Regenerative Planning & Design--Connecting to the Essence for Higher Value

Leading Edge.  Multiple threads of leading edge sustainability are coalescing around what can be termed the new practice of regenerative planning and design. At the center of this approach is connecting the functional success of the regenerative life support system we call the environment with the heart, soul, and spirit that adds meaning to human life. Making the connection creates more value than the standard functional, often eco-efficiency, approach to sustainability. (See also Elsevier, Journal of Cleaner Production, Call for Papers for a special volumen to be published in May 2014: Toward a Regenerative Sustainability Paradigm for the Built Environment: from Vision to Reality, for a short history of the topic description of the project).

Copy Success. After 4.8 billion years of evolution, the battle-hardened principles and processes of the co-evolutionary whole system we call life on earth can provide principles for what might be termed "north star" guidance. We can use living systems principles to inform our current policy, planning, and design response to the accelerating socio-economic and environmental trends that are challenging the possibility of continued human survival on earth.

Shift to Biology & Living Systems. At the center of these threads is the recognition of the exquisitely powerful, well designed, and fragile regenerative life support system of the biosphere that we often call the environment. The multiple threads of this newly coalescing arena of regenerative planning and design connects to the foundational areas of biology, ecology, and ecological economics, and to the applied arenas of comprehensive anticipatory design science, ecological restoration, biodiversity, biomimicry, green buildings/design, living buildings/cities, eco-cities, urban ecology, biophilic design, biophilic cities, and more. Living systems theory is the emerging knowledge area.

Place+People. I recently had the good fortune to meet and work with Ray Lucchesi of the RenovusCollaborative, and Beatrice Benne, of Soma Integral Consulting, two leading regenerative planning practitioners. They have joined forces to merge Ray's expertise in place-based regenerative sustainability planning and Beatrice's expertise in personal and organizational transformation. The combination is required to fully realize the exceptional value a regenerative approach can deliver across multiple types of capital: (1) human (productive capacities of an individual, both inherited and acquired through education and training)); (2) social (trust, mutual understanding, shared value, socially held knowledge); (3) natural (environmental resources, production, and services); (4) financial (nominal paper and virtual value representations of real economic resources); (5) produced (physical assets generated  by applying productive activities to natural capital; provides a flow of goods and services)./1/ 

In Ray's words: We collaborate in co-creating place-sourced design processes and experiences utilizing integrative design, whole-system thinking and living-system principles. We contribute to the renewing of places, people and communities that build capacity and capability in the social, natural and built environments. We contribute to processes and outcomes of meaning, intention and learning that realize a project’s purpose and potential.

In Beatrice's words: Soma Integral is partnering with colleagues from the Regenesis Group and the Alliance for Regeneration to enable communities, cities and local governments to become more sustainable and resilient. We use a place-based approach to regenerative design and development to harness and unleash the potential of a place.  We engage diverse stakeholders in a co-creative process to develop systemic concepts, integrated structures and processes, and mutually-beneficial relationships that aim at raising the value produced to the community while increasing the vitality, viability and evolution of the place.   Our work is developmental in essence and our objective is to develop the capabilities of the social systems within which we intervene.

Function+Aim. This regenerative approach goes beyond the function of energy and resource efficiency, of simple return on financial investment. It connects with the essence of place, the heart of a team, the soul of a community. It uses an emergent, whole systems approach that is iterative, cyclical, and deepens on each pass. The focus is relational, seeking connections that create greater value across multiple capitals that enhances and empowers on-going innovation and development. It asks the question who is the project, not simply what is the project. The question instantly activates the project's context, from which aim, purpose, alignment, and exceptional value arise. For instance, this generative approach shifts green roofs from simply being an intriquing biologicaly-based roofing technology to a water cleansing, food producing, biodiversity enhancing, and community activating sustainability asset. 

Full Potential.  By shifting the focus from purely functional to the essential and to living systems, an integrative whole systems regenerative approach uncovers, empowers, and realizes the full potential of places and people, thereby creating the minimum value needed for a future worth living for all. 

Resources. For a deeper understanding, explore Ray's (RenovusCollaborative) and Beatrice's (Soma Integral Consulting) ideas, services, and cases, the Regenesis Group's method, and Wikipedia's article on Living systems theory. Additional posts on this topic can be found here, and by searching for "regenerative planning" in this SSI2030 website, including SSI2030's Challenge for Regenerative Success.  In addition, the American Planning Association's Sustainability Committee has a few posts here (also, search for "regenerative planning").

• An Example: Adding Context to Building -- Brattleboro Coop in Vermont

• The Regenesis Group, Case Studes 

• Regenerative Community Planning, Story of Place® — A Transformative Change Process, Enabling communities to go beyond sustainability to regeneration

• Design Examples--Edges, NJ Highlands Regenerative Design Process

• Foreshadowing and a Short History:  Regenerative Design - Sustainable Design's Coming Revolutions (2001)

Notes: 

/1/ See Goodwin, "Capital," Encyclopedia of Earth.