My writing portfolio is a brief overview of the publications I write for and the topics I specialize in: industry-specific reporting, creating change, ecology, cities, infrastructure, and many more.
Below is a curated selection of articles, industry-specific reporting, editing, and books.
Ecology, Cities, Infrastructure
Earth Island Journal
Innovative infrastructure projects find inspiration in the wild to restore urban air, waterways, and coastlines.
The Guardian
Reprogramming the City: Can Urban Innovation Meet Growing Needs?
“To unlock the full potential of our cities and solve pressing problems, we must re-imagine the existing urban infrastructure writes Scott Burnham”
Architizer
NatureStructure: Design That Plays on the Same Team as Nature
“Instead of combating natural forces, NatureStructure represents a new generation of innovative infrastructure that uses the powers and processes of nature as components, providing a framework for a sustainable and coexistent future.”
Metropolis
“Scott Burnham writes that in our era of limited budgets and resources, increasing the functionality of existing infrastructure is a necessary path forward.”
NurtureStructure
Restore Ecosystems by Rethinking Cemeteries
“To preserve species, increase biodiversity, and restore ecosystems, cemeteries may be our safest bet. Scott Burnham writes that it is time to reconsider the role they can play.”
Architizer / Reprogramming the City
Design With the City, Not For It: How to Discover Unlimited Urban Potential
“The city has all the resources it needs; the key to unlocking these resources is seeing the urban landscape not as the end result of a previous creative process, but as the beginning of a new one. Learning to design with the city is appreciating that there is a landscape full of resources to work with, not to remove and discard.”
ArchitectureBoston
From bus shelters to classrooms, a Swedish energy company sees the light with therapy bulbs.
Industry-Specific Content
Project Management Institute
Global Project Management Job Trends 2023: South Asia
Outlook for 2023 South Asia Talent Trends analyzing regional GDP growth forecasts and key industry employment and job market trends.
How to Build a Change-Ready Mindset Across Teams
“Despite pivot after pivot, organizations still have work to do to build change-ready teams. From implementing new tools for teams to use or scaling a new process for teams to follow, project leaders must create a culture and a mindset that allows teams to adapt seamlessly and quickly.“
Company Reports
Skanska (Sweden’s largest construction and project development company)
“Se stadens dolda potential” (See the city’s hidden potential)
Thought piece commissioned by Skanska for their magazine Flervärden to motivate its developers to think outside the box when searching for potential in cities.
Work as Editor
The Relationship between Trust and Design
Over the course of two years I served as Editor and Project Director for Trust Design, a research project of Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design in Amsterdam to explore the relationship between trust and the design industry.
The result was a four-part publication series in collaboration with Volume Magazine / Archis, a series of workshops with Design Academy Eindhoven, and other talks and events. “A surprising new perspective in the design field.” – Louise Schouwenberg, Design Academy Eindhoven
My Books
Scott’s books are filled with simple-yet-powerful insights. They highlight aspects that were staring me in the face all along but I was too blind to see. Now I can’t unsee them. – Vishal Kataria
An exploration of ways in which the city’s waste and byproducts can be recovered, reimagined, and used in new ways – illustrating the potential of overlooked and unsung operations of the city.
This Could: How to Create Opportunity, Increase Creativity, and Reduce Waste
Strategies and tools for companies, cities, and individuals to create solutions and future opportunities using objects, assets, and materials in new ways.
“A masterclass in the art of possibility.” – Fiona Luis
Reprogramming the City: Adaptive Reuse and Repurposing Urban Objects
44 projects from 17 countries showing how people are making cities more livable and resilient by using existing urban objects in new ways.
“A hopeful anthology of solutions for our hot, crowded planet.” – Renée Loth
NatureStructure: Infrastructure for Nature
A new generation of nature-centric design and infrastructure. Projects that nurture and restore ecosystems, employing nature and natural processes to address the problems human development has created for itself.
Design Hacking: Resourceful Innovation and Sustainable Self-Reliance
Design hacking is the individual stepping in when products and systems fall short. It is a democratization of design, enabling the user to be part of the design process and not only on the receiving end of it. “Exceedingly well written and comprehensive.” – Core77