TL;DR
Why: Urban/Spatial Design knows how to value, but lacks pathways to invest in it. Real Estate knows how to capture value, but not how to create in. 
How: Cross-sector collaboration, subversion playbook, Impact modeling
What: Harlem River Yards:

TITLE
THE COLLECTIVE SPECULATORS’ PLAYBOOK is a series of experiments in value capture and value creation mechanisms design for community wealth.
A PORTFOLIO OF ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL DESIGNS FOR COMMON WEALTH
VALUE CAPTURE DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR COMMON WEALTH
(1) HOW TO: BRIDGE THE URBAN VALUE GAP
It is built on the belief in the power of spatial agency (right) to confront what I call the urban value gap - driven by the economic growth paradigm that feeds the developer’s incentive system (left).
The architect proficient in value creation, but lack pathways to invest in it. In contrast, the developer (left), excels in capturing value, bue lacks the means to create it.
Assuming there is an external system of checks and balances in place, this would not be a problem. However, the issue today is that the regulator and developer are often intertwined within the same growth machine.


(2) THE ARCHITECTURE OF VALUE: PLACE TO PROFIT
Tracing the evolution of western architect and real estate urban development practices - beginning in a 5000 BC "architecture without architects" to a modern-day architect/developer complex, I focus on the past 50-year takeover of the global capital market as the intersection point that married the regulator to developer, as the architect professionalizes.


(3) The Collective Speculators Playbook: Subversive Market Forms for Common Wealth
This is an ongoing series of experiments in other ways of producing buildings and spaces under current market conditions.
While still a work in progress, with a submission deadline of August, the thesis prioritizes the methods and approach, rather than provisional outcomes, as they are still being refined.
Its ultimate goal is to expand the architect’s scope of action to strategically engage and redesign current forms of speculative urban development.
Its more specific goal is to leverage manipulated loopholes in speculative governance  by subverting its tools, methods, and strategies to facilitate a proposed transition period toward a 30-year Bronx-wide Plan for collective ownership and governance, a grassroots initiative led by a borough-wide umbrella of CBOs.
Its more general goal is to test alternative practice models for spatial agency to redeploy existing conditions of capitalist production towards its inevitable transition period.
(04) STRUCTURE
We tackle the value gap in three parts.
The first two comprises what is - observations drawn from exploratory everyday real estate observations in New York City, from which a set of "What if?' propositions is invented or uncovered.
(1) VALUE CAPTURE: PLAYS: the first draws the practices, policies and protocols of real estate speculation to make visible its unspoken rules and identify strategic opportunitieis for intervention. It does so in two acts; Hudson Yards & Harlem Yards, two private developments on public land that rely heavily on capturing public value for private gain.
(2) VALUE CREATION: PLAYERS: it then presents the proposed alternative in the Bronx. Proposing counter opportunities and barriers, two  the presented economic spectrum - focusing on current civic agency in the Bronx as its testing ground towards designing the transition for a community-driven economy. 
(3) VALUE FACILITATION: Lastly, I present a set of possible mutations in the code, or and alterations to the patterns, of everyday real estate speculation. Designed in the context of a proposed transition period for the Bronx-wide Coalition, a diverse array of observations and propositions sketches a catalogue of possibility which others might draw from, build with, expand, adopt and adapt to their own needs; focusing on the South Bronx as its testing ground.

01 WHAT IS: PLAYS
What is the urban value gap in state-sponsored speculative economic development, and why is now the time to bridge it?
(6) THE VALUE GAP • ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSITION • HUDSON YARDS TO YARDS HARLEM 
In 2016, a partnership between the City of New York and a global real estate developer actively diverts billions from Harlem’s most impoverished neighbourhoods to Hudson Yards, the most expensive private development in US history, exemplified as pièce de résistance of “innovative financing”. Enabled by a federal EB-5 investor program, this particular play is one out of many; and one that demonstrates that in market urbanism, virtually all development stems from asymmetrical economic power.
All of which are components of what I argue to be the prevalent urban speculation model - defined as the practice of investing in urban land, property, or real estate with the expectation of profiting from future increases in value - is now responsible for delivering the larger proportion of the global urban built environment. Remained uncheck, it is held to be responsible for the increasing inequality of society.
The premise of this work is that design, in this condition, should not only strategically engage with current forms of real estate, but must consider practices of real estate as a design project in itself.
Beginning from Hudson Yards as a case study in so-called financial innovation, The faults of this system are invisible on the scale of a project - and can only be uncovered when we shift to a city-wide scope.
To spatialize urban speculation on an urban scale, we begin by expanding the idea of the market cycle into its urban context.
Reading boom and bust cycles as simultaneous, intertwined, intrinsically spatial urban process - leads to a historical reading of two particular case studies demonstrating opposing boom and bust cycles in the US market economy - led by an urban-wide strategy of Accumulation and Disposition.

HARLEM RIVER YARDS: 
As Hudson Yards rises, the city posts a public RFP for a portion of Harlem River Yards - 96 acres of public land, leased for 99-years to Galesi Group - a private developer that subleases the site to industrial uses since 1991.
The same developer of Hudson Yards submits its application for a mixed-use luxury development of condos, offices and a stadium on the waterline. The proposal, designated for the country’s poorest neighborhood, is a political and financial reconfiguration of Hudson Yards - New York’s costliest neighborhood.
While seven years later, the contested site remains unbuilt, focusing on the last underdeveloped waterfront offers a long-term opportunity to test other ways of investing in neighborhoods. In particular, those that have been disinvested in for decades.
MOTT HAVEN
Mott Haven, with a population that is 97% Hispanic or black, is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Due to toxic pollution by industrial tenants on public land, Mott Haven is nicknamed “Asthma Alley” as it has some of the worst air pollution levels in the US. This highlights how identical means and methods encounter contrasting social and spatial circumstances. Therefore, it is crucial to address form, finance, and politics collectively rather than in isolation.
 real estate lacks the tools to deal with spatial parameters. By framing the discipline as a continuum of the urban disciplines, there is the opportunity to build an economic language that diverts from its in-place mono centric value system.

PLAYBOOK
Through a city-wide analysis of state/city-sponsored speculation we can identify concentrations of speculation in the Bronx and study the local mechanisms that shape its built environment. By investigating the protocols, policies, and practices of speculative governance and extractive finance that led to civic disinvestment, we can begin to identify where to intervene in the system; compiled within a growing playbook of the state-sponsored urban development speculator. 

INDEX
A play is defined by the parameters it is made of, where it is positioned throughout the speculation cycle, What sectors it involved, particular agencies (in the context of NY), …
Rather than continuing a litany of what is done badly, the playbook elicits the codified protocols by which the essential decisions and actions are formalized through a set of general terms and concepts that are otherwise hidden in the play of customary context practice.
At its core is a set of value transfer mechanisms - financial tools used by public agencies and private investors-developers to tap into collective value.
It is therefore the general goal of this thesis to develop civic value capture mechanisms for a broader shift towards alternative economic systems. To do this, the playbook traces the dysfunctional ways capital is distributed, structured, governed and deployed - as a primer towards its subversion.

PLAY 27: THE PILOT
The key tool for public speculation; demonstrated in  Hudson and proposed in Harlem is PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes).
Sold to the public as a “self-financing” play, it is a wildly popular and powerful public financing play in NY, it captures how we invest in cities today.
A way of betting on the future — the city sells a financial products (bonds), uses the proceeds to fund development, and as surrounding property taxes (hopefully) go up, that extra tax revenue gets skimmed off tax payers and used to repay its investors.
Usually poorly understood by taxpayers, it affects them in very real ways.
(i) VALUE CAPTURE (CAPITALIZATION): Speculation Captured revenue is diverted from public services.
(ii) VALUE REDISTRIBUTION (GOVERNANCE): governance transparency is eliminated by separating public financial decisions from the budget process.
(iii) VALUE CREATION (): Taxpayers monies is diverted from the public budget, designated to benefit  from Property value increase It also carries the same risks as other business tax incentives, which lead to short-term decision-making. 
Speculation is not bad in and of itself. What is While its core idea has powerful virtues, its implementation in Hudson Yards - and presumably a future Harlem Yards - is more properly a device that ‘transfers’ value to, rather than ‘captures’ value from, the private sector.

REAL ESTATE SYSTEM
The real estate system operates through three potential points of intervention, each of which reveals issues related to central control and exclusion:
Value Creation: Architects, planners, investors, developers, and government all speculate on the creation of value through future spatial forms and financial returns. However, this alignment towards growth exposes a state-sponsored speculation system where the regulator shifts the risk to taxpayers. Centralized control by the capital market disconnects decisions from community needs.
Value Capture: Public investments can increase economic value in surrounding neighborhoods, but few civic assets have systems in place to benefit from the value they deliver. As property values rise, there is a risk of unaffordability for local residents. To address this, we need to capture and distribute a portion of this new value in a way that benefits the community, sustain the operations of public places, and address issues of exclusion.
Value Redistribution (governance): The city has three main levers - it can tax, regulate, or buy. However, as it stands, 90% of New York City’s budget is made of property tax, feeding the investor and developer. To address issues of exclusion and central control, we need to explore alternative forms of capital that allow all individuals to participate, with transparent systems that capture and redistribute value beyond economic growth.
VCG = VCE – AVC
We define value creation as the perceived benefit to the customer.
The Value Creation-Value Capturing (VC2) framework.
Value Capture Gap = Value Capture Expectation - Actual Value Captured
Value Gap = Vale Created - Value Captured 




It seems a bit obvious but the way that public services are organised inevitably influences the outcomes they achieve. Policymakers and managers are taking design decisions all the time, too often without realising it. (Philip Colligan, 2011) 


We can even think of the ideologies in play at any one time as being a result of, or a manifestation of, design decisions. The dominant market-oriented neoliberal hegemony across much of western society, for instance, had to be actively inculcated. People had to breathe life into it, with purpose. It is not a naturally occurring state. It is thought of as a system, with certain characteristics, attributes and affordances; something that can be calibrated, modelled, modified. This was clear when one of its architects, Alan Greenspan, under some pressure because his global financial system had become a global financial crisis, described the market-oriented ideology in terms akin to an inexplicably misfiring engine, or some inconvenient errors in a block of code. Yes, I've found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I've been very distressed by that fact. (Alan Greenspan, New York Times, 23 October 2008) 


the hegemonic characteristics of opaque urban speculation as a debatable, contestable position. mean that we tend to ignore, or conveniently forget, that they have been designed; they have been imagined, articulated, stewarded into position. 


Failure wasn't so much the absence of attention to individual details as it was an entire culture to do with the primacy of business, of money, of deregulation, of putting the interests of the financial sector first. This brought us to a point in which a belief in the free market became a kind of secular religion. The tenets of that religion are familiar ... all debatable, contestable positions-but in the Anglo-Saxon world we forgot to contest them. Qohn Lanchester, 2010)  


The same can be said of democracy, nation states, regional authorities, many systems of living, for example-all are designed, all are design challenges, all are "debatable, contestable positions". 

02 WHAT IS: 


The value creation/value capture dichtomy is the result of design decisions. This is to say that we designed our way into the situations that face us today.


“Our global system emerges as a result of each person, company and institution, with their common and distinctive histories, playing their own part in their own niche, and interacting together through biological, cultural and structural channels. The self-organisation reminds us that governments do not control their own economies. Nor does civil society. The corporate or financial sectors do not control the economies within which they operate. That they can destroy the economy should not be taken as evidence that they can control it.” (David Korowicz, 2011) 


Yet another way in which complexity is placing systems beyond our comprehension, our agency, is through code. Kevin Slavin has positioned the algorithms that underpin financial systems in particular as a form of stealth technology, that can "move invisibly through the earth". These "black box" algorithms are so complex that they are effectively beyond the comprehension of even the programmers who coded the frameworks that produce them. Some 70% of all activity on Wall Street is involved in automated high-frequency trading, algorithm-driven trades that are either trying to hide (disperse) or locate (aggregate) larger movements of trade. These are things that humans write, but can no longer read. (Kevin Slavin, 2011) 


DESIGNING THE CONTEXT OF THE WORK
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context-a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” (Eliel Saarinen) 


This chapter is made of a value capture toolkit for the Bronx-wide commons. Divided into four categories: Acts, Counter-acts, Emerging Tools, Policy.


COLLECTIVE REAL ESTATES: drawing inspiration from system dynamics and asset-based development, I define a personal theory of design practice for transitioning private real estate practice into the civics.


ECONOMIC SPECTRUM: Expanding on the market-led economy on which urban speculation is designed, I study a set of alternative economies throughout the economic spectrum - focusing on specific case studies throughout the Bronx’ history. Building on an idea of Edge Effects Abundance: The term "edge effects" is derived from ecology, where it describes the changes that occur at the boundary of two different habitats. Abundance, in this context, refers to the increased diversity, productivity, and interactions that happen at these edges.

THE BRONX: ASSET-BASED MAPPING
“We are tired of narratives that portray us and the Bronx as people and places only of poverty, desperation, and hardship. Yes, we are struggling. We’ve been struggling. But we are not defined only by our hardship. We are a multilingual, multicultural community with bustling commercial districts, creative energy, community institutions, and neighbors who support each other.”
As market pressures intensify, particularly in the South Bronx, 
This built-in racial segregation and housing discrimination led to a feedback loop of vacancy, urban decay, tax rate base, education level, unemployment, etc…

BRONX-WIDE PLAN: ACTS:
The current investment pipeline is unprecedented in terms of both public infrastructure and civic engagement in the Bronx. 
Challenges: Assembling the capabilities (people, financing and technology).
Opportunities: Civic agency, lexibility, possibility, momentum.

LESSONS FROM COUNTERACTING: 
MULTI-SCALAR: We need to find a way of addressing and building on the many positive aspects of recent protests while fixing or removing the core system faults that they are predicated upon. Aggregated on the scale of the neighborhood, I propose to shift the Bronx-wide Coalition’s social unit of change on a neighborhood scale. Aggregating neighborhoods into a decentralized network comprising the Bronx-wide platform, enables a stronger political unit of change - built on a democratized social foundation.
/// While it is critical that they keep a borough-wide front to amplify political power, the work on an aggregative site-specific level must be distributed across local leaders per neighborhood. By re-organizing pooled proposals by type, I propose two types of agencies. One based on place, the other based on content. For example, all teams working on anchor institutions are referred to as Guilds - with direct communication forums and weekly meetings. However the basecamp of each member is its own place of residence. Those working on anchor institutions work, on a daily basis, with those working on CLTs, Advocacy, planning and policy, etc.
This creates a borough-wide network of knowledge exchange and particular, place-based specifications to borough-wide efforts.
CONNECTING THE DOTS: Those are then compiled into a portfolio civic assets:
HEARts Center
Kingsbridge Armory
These are the resources from which our communities stand to derive many benefits regardless of ‘ownership’. While focusing on ownership is helpful to bring order to our world, we believe (along with Nobel-prize winner Elinor Ostrom and others) it has led us on a path of false dichotomies and arbitrary demarcations. These assets, after all, do not exist in isolation; what gives them their value is the surrounding functioning of our environmental, economic and social systems – our natural assets and human activities that shape the resource.
Assets & Liabilities: Climate resilience, healthy population, housing for all, community relationships, political legitimacy, indigenous sovereignties.
Collective Data Assets: Everything data (mobility, energy use, online activity, social media, medical & genetic, financial, loyalty card, geolocation, etc.), predictive and decision-making capabilities.
Civic Infrastructure Assets: Sewers, water treatment facilities, energy distribution systems, internet, telecommunications, roads, public transit, bridges, airports, ports, parking, heritage buildings, social housing, schools, universities, libraries, and parks.
Natural Assets:  Trees, wetlands, aquifers, sun, wind, biodiversity, ecosystems, reefs, foreshores, micro-organisms, clean air.


a call to fundamentally shift the way we understand value in civic assets through system financing tools and models for collective wealth. 
WHOLE SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY: sustainability can’t no longer be considered as solely an environmental issue, but instead as one anchored in new economies to create better places that underpin growth in social equity. The essential value of the natural environment, and its role in underpinning economic prosperity, health, and wellbeing, should be acknowledged. 
The goal, then, is redefined - if economic democracy is to be achieved, it cannot remain reliant on philanthropy and grant. A buisness model for co-ownership and co-governance must be self-reliant. 
TRANSITION PERIOD: Under this premise, I propose to design and re-position a strategic design transition period  notion of the BWP. Democratizing access alone is not enough to build a more equitable future. We must also shift patterns of investment and how wealth accumulates. To tackle current power structures, we must gain a deep understanding of the situation at hand and respond to that reality. Otherwise, to paraphrase Mark Twain, people with hammers will treat everything like a nail, even when the job at hand may be better accomplished with a drill or a saw.
CROSS-SECTOR SUBVERSION: An economic transition cannot be accomplished on one sector alone. This is w
The study highlights the growing priority of land value capture and of using new value models to better benefit from land value increases, to ensure that future developments capture economic, social and environmental value, as well as are beneficial for the environment, existing and future residents, workers, businesses and local organisations. 

MOTT HAVEN PORT MORRIS
To demonstrate the sub-borough network, I focus on ongoing work with a particular community-based organization.
South Bronx Unite faces critical and particular challenges within current market forces. While lacking the manpower to 
Linking South Bronx Unit into the Coalition, I’ll begin by introducing our immediate site of action - Mott Haven and Port Morris. In the southwest Bronx. About 60K people make up a rich and vibrant culture, majority of immigrants. Yet it is still met with limiting narratives and stigma as a consequence of being the poorest congressional district in the country.
For example, Nos Quedamos Melrose CLT and the SBU Land Stewards CLT - all focus on different aspects of the same process. Some even work on the same sites.
An immediate proposal is to join forces - decentralizing areas of expertise per organization.
For example, SBU focuses on community spaces, Melrose focuses on residential rehabilitation, and Nos Quedamos focuses on 

PLAY 1: Lincoln Hospital
Young Lords Takeover: The New York Young Lords defined themselves as “a revolutionary political party fighting for the liberation of all oppressed people.” 
The Young Lords’ 13-Point Program and Platform reflected a vision of society that was anti-racist, anti-imperial, and socialist. This radical ethos inspired many of their direct actions, including the takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the summer of 1970
Offensive. Media. 1975: Lincoln Hospital Occupation to draw attention to systemic issues like inadequate housing, healthcare, education, and police brutality. Through these actions, the Young Lords advocated for community empowerment and self-determination, leading to increased visibility and support for their cause.

03 THE PLAYBOOK
TOWARDS NEW CIVIC INVESTMENT MODELS
BRONX-WIDE COMMON STACK:
WHAT THIS IS NOT
This is not an attempt to produce precise boundaries around the framework of collective real estate, or describe a coherent and complete set of tools, techniques and tactics.
By making legible its seams as alternative forms of urban development, I hope to better understand them myself, as well as open it up for constructive critique and progression through as many useful dialogues as possible. This is part of this process, testing out a new language as much as anything. 
not genuinely intended as a “playbook” to simply adopt, despite the language, or a simple set of ideas and instructions to co-opt and follow — legibility is simply intended to prompt thoughts and start conversations.


Innovation is how economies evolve and grow over time
Growing library of open-source component blueprints for governance, funding, the allocation of capital and impact measurement. 
A platform that enables civic actors to actively co-create this civic infrastructure — transforming the way we use, govern and design the city in the process
VALUE NETWORK MAP: MICRO NARRATIVES
- a series of micro-narratives that each represent a critical issue that contributes to the challenge of 
- Each narrative comprises a cluster of nodes (pain points) and takes into account the weight of the connections (which is determined by the number of connected nodes). Superimposed on the map itself, these micro-narratives provide an entry point into the critical issues, and allow zooming in at the numerous branching connections.

Together, this stack of interventions provides a framework for driving the structural regulatory innovation vital to achieving the scale of progress necessary both in terms of unlocking “value” for transition but also broadening current notions for value. A subversion opposition cannot make our future, but it can break down the process. 
As we move forward, we need to simultaneously design markets fit for the 21st century and design for markets fit for the 21st century.

It’s key argument can be flipped on two sides - the first is virtually all urban development today stems from economic power. Therefore, design cannot afford not to tackle real estate as a design project in itself.
The second is that the greatest risk for real estate is its current positioning within the capital market. Its value lies not in the stock market, but in the real economy. To capture that value, it must position itself in a continuum with the urban disciplines to complement its ability to capture value with the spatial sensitivity to create it.
This is not a call for the architect-developer. Instead, it calls for a repositioning of the real estate practice - which I argue lacks the ability to create value. While the urban disciplines lack pathways to invest in it.


CONCLUSION
 design, at least as discussed here, is more exploratory than "prescribed trajectories". It might instead use prototyping and feedback loops to flush out the right questions in the first place, before embarking on tentative processes that are iterative and adaptive in nature. This subtly undercuts the critique about "prescribed courses of action". (The optimism inherent within design also allows us to build on Thackara's statement that "out of control" is an ideology, not a fact-that these things are the outcome of policy, one way or another, and so can be reshaped by different policy.) This is not an instrumental or engineering-led idea of design, in which altering the infrastructure, or plumbing, underpinning the current reality will at some point produce a different one. Instead, this is an idea of design as directly involved in the creation of culture (culture as a way of being, a pattern of living, after Raymond Williams, rather than simply cultural production and consumption). This moves design well beyond simple problem solving, and means that design does not always "know". But with this more investigative view of design, there are no claims to having a clearly prescribed course of action with a straight line to the ideal solution. Yet we can still see the world as malleable, fungible- and look for affordances to work with- without the sense that design necessarily knows all. It also means that by making small moves within a system, we may be able to shift the pattern at the macro-level, just as a single bird within a flock does. This is Kwinter's description of "a delicate servo-mechanism guiding a much larger machine". The "much larger machine" may not be malleable directly, or even capable of being understood. Yet it can still be affected. 

NOTES
Game Stop Takeover: In 2020. The internet as an economic medium, GameStop stock rose by over 1,700 percent during one rally in January as small investors pushed it to a record high of $483. That share price has dropped back down to around $45. While many amateur traders raked in hundreds or thousands of dollars from the GameStop stock, some hedge funds lost billions as they scrambled to cover their bets against the company.
This thesis is an ongoing set of practice-based experiments in other ways of doing real estate. Its first act compiles the Speculator's Primer: A thorough examination of the paradigms, policies, and practices of the state-sponsored speculative urban development model. The primer stresses the entanglement of public risk and private reward, identifying latent conditions of speculation suitable for subversion and operating as its primer.
Based on Harlem Yards’ South Bronx, The latent conditions suitable for subverting speculation lay the foundation for rethinking the means to an ends - a portfolio of proposals for a future Bronx - pooled from a Bronx-wide cross-sector stakeholder collaboration. A deconstructed primer then rewires plays of subverted speculation. A strategic transition design is demonstrated across South Bronx’ Harlem River Yards and Lincoln Hospital - a direct response to the Young Lords 1970 takeover. I describe current practices of local Community Land Trusts and suggest avenues for scaling up its impact. Situating real estate between the fields of urban design and economics, the portfolio redeploys intrinsic flaws of its dysfunctional development model and taps on the required collective capacities to tackle its paradigms through site-specific forms of practice. 
Skin in the game
Tokenization in Real Estate is a system where geographically desirable assets are distributed to investors through a token. This tokenization system divides ownership into small chunks, which can be traded on exchanges and has the capacity to reach more people than traditional real estate ownership models could. The fractional nature of this asset means that any one investor can own a share that cannot exceed 1% of the total number of tokens in circulation at any given time.

“Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.” (Alan Greenspan, New York Times, 23 October 2008)
Flip the roles between those actually invested in the neighborhood to the financial investors benefitting from its development.
Multi-scale strategies to design tools and models for a transition 
The CLT is a resource not just for affordable prices, but for financial education and counseling — and the investment at scale the People’s TIF unlocks creates the conditions and funding stream to support this vital work.
a different conception of design — one not overly focused on problem-solving, or pretending to embark towards a resolution with a clear idea of the answer — could provide one way of addressing this concern, following an idea of prototyping and heuristics in a space of “unknown unknowns” (after Donald Rumsfeld).
Equally, I am motivated by the belief that the current structures are themselves design decisions, no matter how unconscious. And if it was designed in one way, it follows that it can be designed in a different way.

SUBVERSION PLAYBOOK
Redesigning the convergence: Now, in 2030, there is a global movement to redesign the convergence of communications and monetary media as post-capitalist economic media.
Exit Strategy: One thing that doesn’t get enough attention, is that in private [investment] transactions, you’ve got to have an exit strategy. You have to be able to have a way to cash in on the investment to get the speculated return. So, how do you exit these transactions when there is so much subordinate debt?
starting to concentrate on stewardship 

Play #1: The Trojan Horse: Subversion
The Trojan Horse is an artifact that carries “hidden” strategic elements.

Play #2: The Platform:
(Houston CLT): The homebuyer contributes what they can afford to their home purchase, usually in the form of a standard mortgage. The financial assistance grant helps cover the rest of the home's purchase price, as well as the buyer's reasonable closing costs.
With financial assistance lowering the cost of the home for the homebuyer, Houston Community Land Trust permanently captures that affordability by placing the land beneath the home “in trust”. With the land beneath their home held in trust, the new homeowner joins a community of homeowners who share land ownership with the community land trust (or CLT). All CLT homeowners agree to pass on the affordability of their home to future buyers: both by limiting its resale price to an affordable amount set out in the Ground Lease - and by agreeing to sell to a modest-income buyer who can deeply benefit from that affordability in the future.

Play #3: TRANSFORMATION
In terms of practice, design’s core value is in rapidly synthesising disparate bodies of knowledge in order to articulate, prototype and develop alternative trajectories.

With some rent-to-own contracts, you may have to maintain the property and pay for repairs. MHA Co-Op

Policy market failures:
Levy a higher tax rate on empty urban land, to encourage housing development: this policy accelerated the rate of single-home construction (Lyytikäinen, 2009). However, policymakers should first attack the roots of apparent market inefficiencies: for instance, if idle properties are not leased due to a lack of enforcement of landlord’s rights, laws
and regulations should be changed before taxing empty flats.

Cross-collateralization, reinsurance, and risk reduction: This set of strategies pool cash flows to reduce the risk of individual investments. Thereby, the cost of capital for affordable housing is cheapened. Securitization is the most prominent strategy, whereby mortgage liabilities and cash flows are pooled and sold to the market at relatively low spreads. Credit guarantees—effectively an insurance policy on large loan portfolios—work similarly. 
The real estate development process is also highly risky, requiring large expected returns. Strategies to de-risk development to make housing cheaper include reducing regulatory uncertainty; allowing for phased development; public credit guarantees; private guarantees; land leases with promote clauses—where upward and downward risks are shared in optimal ways; well- structured public-private projects (PPP); enabling developers to use land call options; and the institutionalization of the investor base via development joint ventures (JV).
Equity & Co-operatives:
Civic actors & makers have created collective value through co-op structures since the forming of the Fenwick Weavers’ Society in 1769 [28]; now new transparent technologies which stream-line co-ordination are allowing for new forms of neighbourhood shares in Leeds (UK) (#D.05), co-operative renewable energy market-places (#D.19), co-operative data funds to monetise personal data (#D.21), a block-chain based real-estate co-operative investment fund (#D.03) to international social media platform (#D.18) where owners ‘work-in’ the system (swapping their time for ownership) rather than ‘buy-in’. 

A system design which tapping into existing legal loopholes, complemented with those programs which have been designed for areas like the Bronx (but misused), 
NIT citywide scaling system based on multiplayer strategy; broader agency-based network (council, cabinet, anchors)
By leveraging existing frameworks (OZ + V2V) as well as building on the existing federal reparation discourse, NIT designs the system for redlined neighborhood community capital.
NIT citywide scaling system based on multiplayer strategy; broader agency-based network (council, cabinet, anchors)
Interface: neighborhood level; organize governance: based on three milestones; RECLAIM Vacant property, Rehabilitate it, and Leverage it; via two main agencies; people (council) and professionals (cabinet).
RECLAIM: The neighborhood scale monetizes more types of vacancies (floor, unit, time frames…); less red tape: An investor uploads a vacant space. The Council reacts and draws anchor developers, the Cabinet reviews and draws the redline bank for trust receivership.
REHABILITATE: open to neighborhood discussion; navigated by local representative (council) and planning professionals (cabinet), presented in the neighborhood hall and judged by the board of directors in the neighborhood court. 


LEVERAGE: each type of plot is identified based on its site-specific potential; categorized based on a growing vocabulary of opportunity types. (CATALOG


3 PROPOSALS: HEARts Center; are the finalists for this investment round. the final Voting > citywide framework shifts traditional community development towards a broader notion of community capital building through neighborhood ownership.


The citywide framework shifts traditional community development towards a broader notion of community capital building, by leveraging existing opportunities


we need community-rooted groups playing offense as well as defense, not just shutting down inequitable development, but working to bring transformative plans for truly inclusive development to the table, and demanding the support these plans deserve from our elected officials.


Looking for alternatives
Could reputation based gift economies organized in networks could offer a pathway between market exchange and state planning?
My aim is to assess whether the network is a renaissance for the free market economy or possibly an alternative that could replace the market.
alternatives to the one-dimensional expression of value in capitalism (financial value expressed in price) so that we can take power in the next inevitable recessions.
Collective Impact Models: An investment model which links mutually supportive interventions
Complementary Currencies: An alternative currency system where tokens can only be redeemed locally
Rent-to-Own: rent-to-own agreement. Opportunity space diagram. Based on Tiesdell & Adams, 2011.
include a clause in the rental agreement which either gives you the option to buy or an obligation to buy after a certain time period. You make rent payments each month and a portion of those payments can count toward your down payment. Should you decide to buy, the excess money can be applied to the home purchase.
ALTERNATIVE PORTFOLIO: Municipal bonds have played an integral role in funding public infrastructure projects in the U.S. since New York City issued the first general obligation bond in 1812. While the process to issue and trade municipal bonds has vastly improved since then, the now $3.8 trillion asset class remains stymied by outdated and inefficient processes. The antiquated practices of the muni bond market create access barriers for retail investors and high costs of issuance for local agencies. As blockchain technology gains prevalence, some issuers and financial institutions are looking toward this new tech to “disrupt” and streamline the archaic municipal bond market.
we already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfil such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight. Instead, he said, we need to start looking at the non-technological obstacles to these advances, citing insurance as a key example. The development of alternative space launch systems has been curtailed by the unwillingness of the insurance industry to underwrite satellite launches on systems for which there is no good model of the risk involved.
the problem is rarely technology — or “the idea” — but it is the surrounding context, the thing that makes something happen. Or not. And we need to design that context if we want, say, large scale solar production to happen.


applying the principles of traditional design to “big picture” systemic challenges such as healthcare, education and climate change. It redefines how problems are approached and aims to deliver more resilient solutions.


outlines a new vocabulary of design, one that needs to be smuggled into the upper levels of power. increasingly, effective design means engaging with the messy politics — the “dark matter” — taking place above the designer’s head. And that may mean redesigning the organisation that hires you.


we have to make a more meaningful case for design — without which we are largely left “sticking lipstick on the pig”


Architecture, for example, is horribly, almost fatally constrained by its current positioning and practice. Its inability to reinvent its context, its industry, its practice and its purpose means it continues to fall far, far short of the claims it makes for itself, and indeed its true potential. (With some very honorable exceptions.)


the essay is framed as a sort of tentative playbook of tactics, strategies and other approaches that might trigger useful thoughts, adaptations or discussions (Note it is not the kind of playbook that is to be simply enacted, but one to be interpreted.)


So, for instance, such plays include basic tactics for addressing ‘dark matter’, such as appropriating the ideas of the Trojan Horse or Alfred Hitchcock’s MacGuffin for the Low2No sustainable development competition.


doesn’t see design as key to problem solving and says engineers are better at that.


“What design is good at is asking the questions and reframing things.”
By 2008, the core of Newcastle, New South Wales, had essentially emptied out- a familiar dispersal to the suburbs common to virtually all Australian cities. Dozens of buildings-more than 150 -lay empty in the often elegant yet fading city centre. Two years later, many of those exact same buildings were full of businesses and other organisations, with at least 60 new projects and 86 WHAT IS THE DARK MATTER? ventures starting in at least 30 previously empty spaces. Those same spaces had undergone basic renovation and witnessed hundreds of events. In Newcastle, entirely new communities are now engaged in transforming how the city centre feels and functions. This had all h appened with no change in physical infrastructure- the matter-or essentially any funding whatsoever. So what happened? A Novocastrian-in-exile in Melbourne, Marcus Westbury, and a group of friends and colleagues, unlocked the entire place through understanding and manipulating the dark matter; through the legislative infrastructure invisibly overlaid on to the city centre's leaseholds, which had been locking down the use of the spaces. What became known as the "Renew Newcastle" team visited the buildings' landlords in the centre, and pitched the notion that there were individuals and organisations interested in moving in. But being creative businesses, small firms, individual entrepreneurs, artists and community groups, they just weren't the kind of individuals that could take out a costly long-term commercial lease on a space. We created new rules, new contracts, and convinced owners to make spaces available for what was effectively barter- we would 87 DARK MATTER AND TROJAN HORSES find people to clean them, use them, and activate them and they could have them back if and when they needed them. We stepped outside the default legal framework in which most property in Australia is managed and created a new one. We used licenses not leases, we asked for access not tenancy and exploited the loopholes those kinds of arrangements enabled. (Marcu s Westbury, 2010)