Returning home….

I’m home after four weeks on the move: Paris, Freiburg, Utrecht, London, Amsterdam, back to Johannesburg for four amazing days and nights, and then to Tunis (via Frankfurt), and then home to Stellenbosch. A beautiful mosaic of connections, creative collaborations, explorations, talks and discussions. I had 5 days in Utrecht at Maarten Hajer’s Urban Futures Studio where I finished off my book Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World. The main task was to complete the conclusion. Fittingly, I wrote the last paragraph on African soil – in Tunis, the ancient land of my Sephardic ancestors. I even found an amazing graphic for the cover page. It’s all submitted now and ready to go into production. It should be out by September! I just can’t believe it. Other highlights of the trip were the Campus de la Transition located South of Paris, meeting someone from the P2P Foundation in Amsterdam, meeting Jeremy Oppenheim from SystemIQ in London, seeing my son Ray in London, and our proposal development teamwork in Freiburg (with researchers from Utrecht University, University of Freiburg, Indian Institute of Housing Studies and Stellenbosch University). I did my first-ever talk about the book at a seminar at Utrecht University. I was too anxious to prepare properly, but once I got going it emerged in a surprisingly clear way. I guess I’ve lived and breathed that book since the start of my time at Yale in March last year. Amazing movements on all fronts. So exciting. Today, back to my two offices at the Sustainability Institute and CST. Both looking as beautiful and inspiring as ever. It’s a privilege to live this life. I take nothing for granted.