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Regenerative Development and Design

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Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology

Definition of the Subject and Its Importance

The emerging field of regenerative development and design marks a significant evolution in the concept and application of sustainability . Practices in sustainable or green design have focused primarily on minimizing damage to the environment and human health, and using resources more efficiently, in effect, slowing down the degradation of earth’s natural systems. Advocates of a regenerative approach to the built environment believe that a much more deeply integrated, whole-systems approach to the design and construction of buildings and human settlements (and nearly all other human activities) is needed. Regenerative approaches seek not only to reverse the degeneration of the earth’s natural systems but also to design human systems that can coevolve with natural systems – evolve in a way that generates mutual benefits and greater overall expression of life and...

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Abbreviations

Biomimicry:

Sometimes called biomimetic design, an emerging design discipline that looks to nature for sustainable design solutions [1].

Cradle to Cradle®:

Framework for designing manufacturing processes “powered by renewable energy, in which materials flow in safe, regenerative, closed-loop cycles,” and which “identifies three key design principles in the intelligence of natural systems, which can inform human design: Waste Equals Food; Use Current Solar Income; Celebrate Diversity” [2, 3].

Ecoliteracy:

The ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible, including understanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e., ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities [4, 5].

Ecological sustainability:

A biocentric school of sustainability thinking that, based on ecology and living systems principles, focuses on “the capacity of ecosystems to maintain their essential functions and processes, and retain their biodiversity in full measure over the long term”; contrasts with technological sustainability based on technical and engineering approaches to sustainability [4].

Ecology:

The interdisciplinary scientific study of the living conditions of organisms in interaction with each other and with the surroundings, organic, as well as inorganic.

Ecosystem:

“The interactive system of living things and their nonliving habitat” [6].

Ecosystem concept:

“A coherent framework for redesigning our landscapes, buildings, cities, and systems of energy, water, food, manufacturing, and waste” through “the effective adaptation to and integration with nature’s processes.” It has been used more to shape an approach than as a scientific theory [7].

Living systems thinking:

A thinking technology, using systemic frameworks and developmental processes, for consciously improving the capacity to apply systems thinking to the evolution of human or social living systems [8].

Locational patterns:

The patterns that depict the distinctive character and potential of a place and provide a dynamic mapping for designing human structures and systems that align with the living systems of a place.

Pattern literacy:

Being able to read, understand, and generate (“write”) appropriate patterns.

Permaculture:

A contraction of permanent agriculture or permanent culture, permaculture was developed as a system for designing ecological human habitats and food production systems based on the relationships and processes found in natural ecological communities and the relationships and adaptations of indigenous peoples to their ecosystems [9].

Place:

The unique, multilayered network of ecosystems within a geographic region that results from the complex interactions through time of the natural ecology (climate, mineral, and other deposits, soil, vegetation, water, and wildlife, etc.) and culture (distinctive customs, expressions of values, economic activities, forms of association, ideas for education, traditions, etc.).

Regenerate:

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam Webster Dictionary

• To give new life or energy; to revitalize; to bring or come into renewed existence; to impart new and more vigorous life

• To form, construct, or create anew, especially in an improved state; to restore to a better, higher or more worthy state; refreshed or renewed

• To reform spiritually or morally; to improve moral condition; to invest with a new and higher spiritual nature

• To improve a place or system, especially by making it more active or successful

Regenerative design:

A system of technologies and strategies based on an understanding of the inner working of ecosystems that generates designs to regenerate rather than deplete underlying life support systems and resources within socioecological wholes.

Regenerative development:

A system of technologies and strategies for generating the patterned whole-system understanding of a place, and developing the strategic systemic thinking capacities and the self-organizing and self-evolving stakeholder engagement/commitment required to ensure regenerative design processes achieve maximum systemic leverage and support.

Restorative design:

Sometimes called restorative environmental design, a design system that combines returning “polluted, degraded or damaged sites back to a state of acceptable health through human intervention” [10] with biophiliac designs that reconnect people to nature.

Source to sink:

Simple linear flows from resource sources (farms, mines, forests, watershed, oilfields, etc.) to sinks (air, water, land) that deplete global sources and overload/pollute global sinks [11].

Systems thinking:

A framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things and for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” It addresses phenomena in terms of wholeness rather than in terms of parts [5].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Regenesis Group and Story of Place Institute, 1219 Luisa Street, Suite 5 Santa Fe, 87505, Santa Fe, NM, USA

    Dr. Pamela Mang

  2. Regenesis Group and Story of Place Institute, 20 Woodland Street, Arlington, MA, USA

    Bill Reed

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  1. Dr. Pamela Mang
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  2. Bill Reed
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Correspondence to Pamela Mang .

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  1. RAMTECH LIMITED, Larkspur, CA, USA

    Robert A. Meyers

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Mang, P., Reed, B. (2012). Regenerative Development and Design. In: Meyers, R.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3_303

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