Holmgren has his particular biases, of course, such as the reworking of suburbia. I was lucky enough to see him give his Future Scenarios presentation on his first (and only I think) USA tour. It was radical at the time, and I think his broader analysis is still radical. And, is missing in this review.

For example this:

"All four of David’s future scenarios — green tech, lifeboat, brown tech — and as practiced more at the personal and household level, the earth steward model — coexist and vie for advantage."

It is not a question of which one will "win" in some kind of context of equal opportunities - that misses what I see as Holmgren's most meta point. What matters is which one or combination of ones is viable in the larger world of which humans are only a small part.

We may be continuing to move into an imagined "green tech steady state" future, but that does not mean that such a future is viable in the long term (and Holmgren gives clear and grounded ideas as to why he thinks it is not). It just means that our culture strongly prefers it to alternatives we don't like as much. Thus the speculations that are 'popular' or preferred are those such as Robinson or Bastani, which focus on technological fixes to what are systemically socio-cultural and meta-ecological problems. That is in line with our dominant culture thinking; Holmgren questions that in itself, makes it explicit. It's the story we want to be true - which has no necessary connection to whether it can be true, or for how long.

As for the housing crisis, permaculture's focus is material non-human living system. The housing crisis is fundamentally socio-cultural - starting with private propoerty, and with land and housing as just another speculative commodity. Permaculture doesn't offer tools methods or techniques to address that, or much of anything in our socio-cultural realm. The emergence of so-called "social permaculture" in recent decades is an indicator of this absence in permaculture's foundational elements.