On April 15th, 2024, Tomas Diez, the Executive Director of the Fab City Foundation, hosted Leonora Grcheva, Cities & Regions Lead at the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), for an insightful conversation on innovative approaches to building 21st-century economies.

This news post summarises our recent round table featuring urban planner, researcher, and participation practitioner Leonora Grcheva.

Cities and communities worldwide are actively moving away from outdated paradigms, embracing transformative practices promoted by initiatives like the Fab City Global Initiative, Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), and the Fab Lab Network.

DEAL’s approach to shifting away from the old profit-driven economic model towards a new paradigm that fosters safety and equity is rooted in Doughnut Economics. DEAL proposes seven new ways of thinking and offers open-source tools, resources, and support networks for practitioners committed to reshaping urban development. 

Insitutions are leading the implementation of Doughnut Economics, both with and without direct influence from DEAL.

Doughnut Economics is more than just a radical concept.

In our conversation, Leonora Grcheva explores DEAL’s ‘unrolled doughnut,’ which is a core tool designed to assist practitioners in applying Doughnut Economic principles. She discusses the four lenses that guide practical applications of the unrolled doughnut in real-world contexts.

The session brought out a number of themes. We will highlight three here:

• We need to fundamentally rethink how we measure and assess economic progress. The conventional GDP growth metric is outdated and inadequate for addressing the social and ecological challenges of the 21st century.
• Cities should adopt distributive designs that share value and opportunity broadly.
• Three critical questions to consider from the onset of the design process: how much can we get away with? How much do we have to do? How much can we possibly do?

The Fab City community regularly convenes to explore diverse topics and share best practices in round table discussions organised by the Fab City Foundation, which feature experts and community members.