We face a foundational transition that is shifting us from an age defined by a reliance on an abundance of fossil fuels into one where we will experience constraints on mineral resources and energy.

These resource constraints could lead to uptake of hybrid models of use such as zero waste, circularity, the sharing of finite critical resources and the deployment of regenerative, bio-based and non-invasive materials. These foundational shifts of our built environments will require us to dematerialise our economy substantively. Rather than being based on ownership and control, such an economy could be founded on care, stewardship, radical creativity and innovation capacities.

Degrowth of our material and energy economy will be a necessity, at least in the short term as we move away from the current trajectory of excess emissions, biodiversity damage and planetary injustice. This new reality, aided by the promotion of maximum durability, full circularity and reusability, and the use of super lightweight, biogenic and fully biodegradable and compostable materials, might lay a pathway to the future.

As we face material constraints, we must discover new immaterial abundances. The degrowth of material, energy and extraction could be accompanied by a growth in care, maintenance, participation, collective intelligence, new forms of logistics and virtual, augmented and other immaterial assets. To accomplish this will require investment in intangible, immaterial infrastructures.

Further, a constrained material future will also require us to accelerate the growth of a civic economy by encouraging new forms of radical sharing, creating new pathways of abundance through this sharing.

This future will require us to focus on forming new regenerative relationships with the world around us, affecting how we relate with nature, soil, water, space and time. We need to recognise our cohabitation on this planet and the power of intense biodiversity in building our regenerative systems in practices of farming materials or nutrients.

As humans, we will need to recognise the sharing of resources, materials and spaces with other species and adopt fluidity in how we use them, prompting a shift towards ecological relations, the growth of biodiversity and environmental values, and acknowledgement of the importance of One Health39 in the very deep codes of our institutions’ economy.

Our understanding of value should recognise the importance of dynamic and entangled relationships rather than notions of assets and ownership. For example, the worth of a natural body such as a river should be considered from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including the people, fish, animals and vegetation that depend on it.

Similarly, a house can be understood not just in relation to the people who live in it, but in terms of the goods and products that flow through it, the nature, animals and vegetation that surround it, and the water and energy flowing through it.

We need to shift how we perceive the complexity of value flows. We can no longer abstract vitality into lifeless debits and credits in our accounts. Instead, we must find ways to recognise and represent both aesthetic and functional value.

The conception of wealth could be centred on the biosphere’s health and its nested ecosystems, with regenerative efficiency replacing profit as the primary token of optionality.

Value can be appreciated in terms of entanglement rather than distinctions between private and public goods. Consider, for example, a city’s tree canopy: its collective intelligence, cooling and heating capacity, the material stewardship chains that serve it, and the theory of security that protects it.

Property is foundational to our societal institutions, our economic means of production, and our pathways to individual freedom. Dominant property models have contributed to extraordinary scales of harm, relating to the world through objectification, separation, ownership and dominion.

Our relationship with property fails to balance freedom of rights with the burdens of responsibilities, especially when the consequences are borne by the social and ecological commons. It is clear that property rights are intrinsic to the many planetary challenges that we face, enabling the privatisation of value extraction, normalising its consequences and reinforcing inequalities arising from the monopolisation of scarce resources. Rather than simply fixing these imbalances, there are more fundamental questions to address.

Do property, ownership and hierarchies of control present a viable framework for planetary transition? How do we reimagine notions of dominion and separation, replacing them with those of collectiveness, care, mutuality and reciprocity? How can we resist the objectification and commodification of life?

Can we start recognising the selfhood and agency of everything: from flora and fauna to water systems, minerals and land?

We must relearn how we look at the world, not through objects, assets and liabilities, but through value flows.

Consider the example of a kitchen table. Lumber derived from trees nurtured by the soil is subjected to processing and transportation before becoming a table used for eating, playing, drawing and work. The table is intrinsic to numerous social, economic, cultural and emotional value flows. Over time, the table may enter different homes with different value flows, or it will be recycled and transformed into materials for new tables, chairs or paper. In turn, these will eventually be composted, returned to the soil and transformed into new value flows. Viewed this way, we see the entanglement, complexity and actual value of material life cycles.

Money was once described as the alienated ability of humankind. Today, we require a new form of accounting for ability. Accounting for entangled goods will require us to operate through a multivalent currency system.

A tree planted by a community, for example, has a 90% chance of survival, while a tree planted by a local authority has only a 50% chance of survival. The role of community can be equally effective in other scenarios.

Neighbourhood care for the elderly and children could be operated through static paid services such as those provided by homes for the elderly, kindergartens and caregivers.

Alternatively, there could be a hybrid capital system where the elderly play with children in shared communal living rooms while food is cooked and shared equally, reducing food waste and energy consumption for heating and cooking. This could also help reduce the loneliness of the elderly and the stress of the middle-aged. Hybrid currency systems can potentially change our theory and practice of value.

Our first projection is that the economy of the New Bauhaus—an EU movement to demonstrate the potential of circular design and sustainability—will need to emerge at the intersection of the abovementioned shifts. We will likely need to build the capacity to oversee and operationalise this economy as an entire portfolio of innovation across domains, such as introducing green infrastructures like tree canopies, civic infrastructures such as care networks, and integrated financing focused on value flows rather than individual products. 

Extract from A New European Bauhaus Economy:
Designing Our Futures. DM, 2024