BOOK DRAFTS
This section includes book drafts by members of the Sustasis Collaborative. Click on the image of each book to open.
We also have a selection of papers already published in journals, available here.
WHAT COMPUTERS MUST DO (AND HUMANS TOO):
Confronting the Age of Artificial Stupidity
What Computers MUST Do (And Humans Too) confronts the paradox at the heart of the AI revolution: never have our technologies been so powerful, and never have they been so capable of amplifying human error, confusion, and cultural decay. Drawing on decades of work in architecture, systems theory, network science, and pattern languages, Michael W. Mehaffy argues that the real danger is not artificial intelligence, but artificial stupidity—technologies that learn quickly without depth, feedback, or responsibility. Tracing the evolution of AI from early philosophical debates to today’s deep learning systems, the book reveals how intelligence emerges from richly structured networks—and why shallow, uncurated systems threaten democracy, culture, and even survival. Mehaffy offers a hopeful alternative: a vision of curated, human-centered technologies that strengthen collective intelligence, restore meaningful feedback, and help build a more resilient, regenerative future.
SYMMETRIC STRUCTURALISM:
Adventures in Metalanguage
Symmetric Structuralism: Adventures in Metalanguage offers a sweeping yet rigorous reconstruction of how meaning, structure, and knowledge arise across nature, culture, and design. Tracing a line from Plato and early structuralism through post-structuralist critique, systems theory, Christopher Alexander's work, and contemporary artificial intelligence, Michael W. Mehaffy argues that today’s crises—ecological, social, and institutional—are not primarily technical failures, but failures of structural alignment. Introducing symmetric structuralism, the book shows how deep, multi-scale structures shape cognition, language, economy, architecture, and technology, and how coherence, beauty, and meaning emerge from their resonance. Written for scholars and reflective practitioners alike, this work proposes a generative framework for rethinking culture, institutions, and design—and for imagining a possible renaissance grounded in structural literacy and polycentric cultural renewal.
POLYCAPITAL CULTURALISM:
Value, Governance, and the Structure of Living Economies
Polycapital Culturalism: Value, Governance, and the Structure of Living Economies offers a new framework for understanding why modern economic and political systems—capitalist, socialist, and hybrid alike—are struggling to sustain human flourishing. Drawing on economics, urban theory, institutional analysis, and systems thinking, author Michael W. Mehaffy argues that the core problem is not ideology, but valuation: societies rely on multiple forms of capital—financial, human, social, cultural, ecological, and spatial—yet attempt to govern them through a single dominant metric. The result is systemic depletion rather than regeneration. Polycapital culturalism proposes an alternative grounded in plural valuation, polycentric governance, and feedback-rich institutions capable of learning over time. Rejecting both technocratic control and nostalgic restoration, the book offers a rigorous, humane account of how economies, cities, and cultures can be structured to endure as living systems in an age of mounting complexity.
PLACE NETWORKS:
The Secret Life of the Urban Connectome
"Place Network Theory" offers a new way of understanding cities, not as collections of buildings or abstract systems of flows, but as living networks of interconnected places. Drawing on architecture, urbanism, neuroscience, complexity science, economics, and ecology, Mehaffy shows how human settlements function as spatial connectomes: distributed structures that embody collective intelligence about how to live together, learn, and adapt. From everyday thresholds and sidewalks to neighborhoods, institutions, and governance systems, the book reveals how dense, well-connected place networks support social cohesion, economic creativity, public health, and ecological resilience—while their fragmentation produces many of today’s urban crises. Integrating classic thinkers such as Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander with contemporary research and original theory, Place Networks provides both a compelling diagnosis of what has gone wrong in modern urban development and a practical framework for rebuilding cities that are more humane, adaptive, and sustainable.
THE EMPIRE'S NEW CLOTHES:
On the Curious History and Dubious Future of an Architectural Malpractice
A work of architectural and urban criticism, The Empire's New Clothes follows in the lineage of Jane Jacobs, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Robert Hughes and Peter Buchanan. It offers an incisive critique of contemporary architectural theory and practice.
The book begins with the observation that, in spite of its claim to be "modern," the architecture profession - along with the other built environment professions which it leads, or fails to lead - is actually "mired in the past." This is a past not of richly evolved complex traditions, but of primitive industrial forms of a century ago, branded and marketed by clever artist-architects. In spite of "post-modern" reforms, the central fallacies of that era still dominate the built environment today, with profoundly negative consequences.
The book provides an engaging account of the history of this malpractice, up to the present -- and a hopeful account of the tenuous but encouraging reforms that are under way today.