A compelling mystery was solved as I attended a three evening talk, Heroic Futures, by futurist Alex Steffen, a TED Fellow who co-created the WorldChanging movement and book. As all of us more fully realize climate change, reversing it depends on all of us changing. The speaker gave us a way to realize hope: co-creating a culture of innovation as the Harlem Renaissance and Paris of the 1920’s did. It is developed by stories.

One of the innovations Alex featured, Baugruppen, is a cohousing-style form of neighborhood development thriving in Germany. The government there supports future neighbors collectively leading design of their own neighborhood and buildings, rather than allowing commercial market-rate for-profit developers to dominate. The net result is a much easier, faster path to people getting neighborhoods like mine that help them live the way they like, whether in mutual support networks for child-rearing or for Aging in Community (or ideally, both together).