New Systems – A Reader
The recent Corona pandemic has made the question of economic, social and ecological transformation ever more urgent. Truly addressing the problems of the 21st century requires going beyond small tweaks and modest reforms to business as usual – it requires „changing the system“. An illuminative and provocative book has appeared on the topic – a first assessment by Professor Udo E. Simonis.
James Gustave („Gus“) Speth, one of the editors of this new book, became world-renowned by several of his functions: as founder of the World Resources Institute, as Aministrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNEP), as Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. But he also is a talented author, particularly shown with his books „Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment“, 2004, and „The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Cr
The pitch goes something along the lines of, “we’d like you to participate in buying up the vibrant and dynamic neighborhood you love and helped create.”
Levine is co-founder and CEO of Nico, short for Neighborhood Investment Company, a real estate startup that is in the business of acquiring buildings in neighborhoods like Echo Park and giving tenants in those buildings and others nearby an opportunity to buy a stake in the ownership structure of the buildings in its portfolio.
It can be a difficult conversation, at first.
“When you talk to folks in Echo Park about real estate investment and capital, people are automatically very defensive about it, and it makes sense because it has been so dis-aligned with them historically,” says Levine.