Mike Duff

Background

About Mike Duff

Mike is a regenerative systems designer, farmer, father and local councillor, creating urban & regional scale, physical, governance, environmental and economic systems. Mike works at the design, consultancy, policy, “hands dirty” implementation and feedback phases, on projects aiming to assure abundance and resilience within planetary boundaries, with marginalized groups in the designer’s chair. He has degrees in Philosophy & Social Psychology; Urban Sociology, Economics & City Systems Design; and Architecture, Urbanism & Sustainability, and has pursued further education in Permaculture, Ecological Economics, Degrowth, Nature-based Solutions, Co-creation, Eco-Feminism, Participatory Governance and Non-Violent Protest. Mike has worked around the world as Design Lead and “System of Systems” designer in the environmental and urban planning sector, developing transdisciplinary plans in the sectors of urban renewal,[so-called] ‘development’, post-conflict planning and more recently post-capitalist and pre-collapse planning. He works by co-creating with local communities in tandem with government, donors, the private sector, universities, and academia. Between 2002 & 2015 he developed and set up strategic planning and systems design departments in four built environment consultancies, leading & stewarding diverse teams of designers, engineers, architects, ecologists, governance experts and economists from start-up to project success. Recently he and his co-director / partner Michelle created a successful retreat centre and regenerative farm in the Costa Brava, hosting educational experiences in nature, where Regenerative Design, Community Self-Sufficiency and Permaculture are taught. He and Michelle were invited to join the Research & Degrowth Association, with their project as a “Living Lab”, in 2020. Mike continues to consult and has served his municipality as elected Urbanism and Participatory Governance councillor, since 2019. He is an accomplished public speaker, on TV, in the Economist Magazine, in conferences, and as a guest lecturer on complexity & systems-thinking, participatory design, and alternative economics, at the LSE Cities Programme, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Universitat de Girona’s School of Architecture. He is currently a Final Project Supervisor for Masters students in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.