Casa Robino

At this point, people start talking about being "sustainable," but that word has now picked up so much baggage that it's almost meaningless, and it was never precise. The word I suggest instead is stable, applied not to products or technologies but to whole systems.
Civilization as we know it is unstable, because too many of its processes are increase-only. No engineer would design a plane that can only increase its speed and altitude, but we do it everywhere: When has a government reduced the number of laws? When has a new computer operating system been leaner than the old one? How often does a food store move into a smaller space and carry fewer products? Have we ever torn down a housing development and planted a forest?