Toward a Regenerative Sustainability Paradigm for the Built Environment?!

Reflecting the emerging coalescence of may threads of urban planning and design around the theme of regeneration, the upcoming Journal of Cleaner Production's (Elsevier) is preparing a special journal volume scheduled for May 2014 on the theme, "Toward a Regenerative Sustainability Paradigm for the Built Environment: from Vision to Reality."

See the Call for Papers for a brief history of the topic and summary of the journal content for a deeper understanding of the breadth, topics, and focus of this emerging theme.

The call for papers begins as follows: "The regenerative sustainability paradigm, as described by du Plessis (2012), is emerging out of the transition from a ‘mechanistic’ to an ‘ecological’ or living systems worldview. This view helps us to re-conceptualize relationships among human’s technological, ecological, economic, social and political systems. Through exploration and questioning of developments in the context of ‘net positive’ or ‘regenerative’ and more traditional sustainability literature, and through application of the classical Chinese concept Tian Ren He Yi, as it was applied to ancient Chinese buildings, a new paradigm of sustainability is evolving. It relates to approaches that support mutually beneficial co-evolution of humans and natural systems in a partnered relationship (Cole, 2012)."