Regenerative Sustainability Research Articles

Toward a regenerative sustainability paradigm for the built environment: from vision to reality

Abstract This Call for Papers (CfPs) for a Special Volume of Journal of Cleaner Production (SV) focuses upon multiple dimensions of regenerative sustainability (e.g. regenerative design, regenerative development, and positive development) applied to the urban built environment at scales, which range from individual buildings, neighborhoods, urban development to integrated regional sustainable development. It was designed to address the objectives of (1) documenting the theoretical development of the term regenerative sustainability, its emerging principles and practices, (2) explaining how it can be measured and monitored, (3) providing encouraging practical pathways and examples of its implementation in multiple cultural and climatic contexts, and (4) mapping obstacles and enablers that must be understood and addressed so that more rapid progress can be made in implementing the shift towards an urban built environment that supports a genuinely sustainable society.

Designing from place: a regenerative framework and methodology

The radical changes required for Earth to ‘remain fit for human habitation’ require a change in worldviews from ‘mechanistic’ to ‘ecological’. A key question is: how can those working on the built environment – a field with major impact on global resources and systems – best support a smooth and timely transition? It is proposed that design practitioners can facilitate that response in the built environment through the development, application and evolution of comprehensive new methodologies, explicitly shaped by a regenerative sustainability paradigm. It is further proposed that successfully evolving a regenerative practice requires going beyond just adopting new techniques to taking on a new role for humans and designers, and a ‘new mind’, and learning how to work ‘developmentally’. As an example of how a consciously held worldview shapes a practice, an actual regenerative methodology, developed and evolved over 16 years of practice, is explored in detail. A framework, adapted from accepted scientific methodology protocols, is used to structure this exploration, differentiating the different elements and levels, showing how they work as an integrated system and revealing the underlying premises and assumptions behind the choice of aims, strategies, methods and progress indicators. Les changements radicaux nécessaires pour que la Terre « demeure propre à l'habitation humaine » exigent que les visions du monde évoluent du « mécaniste » à « l'écologique ». Une question clé qui se pose est de savoir comment ceux et celles qui travaillent sur le cadre bâti – un domaine qui a un impact important sur les ressources et les systèmes mondiaux – peuvent le mieux contribuer à une transition harmonieuse et rapide. Il est proposé que les praticiens du design puissent faciliter cette réponse dans le cadre bâti par la mise au point, l'application et l'évolution de nouvelles méthodologies globales, explicitement modelées par un paradigme de durabilité régénératrice. Il est en outre proposé que, pour réussir à faire évoluer une pratique régénératrice, il est nécessaire de dépasser la simple adoption de nouvelles techniques, de façon à ce qu'un rôle nouveau soit assumé par les hommes et les concepteurs, ainsi qu'un « nouvel esprit », et qu'ils apprennent comment travailler « développementalement ». Un exemple de la manière dont une vision du monde consciemment partagée façonne une pratique, une méthodologie régénératrice réelle, élaborée et développée sur 16 ans de pratique, est examiné en détail. Un cadre, adapté des protocoles de méthodologie scientifique reconnus, est utilisé pour structurer cette étude, en différenciant les différents éléments et niveaux, en montrant comment ils fonctionnent comme un système intégré et en révélant les prémisses et les postulats sous-jacents qui sous-tendent le choix des objectifs, des stratégies, des méthodes et des indicateurs de progrès. Mots clés: systèmes vivants permaculture lieu développement régénérateur et conception régénératrice histoire

Narratives and the development of early emotional life

It has been widely argued that in order to move development into a positive curve towards sustainability, society needs to change the worldview/paradigm within which it currently operates; and that such a shift from a mechanistic to an ecological/living systems worldview is already happening. It is suggested that the purpose of the sustainability paradigm flowing from this worldview is not to conserve the status quo or meet ill-defined human needs, but to strengthen the health, adaptive capacity, and evolutionary potential of the fully integrated global social-ecological system so that it can continue regenerating itself, thereby creating the conditions for a thriving and abundant future – not only for the human species, but for all life. In this paper we explore the ecological worldview and the guidelines it provides for how we interpret sustainability; as well as the strategies for the production of the built environment we need to follow if we are to adapt to coming changes in the planetary system and regenerate the world. The question this paper asks is: how does this sustainability paradigm, with its focus on regenerating the whole of the social-ecological system within which we are working, change the way the built environment is produced? To achieve this objective, the paper synthesizes the findings of two separate studies: an extensive literature review to define the meta-narratives of the ecological worldview; and an analysis of in depth interviews with academics and built environment practitioners that aimed to find correlations between the practice and theoretical positions of the participants and the values and praxiology of the ecological worldview as described in the first study. Three main themes of the ecological worldview – wholeness, relationship, and change – provide a framework for discussing the implications of this regenerative sustainability paradigm for the production of the built environment – for how it is created, the technologies used, and how it is evaluated.