Abstract
Although the integration of sustainability, ecology, and design has been recognized as necessary by scientists and practitioners, most transdisciplinary frameworks are not inclusive of the worldviews, paradigms, aims, processes, and components necessary for sustainability. Landscape sustainability science helps to focus scientist, scholar, practitioner, and stakeholder efforts toward sustainability at a pivotal level; however, collaboration and progress have been slow. Significant potential exists for design to be an integrative and transformational methodology toward landscape sustainability, yet it has not fulfilled this ambitious role. In this paper, we first build a case for regenerative development, a development and design methodology based on an ecological worldview, as an integrative platform for a new paradigm. This new paradigm, which we call regenerative landscape development, has the potential to thoroughly catalyze a shift toward regenerative sustainability. We then detail this new paradigm as a process that could continually enhance the capacities of living systems to increase health, well-being, and happiness. Next, to illustrate regenerative development in practice, we provide brief case studies of projects in Viña del Mar, Chile and Juluchuca, Guerrero, Mexico. Finally, we propose future recommendations and precautions in the construction of regenerative landscape development as a new paradigm. If fully understood, embraced, and realized, regenerative development holds incredible potential for a sustainable future.
Highlights
In terms of the goal of sustainability in landscapes, landscape sustainability science calls for “a place-based, use-inspired science of understanding and improving the dynamic relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being with spatially explicit methods” [1]
Landscape sustainability science is heavily influenced by landscape ecology; it recognizes the social significance of landscapes as the scale at which the inhabitants of a place most directly affect and connect with the land and each other [1,2,3]
We explore gaps in the integration of sustainability, ecology, and design as well as the potential of regenerative development to serve as an integrating platform for a new paradigm, namely, regenerative landscape development
Summary
In terms of the goal of sustainability in landscapes, landscape sustainability science calls for “a place-based, use-inspired science of understanding and improving the dynamic relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being with spatially explicit methods” [1]. As well as its social and biophysical outcomes, holds potential as an important, integrative, and transformational methodology for sustainability in landscapes [7,8,9,10,11]. The potential of design to synthesize descriptive, analytical, and transformational modes of sustainability science in landscapes has not been fully recognized or utilized by scientists or practitioners. Design seldom addresses root causes of sustainability challenges or the necessary capacities for social-ecological systems to evolve continually so that sustainability, as a process that occurs throughout time, can unfold. Regenerative development, an emerging design and development approach that shifts the focus from solving problems to manifesting potential in living systems, has the capacity to fill these gaps. Regenerative development should fully integrate landscape sustainability science and design to reach its potential as a transformational sustainability approach. We conclude with recommendations for advancing regenerative landscape development as a paradigm
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