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What is a Shared Future?

Shared futures are the living expression of future architecture—projects designed to transform systems through collective imagination.

A shared future is a co-created potential reality shaped by common vision and aimed at collective wellbeing and shared prosperity. Like a startup, it organizes resources to bring a vision to life—but its values are different. It exists to counter the long legacy of colonial and capitalist harm by advancing:

Inclusive economies
Equitable societies
Pluralistic cultures
Responsible technologies

A shared future has the following identifying characteristics:

It operates with the mindset of abundance instead of scarcity
It prioritizes the benefit of the commons over the expansion of the market
It engages in regenerative rather than extractive production
It favors stewardship over ownership of resources and assets

A shared future can be young or mature—which is determined by the age of the shared future, not its degree of success—and can experience any of the following four modalities in non-linear and recurring manners:

Discovery:

A fluid state of curiosity and curation to identify the shape of collaboration: passions, values, challenges, opportunities, collaborators and resources.

Incubation:

A focused container to articulate visions, align values, build capacity, attract resources and prototype concepts and processes.

Cultivation:

Characterized by steady growth to iterate, learn and integrate. The growth of a shared future is measured by values alignment and stakeholder engagement that lead to demonstrable shared prosperity.

Fractal:

In entering this modality the shared future has become scalable, portable, translatable and replicable. It is a shared reality fully embedded into the daily lives of its community. It will be up to the community to contextually determine its own self-organizing patterns.