Mike Duff Email & Phone Number

Global

I've joined DML to work primarily on the EU NetZeroCities team, building and delivering systemic city transformation strategies for climate-neutrality and implementing radical actions with local governments and multi-actor coalitions in cities. I will be working on the design and implementation, in multiple cities, of approaches accelerating emission reductions - catalysing collective action locally and building & driving impactful portfolios of actions reducing GHG emissions.

Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

This masters is delivered jointly by the UAB and the Research and Degrowth Association International, for which our centre, La Bruguera de Púbol, is one of 4 Living Labs. My work coordinating this new, practical module in the masters, will be to write the curriculum, deliver the La Bruguera teaching component (on site at La Bruguera), and coordinate the teaching work delivered by the other 3 Living Labs. Developing a practical module to the degree has emerged as an important new front, after 6 years of the Masters. Making sure that students leave the masters aware of the systemic change necessary in the global, national, regional and municipal economies around them is important, but they must also leave with practical skills ripe for lowering their own environmental impact, but also be ready for a changing world, which is likely to take on many forms, and require skills we have stopped teaching in schools over the last 100 years. My job is to co-create this module, with the other Living Labs, who are all practicing alternatives to the growth-motivated capitalist economy, in a few different sectors, and also in the lifestyle space. The module will attempt to link all sorts of practical skills which could be essential to communities (La Bruguera specific ones could be fermentation, food cultivation, local energy generation, local currencies and exchange, soap making, basic medicine production, pickling, agroforestry systems, urban permaculture, water harvesting, etc) and link these to larger themes of the Masters

Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Living Labs Committee Member (pro bono) Since joining, Mike, as a member of the Living Labs Committee, has been developing a strategy to enable the Living Labs component of the association’s educational output to be more actively linked into the “classroom” education delivered by the Association both in the associated Masters Degree at the UAB, and through the development of Policy Briefs, participation in conferences and events, and production of research.Applied Degrowth Consultant Development of the association’s consulting offering, taking research and knowledge from the academics, research, and policy briefs of the association, and applying this directly to consultancy projects in the real world.

La Pera, Catalonia, Spain

Mike was elected to the Council of the Municipality of La Pera, in the Girona Province of Catalonia, Spain, on a participatory governance and environmental sustainability platform. During his four-year mandate, Mike is charged with representing the citizens of the municipality in matters relating to Urbanism, Planning, Renewable Energy Transition, Public Acquisition of Energy Infrastructure and Participatory Citizen-led projects. One was a co-creation for a new children’s park and square, and the other is ongoing, and relates to the recovery, wayfinding and interpretation of a historic Dolmen on the edge of the municipality. Working directly with the Mayor and the town architect, Mike has also brought the municipality’s regional Strategic Plan to successful completion, and as of early 2022 it is with the Catalan National Government for sign-off after remaining unfinished for the 15 previous years.

Púbol, Girona, Spain

La Bruguera de Púbol is Mike and his partner Michelle’s retreat centre in the Girona - Costa Brava region of Catalonia. Over 7 years since the purchase of this estate, he has led the master planning and large-scale renovation of the 10 acre property, converting it to run entirely on renewable energy; harvest, manage and treat all its own water; and produce the majority of its food (for family, and visiting guests). Mike and Michelle jointly undertook the strategy development, and collaborate on all facets of the business, from teaching permaculture and degrowth masterclasses to visitors, farming the land, mapping and measuring resource use, sustainable procurement, marketing, operations, produce preservation, sales and logistics. The project has been highly successful, been fully booked the last 2 years, invited to become a Living Lab for the R&D Association, and Mike has been asked to present case studies on “devising a Regenerative Business” at several conferences and Universities around Spain where he was asked to present on La Bruguera’s contributions to gender equality and innovative approaches to the fight against climate change.

Girona, Spain

I deliver lectures on sustainability, complexity and strategic planning in architecture and urbanism, as well as presenting case studies of our work at @La Bruguera de Pubol, and our contributions to gender equality and ecological sustainability, at the University of Girona in the schools of Architecture, and the Faculty of Tourism.

Púbol, Spain

Mike was a founding member of the CoLab Consulting Group in 2015, directing the urban and regional planning part of the business. CoLab is an agile, international group of highly-skilled, highly-experienced built environment professionals, able to input into or run large strategic planning projects, or integrate into existing design consultancies as a “white label” in-house strategy unit. Mike was charged with running projects for and supporting public sector urban governance clients, who manage portfolios that cross between sectors, providing support, strategic direction, and guidance on urban sustainability, strategy, governance, making the most of the “smart cities” movement, regenerative design, complexity, and computational modelling. In 2022, Mike decided opted to end his association with CoLab, to focus all of his consulting efforts on projects promoting post-capitalist, alternative economic solutions, such as his work with the Research & Degrowth Association, and La Bruguera de Púbol (see “Current Positions”).Highlights- Smart Cities – Development of Modelling Technology for Decision/Options Analysis in Urban Projects;- Clients included: Office of the Prime Minister of Tanzania, The World Bank, The University of Oxford, The Tourism Board of the Government of Catalonia, The UN World Tourism Organisation, The Government of the City of Jinan, China

Girona, Spain

Twice a week, I curate the 'Catalonia Today' page of El Punt Avui, a national newspaper in Catalonia. CT is an English-language page, in which I choose a series of stories from across the El Punt Avui paper, and summarise, shorten, re-shape then translate, for the English-language audience who read the paper online (cataloniatoday.cat, elpuntavui.cat) or in daily paper copies.

Barcelona Area, Spain

I translate and upload articles on the Catalan self-determination process, from Catalan, Spanish and French language media onto CatalanMonitor.com, a news monitor keeping a record of press articles and media produced here in Catalonia during the self-determination crisis. I update the website to post the articles, and push them to the CM social media channels.

Uk & Spain

Developed customised training programs for road-racing cyclists competing in Elite and Amateur races. Followed progress on Training Peaks, assessed progress, and provided support at regular check-ins.

Uganda (Via Skype, From London/Spain)

I delivered 12 sessions of business consultancy to a micro-business owner in Uganda. These sessions were delivered by Skype, with a view to providing business skills to an entrepreneur and unlocking further potential, improving the sustainability of their company, increasing profitability, and creating further employment. I helped Ivan think through a strategy for moving up the logistics chain, from retail to wholesale, in his small IT technology market stall.Grow Movement is working with London Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to evaluate the impact of virtual consultancy on entrepreneur performance in Uganda. For June 2015, Grow Movement will recruit 600 new volunteer consultants to join our existing global network of over 500 business professionals to support this academic research. This is an incredible opportunity to have our work externally validated enabling Grow to work with policy makers and expand our services rapidly across Africa.

London, Uk

Mike is Concerto’s resident urbanist, helping cities decide what to do next. It is my role to take the core Concerto services, of Strategy, Programme Design & Management, Change Management and Major Project Review / Assurance, and provide these in a sector-appropriate manner to clients working in and around the management of Cities.

London, United Kingdom

Mike is a Senior Mentor in the Future of London's "Future London Leaders" Programme. I am mentoring a younger urban professional from the Greater London Authority, interested in developing their sustainability knowledge, and leadership skills. We'll work together over the course of the programme, from January to June 2015.More about the Programme (from: http://www.futureoflondon.org.uk/future-london-leaders/)Sponsored in part by Lovell and Re, the Future London Leaders programme is exclusive to Future of London members. It has been designed to identify and nurture the career development of London’s most promising regeneration, housing, transport and economic development practitioners.Since its inception in April 2010, over 100 candidates have graduated from FLL and our new Leaders Plus masterclass series. Those alumni are moving up through delivery and decision-making roles across London’s public and private sector, working to deliver a truly liveable London.The programme aims to:Develop candidates’ network and increase exposure to senior professionalsBuild real, working understanding of the multidisciplinary aspects of regenerationDevelop candidates’ leadership and management skills, experience and confidenceEncourage awareness of personal strengths and areas for developmentEncourage active career planningProvide a ‘safe space’ to discuss ideas, problem-solving, and the wider world

Wsp House, 70 Chancery Lane, London

I led the Future Cities Initiative at WSP UK, drawing sector expertise from the breadth of WSP’s business units to deliver joined-up thinking for complex urban problems. This involved leading project work, research (e.g. the Smart and Sustainable Cities report WSP co-wrote for the EIB, http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/thefunds/instruments/doc/jessica/jessica_horizontal_study_smart_and_sustainable_cities_en.pdf ), and developing the business’s links with a broad range of other companies, worldwide.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

I was a Founding Member of the Working Group for Sustainable Cities, at the Harvard University Department of the Environment. This was an academic/professional working group on Urban Sustainability, attempting to bring together as many experts from varying schools and centres around Harvard, in order to develop a trans-disciplinary understanding of urban sustainability. I helped set up the structure, mandate, vision and objectives of the group. During this time, I also guest lectured at the Graduate School of Design, on Urban Sustainability, Computational Modelling and Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Urban projects.

London

I have written a number articles on topics from urbanism and cycling (including a few pieces that join those two passions of mine). I also acted as an early professional advisor / part-time mentor to the Founder / Current Editor-in-Chief, and took on minor editing / advisory tasks in the initial years of the venture.

London

I've worked on the MSc Sustainable Urbanism at UCL for the last 4 years, lecturing on Strategic Planning and “Smart Cities”, and helping devise briefs for the annual 3 month design studio project, then acting as a guest judge for the end-of-year presentations in the studio.

London, United Kingdom

Guest lecturer in SO452 Urban Environment on Food Systems and Cities, and Urban Complexity, Industrial Symbiosis, Systems thinking, Biomimicry.

London

Mike was one of the first two hires at Happold Consulting Ltd., joining up with Buro Happold Engineering’s previous CEO, Padraic Kelly, and its Head of Strategic Planning, Lawrie Robertson, to start this strategic planning sister-business. Over 6 years Mike was instrumental in shaping the direction and structure of the business, and led more than 20 major urban strategy projects, on 5 continents. This sustainability and innovation-focussed group was the most successful in the company, and grew from 4 to 50 designers, engineers, economists, and programmers during Mike’s tenure. Mike co-created one of the unit’s most significant products – Integrated Urban Modelling – where lightweight coding was used to bring together the computational models of the many specialisms contributing to the design of urban and regional projects to seek out optimal urban design interventions from a sustainability perspective, embracing big data, and working at levels of complexity which would be impossible with a strictly human designer. The delivery of live models rather than static design reports was the hallmark of HC strategic planning at this time, and tremendously powerful. Mike played an instrumental role in developing the firm’s relationships with Harvard University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, as a guest academic at all three, during his tenure at HC. Happold Consulting, originally set up as a fiscally separate entity for corporate risk management reasons, was later rolled back into Buro Happold after its great success, and now roughly corresponds to the company’s Strategic Planning “specialism” and Cities Team.

London, Uk

Mike was one of 3 recently-graduated urban designers chosen to form the foundational team of a new “Integrated Design Group” at ABA, attempting to devise integrated, whole-systems solutions for public sector clients, on the understanding that “Sustainability”, the watchword of the time, required design teams which could seal the gaps between architecture, urbanism, engineering, transport, environmental studies, and the social and economic demands of public sector clients.

London, Uk

I founded this Urbanism collective, which grew to include a mix of practitioners and recent design graduates, while I was still at LSE. Together we spoke at conferences, wrote white papers, entered design competitions, and generally questioned the status quo in the built environment sector, with pop-up events, subversive competition entries, and a tendency to highlight how the capitalist system is very good at getting in the way of design achieving well-being and equality objectives.

Data Entry, Database Management, Data Cleaning

Master Of Science - Ms, City Design & Social Science, 2:1

British Cycling Coaching Certificate, Level 2 Coaching For All Cycling Disciplines

Level 1 & 2 Cycling Coaching certification

Pg Diploma, Architecture: Sustainability & Design, Distinction

Architecture and Urbanism for Sustainability. Theory, Practical design, and research dissertation on the use of computational software.

Ma, Architecture: Sustainability & Design

MA Architecture & Sustainability was a 2 year masters level course, split into a cities year, and an urbanism year. These two scales were.

Msc, City Design & Social Science, 2:1 With Merit

Activities and Societies: LSE Cities ProgrammeSocial Psychology and Philosophy (learning how people think, and how to think) at BSc level.

Bsc, Social Psychology & Philosophy, High 2:1

International Study Centre, Year 1 (Herstmonceux Castle, Uk), European Studies (Politics, Philosophy, Economics), Distinction

Philosophy, Economics, Political Science, European History, Art History

International Baccalaureate Year 2, International Baccalaureate Year 2

2nd year International Baccalaureate.

International Baccalaureate Year 1

1st year International Baccalaureate.