Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

The developer’s first response? ‘But why should I provide clean air for the rest of the city?’ It’s an unsurprising question, indicative of the near ubiquitous business mindset that has arisen from the design of contemporary capitalism. And that design is the opposite of generous. It is focused instead on creating just one form of value—financial—for just one interest group: shareholders. While regenerative designers now ask themselves, ‘how many diverse benefits can we layer into this?’, mainstream business still asks itself, ‘how much financial value can we extract from this?’ Of course there may be some overlap of those two ambitions—since being regenerative can sometimes be highly profitable—but if that area of overlap is all that business is interested in pursuing then regenerative design will fall very far short of its potential.