We envisioned inclusive scenarios for local delivery.

In the spring of 2020, we teamed up with Star City Group and began working with Julia Powles, Bianca Wylie at Minderoo Foundation as part of a larger effort to reset the global conversation about technology platforms and power. Just as we started, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Supply chains and delivery systems were thrust to the forefront as communities around the world struggled to get essential goods to home-bound populations while protecting essential workers.

We developed a set of three scenarios that explore how consumer cooperatives, maker collectives, and national postal systems can play a crucial role in rewriting the future of last mile delivery systems as a tool for wealth development rather than wealth extraction.

The report was published as a PDF Booklet downloadable here, as well as a limited run newspaper (seen below).

Accompanying the text are a set of illustrations that communicate the circular nature of the economies in question in these scenarios. They show the actors, resources, and scenes that form a swirl of collaboration across different scales. Each is organized around a different central figure.

Orange spins around a Sierpinski triangle, hinting at the multiple interlocking scales at which food systems operate. Blue rotates around an emblem of gear and bolts, symbolizing the open source hardware and ethos that enables a makertown. Purple puts people at the center of the cloud, highlighting the diverse needs and conditions that truly civic systems must be able to service, as well as the vast ingenuity waiting to be applied to society’s challenges via equitable and accessible platforms.

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• Client: Minderoo Foundation
• Collaborator: Star City Group