I am an environmental and economic anthropologist. I study the emergence of self-governance under conditions involving multiple connected public goods and decision-making centers. My interest lies in co-production of newly emerging commons goods like urban flood management, water reliability, groundwater sustainability, green infrastructure, and urban resilience to climate change in New York City and California. I focus on the impacts of social processes through which boundaries of public goods become defined, both biophysically and cognitively. My research focuses on the presence or absence of institutional design principles in the nested governance arrangements that have developed to manage emergent public goods.