Intro: Postcards from the Future

I think of these stories as “postcards from the future”—messages from places where the kinds of systems we talk about are already being built.

Most conversations about alternatives to our current economic system stay abstract. They live in theory, in critique, or in distant visions of what could be.

But over the past few years, I’ve been encountering something different: cooperatives. These are real projects, already operating, that are organized around two principles: 1) shared ownership and 2) shared decision-making. Not perfect, not always scaled, but functioning. Housing cooperatives that keep homes permanently affordable. Businesses owned and governed by the people who work in them. Community spaces run collectively by the people who rely on them.

These are not ideas. They are systems in practice.

I’ve spent the last several years studying and building cooperatives myself. Most notably, I helped create Baldwin House—an experiment in a new model for affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC. That experience made something clear to me: these models are possible, but they are not easy.

What makes them work is not just values or intention. It is structure—how ownership is designed, how decisions are made, how money flows, and how conflict is handled over time.

Since then, I’ve been trying to understand those conditions more deeply.

Right now, I’m based in Spain, where I’m documenting projects that are actively building and sustaining cooperative models. Each one offers a different approach, a different set of constraints, and a different set of lessons.

This project—Postcards from the Future—is an attempt to document and share what I’m learning.

Each “postcard” will focus on a specific project: how it works, what makes it viable, and what it reveals about the broader effort to rebuild the commons.

The goal is twofold:

First, to make these projects visible. Many people assume that alternatives to our current systems don’t exist, or only exist at the margins. That’s not true.

Second, to understand what actually makes these models succeed. Not just what they aspire to, but how they function in practice—where they struggle, where they adapt, and what conditions allow them to endure.

Over time, I hope this becomes a body of work that is both practical and cumulative:

• A set of case studies that can inform people building similar projects.

• A collection of stories that make these models more legible and tangible.

• A growing synthesis of patterns, tradeoffs, and design choices that shape what is possible.

The future we all deserve is often framed as something distant—something we have to invent from scratch.

But in many places, it is already being built.

These are postcards from the future—grounded examples of what is possible, shared out to help us imagine and build what comes next.