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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the article titled Shifting from sustainability to regeneration from 2007 by Bill Reed published in the Building Research & Information journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see the difference between sustainability and regeneration in relation to the environment. This article investigates how the designers and stakeholders can create a whole system of mutually beneficial relationships thus moving beyond sustaining the environment to regenerate its health as well as our own.

Reed starts with a quote from Fritjof Capra’s book, titled The web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems: “the power of abstract thinking has led us to treat the natural environment – the web of life – as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. … To regain our full humanity, we have to regain our experience of connectedness with the entire web of life. This reconnecting – religion in Latin, is the very essence of the spiritual grounding of deep ecology.”

It is fair to say that we are in a situation where rapid change to a healthy relationship with the planet is in order. We are unlikely to make the required changes quickly enough in our behaviours unless significant and radical change occurs, and the technological approach certainly opens the way. However, incremental changes are not enough and effective, especially in the fast degrading design practices. The designers fail to understand the earth systems, the ones they want to sustain.

Reed calls to change our mental model to one that better reflects the new understanding of how the universe actually words and also enables us to design, build and heal with the whole system in mind – a deeply integrated worldview. The real question is how can we bring into common understanding of the linkages among the subsystems, such as hydrology, geology, plants, animals, humans, and our ability to perceive, communicate, listen and respond to this whole and integrated system. If we really want to shift our understanding and behaviour, we must understand the nature of the change required.

The whole systems thinking recognises that the entirety is interconnected and moves us beyond mechanics into a world activated by complex interrelationships – natural systems, human social systems, and the conscious forces behind their actions. In the act of building design, we are inextricable engaged in direct and indirect reciprocal influence in the immediate community and the larger systems operating on this planet. Though the traditional green design movement did not included such an approach, there is an increasing recognition of this problem and a growing effort to address it most notably through the concept of integrated design. The focus needs to include the prime resources and aspects of life and earth systems beside the technical and economic aspects. When designers begin to understand that the purpose of sustainability is sustaining life-enhancing conditions, the scope of their work will expand to include living systems approaches, meaning things are alive and in a process of becoming.

To shift our perceptions, learning a new paradigm in sustainability includes the learning levels experienced in any other paradigm shift. Using the metaphor one can’t see the forest for the trees, level one is seeing the trees, level two is seeing the forest as a whole, and level three is the helicopter view seeing fully that a number of alternative forests exist. Learning level in sustainability can be the easiest to present with three different approaches: level one is doing things better, level two is doing better things, while level three is seeing things differently. Level three allows us to change perceptually, and see the whole system in relation to us, thus creates a conscious participatory relationship.

Reed continued to described these levels in relation to design practices and practicing sustainability, though the levels are not exclusive of one another, they are a progression and each is nested in the more whole level. Level one is greening and efforts to efficiency, level two is aligned with sustainability. Efficiency in design can imply a more technical efficiency approach to design and may limit embracing natural systems and their benefits. Green design implies an improved direction towards a generalised idea of doing no harm. Sustainable design is green design with the emphasis on sustain the health of the planet’s organisms and systems over time.

Level three approaches to understand the whole system with restoration, reconciliation and regeneration asking the question of our purpose with sustainability, effectiveness and end goals. Restorative design is to restore the capability of local natural systems to a healthy state of self-organisation, while reconciliation acknowledges that humans are an integral part of nature and that human and natural systems are one. Regenerative design engages and focuses on the evolution of the whole system of which we are part. And logically, we participate in it within our place – community, watershed and bioregion. Therefore, it is crucial to engage with stakeholders to build the capability of people and the more than human participants to engage in continuous and healthy relationship through co-evolution. The design process draws from and supports continuous learning through feedback, reflection and dialogue, so that all aspects are integral parts of the process of local life.

To achieve planetary health we need specifically heal the damage we have caused to the living systems and continue to live in healthy interrelationship with them. We can best engage in healing the places we inhabit, such as our communities and lands. All of this is an iterative process and this awareness or consciousness of vital and viable interrelationship is the beginning of a whole system healing process. The scales also need to work together, the local scale cannot leave the planetary scale and neither in return. But the process of place-based engagement can frame and integrate the planetary issues in manageable, meaningful and grounded context.

To shift from level one to level three requires behaviour change management and the designers need to work with this process closely to work with the client for such a regenerative approach where the design process is an opportunity for everyone for learning. This co-learning process required the design team to engage deeply, to participate, and to be conscious of the earch and human systems that are essential to the health of the place. In effect, the design and client team become a learning organisation.

Regeneration is a learning level three process which moves our frame of discourse from doing things to natura to one of participation as partners with and as nature. Regeneration requires that we engage the entirety of what makes a place healthy. To catalysing a regenerative condition, Reed gave three essential aspects which need to be in a spiral continually evolving for enhancing design processes involving the stakeholders: understanding the master pattern of place with human aspirations and the unique character of the place, translating the patterns into design guidelines and conceptual design, and ongoing feedback for a conscious process of learning and participation through action, reflection and dialogue.

According to Reed, this way of working can deliver not only more holistic and effective projects but also a higher level of satisfaction because we experience ourselves as part of a larger whole and adjust our needs and aspirations and values. We are increasingly able to play a meaningful role, one that evolves us at the same time that it evolves the living communities we are an integral part of. Inevitably, this results in a deep sense of caring, appreciation, connectedness for all who choose to engage in a regenerative level of work. A reconnection to place and the rituals of place would help foster the shift from sustainable design to restorative and regenerative design.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Sustainability may not be the final step, but regeneration with the continuous evolution of humans, design, place and the earth systems.
2. We can approach the shift from sustainability to regeneration through the learning levels: level one is doing things better, level two is doing better things, while level three seeing things differently, as the regeneration.
3. Regenerative approach can be achieved through three continuously used aspects: understanding the master pattern of place, translating the patterns into design guidelines and conceptual design, and ongoing feedback as a conscious process of learning and participation through action, reflection and dialogue.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Have we become better at regenerative design practices in the last 15 years?
2. Why has sustainability gained more attraction than regeneration if the latter is the step afterwards sustainability? Is it because we haven’t reached sustainability, governing bodies found sustainability first and more compelling, or some other reasons?
3. Do you have a personal connection to your place? Do you think that influences your efforts to make it better? Do you see yourself as an integral part of your own environment?
4. How can you play in an increasingly meaningful role in your own area?

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