It is almost becoming a cliché when discussing regenerative or living systems design that we need to stop seeing the world as discrete objects and start seeing, and working with it as dynamic and moving.  A central focus of the Regenerative Practitioner^® series is learning how to make that mental shift.  Dynamic systems frameworks are one instrument utilized by Regenesis to that end.  Another powerful instrument is story or narrative. Shifting how we see a project we’re working on from a cluster of objects to a dynamic living process moving through time is a powerful source of insight and creative energy. Shifting our way of seeing is just the first step however.  The next big challenge comes in engaging others in a way that they can see, and be equally energized by, what you are seeing.

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You want to integrate regenerative design into your practice. You know, from all you’ve read and heard, that it requires a “different way of thinking,” a new world-view, and you’ve read the lists of attributes for both. So now what? At Regenesis, we’ve spent a lot of time helping people shift the way they think, and we fully appreciate the challenges that involves.

The way we think is shaped by patterns that we’ve been taught or picked up over the course of our lives, patterns that are deeply embedded in our culture and institutions. Over time, these patterns have become increasingly interdependent and self-reinforcing and, most problematic, increasingly habitual because they are invisible to us. If we want to change how we think, the first step must be to make visible the patterns that currently shape our thinking. Only then can we decide which are useful when, and which condemn us to degenerative outcomes. More

In an era of decreased budgets at every level of government the disasters caused by storms like Super Storm Sandy present us real problems. They also are causing us to be creative and to form unique partnerships. While building hard infrastructure is expensive and time consuming, partnering with nature and allowing the re-establishment of buffering wetlands may be more cost and outcome effective. Our choices may have more to do with habit than rationality.

In his November article on the Sustainable Cities Collective website Colin Cafferty discusses the value of buffering wetlands. Filling in wetlands and building close to the water has made us vulnerable to sea level rise and storms. “New York’s wetlands … are actually a key difference for the protection of the city’s citizens against future flooding disasters. Wetlands provide natural flood control by temporarily holding and absorbing floodwater, reducing the energy of storm surges and helping to control erosion of the shoreline.” Similar arguments were made following Hurricane Katrina about the impacts of the loss of gulf wetland communities.

Cafferty argues that the lack of planning and development guidance to protect these important “green or soft” infrastructures has boxed us into a difficult position. “President Obama has pledged to rebuild storm-torn neighborhoods in Queens and Staten Island – but is this really the best way forward?” The question seems to be, do we want to rebuild in ways that we know are prone to flooding and so be forced to spend more money protecting vulnerable communities or to give some of the land back to the wetlands that can absorb the storm surges and protect remaining communities? “…the cost of building storm surge gates … could cost a staggering $23 billion. Building new wetlands and restoring existing ones, which are allowed to flood and cushion residential areas and offices, is potentially a far more affordable approach.”

As Colin points out our reaction to events like this illuminate how our minds work. It reminded me of an exercise used by Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman. In his classes he auctions off a twenty dollar bill with four rules:

1. Everyone is free to bid
2. Bids are to be made in one dollar increments
3. The winner of the auction wins the bill
4. The runner up must honor his/her bid, while receiving nothing in return

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Alternative Gifts International

There’s a lot of buzz about regeneration in the design, building and planning world these days. A special issue of the prestigious Building Research and Information journal (Regenerative Design and Development) is adding to that buzz, along with the 2013 Living Future unConference (Resilience & Regeneration). But in all that’s being written, talked about and presented, there’s a lot about the what of regeneration, but very little about the how. For working practitioners interested in the how, finding comprehensive, integrated learning opportunities designed to fit their work constraints is a major challenge.

To address this growing void, Regenesis is launching a regenerative learning community for people who are passionate about pioneering the evolution of how we create and inhabit our built environment. The first offering is an invitational, hands-on, live distance-learning series—The Regenerative Practitioner^TM.

Ready to go beyond just talking about regeneration to putting it to work?

You can find out more about this regenerative learning community and whether it is right for you in a free distance-learning seminar being offered this winter. For information on the introductory seminar and how to sign up, go to The Regenerative Practitioner^TM Introductory Seminar.

New beginnings are such hopeful times, filled with the belief that somehow all those behaviors that defined the past have been transformed or, at minimum, will slink off into the shadows and leave space for the better self we promise to be.  So, with all the requisite hopes, this post marks a new beginning for Edge::Regenerate. Our first run lasted 12 months, and we came away with a healthy respect for the discipline required to post fresh new thinking week after week.

Why the new beginning now? Edge::Regenerate is taking on new purpose with the new initiative we’ve just launched at Regenesis. We’re stepping into the distance-learning world–our first offering an invitational series titled The Regenerative Practitioner^TM, with the ultimate aim of growing a regenerative learning community. We’ll be writing more about that soon.  In the meantime, our original welcome seems still relevant so we’ve re-posted it below.

Welcome to Edge : : Regenerate. Who are we? More details can be found on the Authors page, but basically we are professionals from business, community and economic development, education, architecture, Permaculture, and land development. We share a passionate belief that learning how to regenerate living systems—all living systems, human and otherwise—is the core imperative for the 21st Century. This imperative threads through, and gives direction to, the collaborations and dialogue that nourish our work within and across our individual disciplines.

Edge is “the outer or farthest point of something”; it’s to “have an advantage,” but it’s also “the point or moment just before a marked change or event.” For Ilya Prigogine, it was the place from which whole-system change was sourced. In ecology, it’s the area where different ecosystems or communities meet. This is where the “edge effect” takes place—a much greater abundance, diversity and fecundity of life than in any of the flanking communities.

Edge : : Regenerate is a dialogue in that edge where human and natural living systems meet. Questions and ideas we’ll be exploring there include: regeneration—what it really means, what it looks like in communities, business, development, etc., and why it’s essential. Living systems—what kind of mind is required to understand how they work and to design ways to partner with them in co-evolution? The role of humans on the planet, and the role of Place in helping us live it out. And many more.

Edge : : Regenerate is also an invitation to join our growing band of regenerates in this dialogue, deepening understanding and designing more intelligent manifestations of that understanding.

Ahmad Nadalian

The idea of regeneration has clearly caught hold in the building and community development world. It’s starting to show up everywhere. But how can we tell whether a project is or will be regenerative? In embracing the term, are we in danger of demeaning its power if we don’t fully understand it?  Is it just green building at its best—carbon neutrality; 100% renewable energy, all recycled materials? Or is it more, and if so what?

At Regenesis, we see it as not just “more”, but actually a different order of working, one that strives for a different order of effect.  For example, a regenerative project, or community must, at minimum, manifest all four of these qualitative attributes. More

More than half a century ago Aldo Leopold wrote of learning to think like a mountain.  He claimed that this was essential to behaving ecologically. But how does a mountain think?  Leopold provides one significant clue.  He relates the story of seeing the dying “green fire” in the eyes of a wolf mother he shot.  He tells us that a mountain must live in fear of its deer herd, for without predators the deer will eat her bare and the rains will strip her of soil. 

Let’s follow Leopold’s trail and see where it takes us. His wolf story reminds me of another my friend tells about Yellowstone National Park:  when wolves were reintroduced, they lowered the temperature of the water in many of the streams and rivers. How could this be? More

While we are hearing more and more about regenerative design, less attention has been paid to how community planning must shift.  Traditionally, community planning efforts have been organized around managing different societal functions—job creation, transportation, housing, habitat protection, etc. as a way of creating economic development, environmental protection or community revitalization. They have largely been conducted as if these facets of life were unrelated to each other.  Where more than one facet has been considered, the goals that were not the primary driver have normally been treated as background constraints, e.g., to advance economic development with minimum harm to the environment. The push to create “sustainable cities” has added goals around carbon emissions and energy efficiency without changing this pattern–a pattern that presents serious barriers to community sustainability, let alone regeneration. More

Many, including the United Nations, have lauded the city of Curitiba, Brazil as being a leading model for ecological urban development and planning.  In addition, a multitude of Curitban civic planning policies are now being replicated in different cities around the world. What has received less attention in Curitiba’s storied success, however, is the unique place‐based visioning process that their civic leaders developed.

Every morning, the mayor and his core team of planners would meet in a log cabin retreat in the middle of a forested city park. There, according to one of the planners, they worked only “on what (was) fundamental, on what would affect a large number of people and could create change for the better.” Then, in the afternoons, they would return to city hall to meet with their constituents and to deal with the city’s day‐to‐day needs. More

I love chocolate. My favorite is the seventy percent cocoa kind. I always read the package for source information and buy Fair Trade Certified. Because of that certification, I am trusting that the contract manufacturers’ workers and the indigenous craftspeople and field harvesters are paid fairly. I trust that they work under safe conditions and under global standards of health protection. I am so thankful that someone is doing that checking for me. I also know that I am only achieving part of the goal that I have as a conscious consumer. It is necessary but not….well you know.

When I buy household products, I want non-toxic products so when they go down the drain, or into the air, they are not harming the very sources of life (or humans). I want the materials that make it up to not destroy habitats with their by-products. I want raw materials to not come from substitution of invasive species for indigenous habitat (like palm oil’s rampant proliferation has). I want fish and wildlife, trees and habitats to benefit from my way of living. I want to know how corporations are working with the earth and her living systems. But again, this is part of my concern, not all. More