San Francisco to Adopt “Doughnut” Economic Model by 2025
A fictional news story from the present day.
San Francisco will become the first US city to discard GDP growth as a development metric, its mayor said yesterday, instead adopting a “doughnut” approach that emphasizes social equity and environmental sustainability.
The city’s development metrics will now focus on 12 social factors and nine environmental factors, as outlined by economic theorist Kate Raworth in her groundbreaking 2017 book Doughnut Economics. Raworth appeared alongside San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed at the press conference held to announce the initiative, which Breed said will be “fully in place” by 2025.
“We’ll spend the next four years preparing our city to adopt these new targets,” Breed said. “This is a major shift but will position San Francisco as a true global leader in thinking beyond outdated and harmful models of growth.”
The concept of doughnut economics underscores that unfettered GDP growth will cause environmental devastation as humanity overshoots the carrying capacity of the natural world. Instead, it focuses on raising living standards to a level that meets basic needs without placing an undue burden on resources.
According to doughnut theory, measures of social well-being — ranging from food, water, and housing to income inequality and gender parity — should pass specific thresholds without raising emissions, polluting natural spaces, or threatening biodiversity. Raworth refers to this threshold as a “doughnut”, reflecting its shape in a widely-publicized diagram she invented as part of a 2012 report for the organization Oxfam.
While the city will continue to monitor GDP, it will be used solely as a background indicator that informs work on the doughnut metrics.
As a first step in San Francisco’s adoption of doughnut economics, the city will establish an Office of Doughnut Development that will be divided into three parts: one to focus on coordinating activities among city agencies, one to engage citizens in doughnut economic concepts via forums and outreach sessions, and one to solicit input from the city’s business community. It will also work toward understanding the global impact of San Francisco’s development on the 12 social and nine environmental factors under the doughnut framework.
“The ‘doughnut’ concept will serve as the guiding principle for all our social and environmental programs by 2025,” Breed said. “We also hope to have established thorough databases of San Francisco’s progress on all these factors, both locally and globally, by then.”
Raworth noted that while some cities have begun to utilize doughnut concepts in their development strategies, San Francisco will be the first city in the world to employ its metrics in lieu of traditional measures of progress like GDP. While the city will continue to monitor GDP, it will be used solely as a background indicator that informs work on the doughnut metrics.
“Our addiction to growth has set the world on a wholly unsustainable path,” Raworth said. “We must figure out a new way to raise living standards without destroying the planet.”
Specific programs that Breed said will take precedence include a renewed push to house San Francisco’s substantial homeless population, taxing companies’ use of natural resources instead of labor, mandating that all government departments employ 50% women, and encouraging local firms to adopt circular business models.
“I’ll be putting proposals in front of the Board of Supervisors first thing tomorrow,” Breed said. “We don’t have a moment to waste.”
