2026 · SSRN
Rooted Expansion: A Circular Societal Framework for Values-Coherent Global City Growth
Introducing the Circular Belonging Framework (CBF). A. Krahé Schaeflein, SSRN, 11 May 2026.
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In Formation
Sentier de la Maison Foundation
Our mandate: to make Belonging a global driver of measurable societal change with positive contribution to GDP.
The Film
Unmute for narration
Why Sentier de la Maison
All roads lead to Rome. We believe all paths lead home.
The earliest known written form of “all roads lead to Rome” appears in Alain de Lille’s
Liber Parabolarum, c. 1175.
For Sentier de la Maison, home is not simply a place. It is the people, places and communities in which we belong. The French name is also a nod to the Founder’s French Huguenot roots.
The Gap
We live in an interdependent world without a common language for reciprocal prosperity.
Globalisation connected capital, resources, people and opportunity at unprecedented scale. Yet the measures by which we determine progress remain profoundly incomplete. Economic activity is readily quantified, while the value it builds, and the cost it quietly extracts, remain dispersed across disciplines, methodologies and time, uncounted and therefore unclaimed.
No established field brings these consequences into a single line of sight. The result is a blind spot, not in awareness, but in return: modern society could flourish perpetually through replenishment, yet continues to spend itself down through erosion instead.
The Hour Is Now
We are at the cusp of a new era. The means exist to bring financial return, human flourishing and positive contribution to GDP into equilibrium.
Whole-system thinking makes it possible. The question is no longer whether it can be done, but whether it is done in time.
For some 11,700 years, the stability of the Holocene let civilisation flourish. The Great Acceleration brought extraordinary progress. It also altered that balance.
Science, technology and best-in-class practice now give us unprecedented capacity to shape what comes next, within a narrowing window before intervention grows more costly and some consequences become irreversible.
Circular Belonging draws fragmented expertise into common purpose, applied to the decisions that shape organisations, places and investment. Social Return on Investment captures the value and avoided cost that conventional accounting overlooks.
The opportunity is better-performing capital and lasting prosperity. The time to act is now.
Belonging
Hospitality already proved it: people return to where they feel they belong.
Before it is counted or discussed, belonging is felt. The Circular Belonging Framework takes that instinct beyond hospitality, into how organisations, places and societies are designed.Belonging is infrastructure.Quantifiable, replicable, transformative.
Global Alignment
Aligned with the standards the world already uses: ESG and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Circular Belonging does not seek to replace existing frameworks. It creates connective tissue between them.
ESG
How responsibility is governed.
SDG
Where global progress is needed.
SROI
What changed, and what value was created.
Circular Belonging
How those effects connect, compound, replicate and inform what comes next.
The CBF is mapped against the relevant SDG goals, targets and indicators, then extended with a longitudinal SROI lens that tracks what changes for people, places and future generations.
Circular Belonging Framework
One field. Many applications.
An emerging field connecting belonging, Social Return on Investment and positive contribution to GDP.
Sentier de la Maison Foundation is establishing Circular Belonging & Human Flourishing as an interdisciplinary field, with the Circular Belonging Framework as its applied methodology, transferable across organisations, sectors, communities, cities and nations.
HospitalityAgricultureEducationHealthcareTechnologyEnergyCultureOrganisationsCommunitiesCitiesNations
Think of it as medicine: one overarching field, many specialisms. Circular Belonging & Human Flourishing likewise encompasses hospitality, agriculture, healthcare, technology, education, organisational design, culture and the built environment.
The purpose is not to replace those disciplines, but to connect them through a whole-system lens, so that the chain above can be understood and applied together.
The first integrated physical expression of CBF, not its boundary.
Four verticals give the methodology its first built form, and the first potential Living Laboratories: Estate, Cultural, Civic, Commons.
Vertical 1
Estate
Rooted in land. Productive by design.
Tap to reveal
Vertical 1
The Productive Estate
Peri-urban five-star boutique hotel on working agri-estate. Cultural Steward Academy. Artist Residence. Surplus supply chain to all verticals.
Tap to return
Vertical 2
Cultural
Hospitality as cultural transmission.
Tap to reveal
Vertical 2
The Cultural Residence
Underutilised privately held villas and estates as single-party, culturally hosted stays. UHNW guests. Hotel management agreement model. Asset-light.
Tap to return
Vertical 3
Civic
Civic infrastructure. Social return. Long-term impact.
Tap to reveal
Vertical 3
The Civic House
Cultural onboarding of new arrivals at all income levels. Patron-hosted and AI-matched.
Tap to return
Vertical 4
Commons
Shared spaces. Shared value. Shared future.
Tap to reveal
Vertical 4
The Commons
Movement, wellness, culture and food community ecosystem. Neighbourhood anchoring at every income level. No price barrier. Commercially self-sustaining.
Tap to return
The Circular Value & Evidence Ecosystem
One operating system.
No fixed beginning, no end.
Four elements, knowledge, evidence, application and economic value, move together in continuous exchange. Any one of them can be the starting point, with multiple engagements active across the system at any time. An insight can reach capital directly, as quickly as the system allows.
Value Circulates
Capital funds the work. Revenue funds the next cycle.
Research
A traceable lineage, grounded in evidence. Tested in practice.
Hospitality is treated as the behavioural infrastructure through which belonging becomes operational at city scale.
From an Executive MBA thesis at Warwick Business School in 2022 to SSRN publication in May 2026. The intellectual property is named, timestamped and attributed, and the framework is open for adoption.
2022
RHSROI Framework
Warwick Business School
2022–2026
Four Years of Research
Field, academy, application
2026
Circular Belonging Framework
SSRN, May 2026
2022 · Warwick
Can Permaculture-Thinking Provide Social Entrepreneurs with Tools to Aid Long-Term Regenerative Movement in Hospitality?
Introducing the RHSROI Framework. Executive MBA thesis, 6 June 2022. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20733312
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A Long-Horizon Capital Architecture
An initial USD 600 million ambition, built in phases.
The Sentier de la Maison Foundation is being designed for permanence. Its initial capitalisation horizon is structured in phases: establishing the institution and research infrastructure; validating the framework through living laboratories and reference ecosystems; and extending proven approaches across further places and partnerships.
USD 600 million is a starting horizon, not a ceiling.
The detailed fund and fiduciary architecture is being established. We are actively seeking anchor capital partners and contributors to underwrite the Foundation’s first phase and help shape its permanent research and field infrastructure. Family offices, institutions, and aligned long-horizon capital are invited.
Join Us
Sentier de la Maison Foundation is in formation. That is exactly when your part matters most.
Advisory Circle
Bring knowledge, practice and perspective into the work.
Advisory Circle
The entry point into the Foundation. Contribute perspective, challenge assumptions and help shape direction. From here, relationships may deepen into commissioned projects or formal roles.
Academic Partner
Centre of Circular Belonging and Human Flourishing.
Academic Partner
An invitation to international universities, research institutes and faculties to come together, each contributing its own discipline and geography to a shared centre that drives how belonging is designed, measured and evidenced.
Government or City
Pilot the framework at scale.
Government or City
Apply the methodology within public policy, urban planning and national prosperity agendas, so that social return sits alongside financial return in the decisions that shape a place.
Strategic Partner
Bring expertise and delivery capability.
Strategic Partner
Provide implementation muscle, sector expertise and delivery capability to living laboratories, reference ecosystems and scaling programmes.
Philanthropic Partner
Support long-term stewardship.
Philanthropic Partner
Underwrite research infrastructure, patient capital architecture and the institutional continuity that lets the work compound across generations.
Practitioner
Apply the framework in real places.
Practitioner
For practitioners, vocational trainers and organisations putting Circular Belonging to work on the ground through living laboratories, reference ecosystems and partnerships.
In brief
- What is Sentier de la Maison Foundation?
- Sentier de la Maison Foundation is an institution in formation, established to make belonging measurable and to connect it to social return on investment, institutional performance and national prosperity.
- What is the Circular Belonging Framework?
- The Circular Belonging Framework is a measurement and application system that treats belonging as an economic asset. It links social return on investment to human flourishing, institutional performance and national prosperity, and it is transferable across sectors.
- Who founded it?
- Anne Schaeflein, Founder & Executive Steward of Sentier de la Maison Foundation and originator of the Circular Belonging Framework. Her research is published under the name Anne Krahé Schaeflein.
- Who is it for?
- Governments and cities, universities and researchers, long-horizon capital partners, philanthropic funders and practitioners applying the framework in the field.
Circular Belonging
The path becomes the mark.
From soil, to path, to circle. The film's closing sequence is the Foundation's promise: rooted expansion, values-coherent growth, measurable impact.
What gets measured gets built. Belonging now has a number.
social return for every $1 invested in wellbeing.
illustrative GDP contribution, at scale.
Capital attraction is the opening move. Long-term retention is the outcome that compounds.
Widely counted, still necessary.
Made measurable, equally weighed.
Every feasibility study, masterplan and strategy can now weigh both.
Progress has long been judged by financial performance alone.
Environmental reporting widened that view.
Social Return on Investment completes it, recognising the human conditions that make long-term value possible.
Belonging is the mechanism that converts social capital into economic value, generating ripple and multiplier effects far beyond the original investment. Expressing that chain as SROI gives funders, districts and governments a common language for what was previously only felt: that belonging-led regeneration drives institutional resilience and, at scale, national prosperity.
of people globally are open to leaving their current city or employer.