I’ve taught systems thinking to policy students for a few years now, but it’s not at topic I’ve written about. That is starting to change.

Last week I was in Montreal at the 4th International Conference on Public Policy. As part of a stream called Advancing the understanding of evidence use in policy making – insights from multiple conceptual perspectives I gave a paper entitled Evidence-based policy? On systems thinking, anticipation and policy making. A pdf of the draft paper should be available here.

This week a paper entitled Housing and systems thinking has been published as a CaCHE Working Paper. I played very much a supporting role in the writing of this paper. Ken Gibb very much took the lead. You can find the paper here. We are anticipating that this is the first installment of a bigger project to explore the application of systems thinking in housing contexts.