For over fifteen years, Ward Stirrat has been quietly dismantling the invisible systems that extract wealth from society — and building the replacements. His work spans currency design, neighbourhood infrastructure, housing policy, ecological accounting, and narrative: a complete alternative economic architecture for the twenty-first century.
Ward operates at the intersection of community organizing, platform design, and alternative economics. Where most critics stop at diagnosis, Ward builds tools. His frameworks have been applied to Vancouver neighbourhood budgeting, housing policy reform, complementary currency systems, and ecological stewardship — producing a cohesive body of work that is simultaneously theoretical and immediately deployable.
His foundational thinking was first published in 2020 under the byline The Decentralist on Medium — three essays establishing the core argument: that the power to create money has been surrendered to private corporations, that a community-controlled alternative is both historically precedented and practically achievable, and that the hierarchical extraction systems underpinning modern capitalism are a continuation of empire by other means.
His flagship platform, Block Share (app.blockshare.ca), is a live proof-of-concept for what a community-owned micro-economy looks like in practice. His policy publications apply the LEI/FEI framework to Vancouver housing with forensic precision. His forthcoming book Default provides the narrative and intellectual scaffolding for the entire project.
Every city block already has a multi-million dollar economy flowing through it. Nobody accounts for it. Blockonomics makes that invisible power visible.
Foundational Essays — Medium / The Decentralist · 2020
Housing & Policy Analysis — Block Share Publications
Economics & Extraction — Block Share Publications
Programs & Policy — Block Share Publications
Ward Stirrat is not another commentator on the housing crisis or the inequality gap. He is building the replacement.
Ward designs interactive games and workshop formats that make complex systems viscerally understandable. Each game encodes real economic data — players don't just learn about extraction, they feel it happening.
Ward Stirrat is not another commentator on the housing crisis, the inequality gap, or the failures of growth economics. He is building the replacement.
His talks draw on fifteen years of hands-on platform design, policy research, and community organizing to show audiences not just what's wrong — but what a working alternative actually looks like, at neighbourhood scale, right now.
Ward speaks fluently across audiences: community organizers and municipal planners, cooperative economists and social entrepreneurs, students and seasoned civic leaders. His ability to translate complex systemic critique into practical, locally actionable frameworks makes him an unusually versatile voice for panels, keynotes, podcasts, and facilitated salon discussions.
He is available for keynote presentations, panel discussions, podcast interviews, facilitated community workshops, and hosted salon events — and is actively building a speaker series around the launch of Default.
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