Later in his life, Paolo Soleri made the case for what he termed the Reformulation of the modern capitalistic socioeconomic system and particularly that type of system of thinking developed in the USA.
Reformulation was his attempt as a progressive to criticize the "incremental reformism" of mainstream US political liberalism. He believed the current mechanisms of piecemeal and incremental reform weren't ever going to create the real and systemic, holistic change needed to alter current practices in a substantive way.
A key element of the Reformulation process involves casting away existing notions of progress and well being that have become central to the American Dream such as hyper-consumerism and what he saw as the twin demons of his Arcology Vision: hedonism and materialism. This notion was expressed in the symbolism of the his mid 90s Hyper Building Project which was to be built in the Mohave Desert of California, between the two icons of US Consumer Culture; Los Angeles (Hyper-Hedonism) and Las Vegas (Hyper-Materialism).
The core problem he identified was this idea of economic growth in modern US society had become an end to itself driven by Suburban Sprawl and Car Culture. The result was that public policy, commercial culture in the mainstream all revolved around icons of consumerism that were not always in the best interests of the US Citizens, leading to demise of real democratic process in society (if it ever really existed at all).
His notion of Reformation was that the greed driven Opportunism of the elite Capitalist Class is the main driven of social and ecological problems in the world. And within US and Global Society this opportunism was rewarded by uncritical media, governmental, academic and social systems, rather than discouraged and penalized. So long as this was the case, there would be only band aid solutions to the social, economic and environmental problems created by the economic externalities that were the result of corporations and capitalists putting profit before a more holistic and long term approach to human well being and development. The band aids would mask the real causes and understate the larger long term implications of putting corporate and private profit before human and ecological well being.
Possibly the idea of Reformulation can be seen as something similar to the reformation process in Europe as the struggle with the prevailing strain of Catholic Christaindom led to much suffering and dying as those who protested the status quo risked their lives. Similarly today we see that the struggle to reformulate means that similar risks may have to be taken to shake humanity.
Jeremy Rifkin contrasts the American Dream model of development with what he terms "The European Dream" which he believed to be more enlightened because it sought in many cases to balance the economic needs of the capitalists with the needs of labor as well as considerations of cultural integrity, environmental responsibility and Social Sustainability.
So that idea is that while the US in the 50s 60s and 70s pioneered many environmental and social programs to balance out the extremes of capitalism, the US made a wrong turn as it promoted more short term linear based understandings of reality and human well being while Europe embraced and evolved these programs and approaches. Under Reagan a major shift happened which was termed the NeoClassical CounterRevolution (in some social science circles) in that conventional economic forces gained an upper hand in the US political system and ushered a series of reforms which reduced the regulation of capital and markets so as to undermine labor, strong tax policy and environmental protections. In this process hyperconsumerism car culture and suburban sprawl were further empowered by many of these NeoClasssical Economic policies so that the growth of car ownership suburbia and consumer consumption became closely tied to US economic success and well being.
Reformulation attacks this thesis by offering a model of development thats actually based on the "Natural Law" that is stated in the CMD Component of Arcology theory which put forward the idea that sprawl driven consumerism actually goes against the natural evolution of life in the Universe.
The Lean Alternative is based on the idea that leanness or frugality should guide public policy and the mainstream public consciousness. It is what should drive any serious reformulation of public policy and public consciousness. The Lean Hypothesis is the idea of using social scientific tools to empirically test or validate the notion that focusing on gaining efficiency through become more lean and or doing more with less should be the driven of social progress.
See also under the Essay Section: Reformulation Vs Reform.