Ezio Manzini founded DESIS Network, the international network of design for social innovation and sustainability. He is Distinguished Professor of Design for Social Innovation at ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona; Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy; and Guest Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, and Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. His previous book Design, When Everybody Designs. An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation was published by MIT Press in 2015.

Ezio Manzini’s book is remarkably timely and much-needed. He shows that another world is possible, not through top-down policy making but through everyday social innovation. Project-based democracy is a concept we’ll be hearing a lot more about.

• PrefaceYou are here. A point of view and of action on the world1. Light communities. Social forms in a fluid worldIf the world becomes fluid. Transformative social innovation. Local discontinuity in the transition. Social commons and their regeneration. People, encounters and conversations. Community as a space of opportunity. Continuity of place. Meaningful encounters and their enabling ecosystems. The value of lightness2. Life projects. Autonomy and collaborationProjects, designers and design capability. The crisis of the conventional mode. Difficulties, risks and opportunities. Projects, autonomy and new conventions. Capabilities, tools and results. Life projects as bricolage. Complexity and individual responsibility. Exploring and transforming the field of possibility. Collaborative projects and autonomy. Collaborative living, as an example. Communities of interest and communities of purpose. Enabling ecosystems and designing coalitions. Collaboration and relational values.3. Politics of everyday life. Design activism and transformative normalityEveryday life makes policies. The world seen (and constructed) by those who live in it. Change the world from where you are. The systemic effects of everyday choices. Can we escape the control apparatus? Transgressive tactics and strategies. From activism to transformative reality. Innovation trajectories and design choices. The Platform economy and the new co-operative movement. Sharing economy and collaborative economy. Collaboration, efficiency and relational value. Everyday-life policies, other policies and other democracies. 4. Project-centred democracy. Ecosystems of ideas and projectsThe complex nature of democracy. A regime capable of learning. The dimensions of the crisis. Experimenting distributed democracy. Participatory democracy and social innovation. Participatory enabling ecosystems. The scenario of project-centred democracy. Infrastructure for project-centred democracy. Diffuse design capabilities.AfterwordAnother book. Design experts and diffuse design capability