos
For context, please read these four short articles, so we can continue the conversation together (I wrote the second two, but it just makes more sense to send you to the links than to try to regurgitate these ideas for you right now):
- 8 Forms of Capital; a Whole System of Economic Understanding
- A Brief History of the De-Growth Movement
- A Few Thoughts on Permaculturizing Our Local Economies
- Bringing Back Reciprocity
Case Study: Degrowth
Case Study: Community Currency
Is an ecological economy, by definition, anti-capitalist?
Probably. Here’s why:
Designing a Better Way
Other faculty members are also innovating and testing alternative systems. Here are three more articles for your exploration. (This is a great time to remind you, dear student, that we would love to publish your writing as well!)
Homework
Questions for Review
- Has this module changed the way you view your role and your power within your local economic community (town, city or region)? If so, why and how? If not, why and how?
- If a community currency can trap beneficial economic energy in a community, what other projects can be designed to trap or increase one or more of the nine forms of capital in a community?
- How much capital do you have? Do an assessment. How much of your capital is regenerative? How much is not?
- How will you finance your ecological design projects? Will you try to create closed-loop, regenerative economic systems? How?
- What would YOUR “sustainable economy” look like, if you were Queen of the world? Would you choose a variation on capitalism, or would you veer towards and anti-capitalist approach? How and why?
Recommended Hands-On
Use the Zones and Sectors concept to create a map of a your current economic community. Think of yourself and your capital as zone 0. Move out from there, thinking about where your capital goes, and where it comes from. Map the way your currencies flow into and out of your site.
Use these tools to get a clear understanding of where you might have flaws in your design site’s economic system, then design how you want it to become. Envision a closed-loop, small-scale economic system for your own site:
- What are the natural resources, currencies, and accrued caches of capital?
- How will you pay it forward?
- How will you embody all three ethics here?
This information could end up in the Resources layer of your design project, or it could just end up in your notes–it’s up to you, but if you design your economics with at least as much clarity as you’re designing your garden, you won’t regret the effort.
