Catalonia, Spain
Mike is a regenerative systems designer, farmer, father and local councillor, creating urban & regional scale, physical, governance, environmental and economic systems. Mike works at the design, consultancy, policy, “hands dirty” implementation and feedback phases, on projects aiming to assure abundance and resilience within planetary boundaries, with marginalized groups in the designer’s chair. He has degrees in Philosophy & Social Psychology; Urban Sociology, Economics & City Systems Design; and Architecture, Urbanism & Sustainability, and has pursued further education in Permaculture, Ecological Economics, Degrowth, Nature-based Solutions, Co-creation, Eco-Feminism, Participatory Governance and Non-Violent Protest. Mike has worked around the world as Design Lead and “System of Systems” designer in the environmental and urban planning sector, developing transdisciplinary plans in the sectors of urban renewal, [so-called] ‘development’, post-conflict planning and more recently post-capitalist and pre-collapse planning. He works by co-creating with local communities in tandem with government, donors, the private sector, universities, and academia. Between 2002 & 2015 he developed and set up strategic planning and systems design departments in four built environment consultancies, leading & stewarding diverse teams of designers, engineers, architects, ecologists, governance experts and economists from start-up to project success. Recently he and his co-director / partner Michelle created a successful retreat centre and regenerative farm in the Costa Brava, hosting educational experiences in nature, where Regenerative Design, Community Self-Sufficiency and Permaculture are taught. He and Michelle were invited to join the Research & Degrowth Association, with their project as a “Living Lab”, in 2020. Mike continues to consult and has served his municipality as elected Urbanism and Participatory Governance councillor, since 2019. He is an accomplished public speaker, on TV, in the Economist Magazine, in conferences, and as a guest lecturer on complexity & systems-thinking, participatory design, and alternative economics, at the LSE Cities Programme, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Universitat de Girona’s School of Architecture. He is currently a Final Project Supervisor for Masters students in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
I've joined DML to work primarily on the EU NetZeroCities team, building and delivering systemic city transformation strategies for climate-neutrality and implementing radical actions with local governments and multi-actor coalitions in cities. I will be working on the design and implementation, in multiple cities, of approaches accelerating emission reductions - catalysing collective action locally and building & driving impactful portfolios of actions reducing GHG emissions.
This masters is delivered jointly by the UAB and the Research and Degrowth Association International, for which our centre, La Bruguera de Púbol, is one of 4 Living Labs. My work coordinating this new, practical module in the masters, will be to write the curriculum, deliver the La Bruguera teaching component (on site at La Bruguera), and coordinate the teaching work delivered by the other 3 Living Labs. Developing a practical module to the degree has emerged as an important new front, after 6 years of the Masters. Making sure that students leave the masters aware of the systemic change necessary in the global, national, regional and municipal economies around them is important, but they must also leave with practical skills ripe for lowering their own environmental impact, but also be ready for a changing world, which is likely to take on many forms, and require skills we have stopped teaching in schools over the last 100 years. My job is to co-create this module, with the other Living Labs, who are all practicing alternatives to the growth-motivated capitalist economy, in a few different sectors, and also in the lifestyle space. The module will attempt to link all sorts of practical skills which could be essential to communities (La Bruguera specific ones could be fermentation, food cultivation, local energy generation, local currencies and exchange, soap making, basic medicine production, pickling, agroforestry systems, urban permaculture, water harvesting, etc) and link these to larger themes of the Masters
Living Labs Committee Member (pro bono) Since joining, Mike, as a member of the Living Labs Committee, has been developing a strategy to enable the Living Labs component of the association’s educational output to be more actively linked into the “classroom” education delivered by the Association both in the associated Masters Degree at the UAB, and through the development of Policy Briefs, participation in conferences and events, and production of research. Applied Degrowth Consultant Development of the association’s consulting offering, taking research and knowledge from the academics, research, and policy briefs of the association, and applying this directly to consultancy projects in the real world.
Mike was elected to the Council of the Municipality of La Pera, in the Girona Province of Catalonia, Spain, on a participatory governance and environmental sustainability platform. During his four-year mandate, Mike is charged with representing the citizens of the municipality in matters relating to Urbanism, Planning, Renewable Energy Transition, Public Acquisition of Energy Infrastructure and Participatory Citizen-led projects. One was a co-creation for a new children’s park and square, and the other is ongoing, and relates to the recovery, wayfinding and interpretation of a historic Dolmen on the edge of the municipality. Working directly with the Mayor and the town architect, Mike has also brought the municipality’s regional Strategic Plan to successful completion, and as of early 2022 it is with the Catalan National Government for sign-off after remaining unfinished for the 15 previous years.
La Bruguera de Púbol is Mike and his partner Michelle’s retreat centre in the Girona - Costa Brava region of Catalonia. Over 7 years since the purchase of this estate, he has led the master planning and large-scale renovation of the 10 acre property, converting it to run entirely on renewable energy; harvest, manage and treat all its own water; and produce the majority of its food (for family, and visiting guests). Mike and Michelle jointly undertook the strategy development, and collaborate on all facets of the business, from teaching permaculture and degrowth masterclasses to visitors, farming the land, mapping and measuring resource use, sustainable procurement, marketing, operations, produce preservation, sales and logistics. The project has been highly successful, been fully booked the last 2 years, invited to become a Living Lab for the R&D Association, and Mike has been asked to present case studies on “devising a Regenerative Business” at several conferences and Universities around Spain where he was asked to present on La Bruguera’s contributions to gender equality and innovative approaches to the fight against climate change.