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.

• Inspirational — Regenerative projects inspire because they play meaningful, contributing roles within the larger human and natural communities in which they’re embedded.  Equally important, they  provide meaningful roles, creating opportunities for all participants (designers, builders, buyers, occupants, neighbors, regulatory agencies and others) to make real contributions to a healthier place and planet. They inspire stakeholders to reach for higher aspirations, bridging divisions and polarities through a shared vision of a better future for all.

• Authentic — Regenerative projects nourish and support what is authentic by growing out of the cultural and ecological uniqueness of place. They recognize that distinctive local culture and traditions grow out of humans’ response over many years to the natural communities and landscapes of their place. They are shaped by and contribute to this interweaving of local cultures and ecosystems. And they work to build understanding of and stewardship for the co-creative partnership between the natural and built communities that is ultimately the real source of enduring value and common-wealth. Perhaps the single most distinguishing characteristic of a regenerative development is that it arises from the essential qualities that make a Place what it is. Through partnering with place, it seeks to be an instrument for realizing and growing the potential that is inherent in these essence qualities. The complexity and dynamism of this partnership requires a very different set of capabilities than green or sustainable design.

• “Naturally” Intelligent — Regenerative projects use natural intelligence to achieve elegant and economical results. Natural systems replace services of engineered systems and engineered systems support healthy natural systems. Like natural systems, regenerative projects “stack functions”—achieving multiple purposes from each investment. Master Plans and designs are informed by the logic of natural systems, integrating developments with wild ecosystems to the benefit of both.  These regenerative designs both optimize the presence of people in a landscape and use the unique attributes of the land to more fully realize the potential of the built environment

• Paradigm Changing — Regenerative projects are paradigm changing. In contrast to many other green development efforts, they are proactive agents in healing the places they inhabit. By including the regeneration of living systems (cultural, economic, natural) as a necessary target, regenerative projects are raising the bar and helping to shift an entire industry in a positive direction. They are proving that financially successful real estate development can also be sources of co-evolution for the natural and human communities.

Gaining Perspective

Let’s begin with a caveat. This will seem wrong to many of you. This is because it is not familiar and our brain prefers the familiar so it can conserve energy. Just remember this conservation is a threat to learning and discovery and particularly creativity and innovation. We have to manage our reactions to the new to open doors in the mind. There will be plenty of time and ways to test and validate if it is worth letting go of old molds and frameworks. But be willing to suspend certainty until you have experienced the different approach.

First, one begins with a Whole in mind and works from the whole, all the time. This may seem obvious, but it rarely happens. Lets remind ourselves how we know a whole. A whole is born (e.g. a person or animal) , formed by nature in her work (e.g. a canyon), or created by humans with an intention of being an enduring whole—e.g. a family. This contrasted with planning processes that work with functional aspects such as jobs or incomplete parts of a whole such as task forces . Additional examples here including working with a river, storm water or a city. These are not wholes. An example of a whole is a corporation, a watershed as demarcated by nature, a customer, or a valley. Puget Sound or Cascadia are wholes, not the State of Washington or the Province of British Columbia.

Starting with a whole in mind, enables working with the potential of the whole, as it is revealed by its essence, and the systems that are to be developed in pursuit and achievement of that potential. Understanding the wholes and their systems comes before examining current existence, never ahead, (current existence is understood from examining and assessing the issues, the trends, the challenges , the problems etc.

This is the first place that the concept may seem wrong to many of my readers. How to you go into the future without understanding the present? Just to clarify, we are not talking about time-based phenomena but rather eternal phenomena. Essence is always there and not about a future creation or end state. It has been there since it was formed as a landscape or born as a being. And understanding the present conditions are so rife with conflicted ideologies, perspectives and filters—not to mention quantity of data to be interpreted, interwoven, validated and aligned. We need a context and new frame if we are to see it anew and unify the divided minds toward a whole. Now back to understanding wholes.
Places, persons and entities are wholes. They have potential because they have unique essence in their forming and their unique way of working. Having begun with Potential, it is much easier to see what matters when we come back to trying to understanding current existence, We can now  know what to study further, what to find pathways for transforming. Looking at current existence SECOND  avoids the shotgun approach to data gathering (which is always on “parts” as well), the interpretation of possibilities from the world of what is already fixed in place and difficult to move (we can bypass much of this when one begins with the essence and potential of what pursuing). And most importantly it avoids losing sight of what is unique and distinctive in a whole that is uncovered in the process of identifying the potential of the whole and keeping it in mind. Without this, all trends, competitive threats and problems present themselves as needing strategies. Working with all this current existence FIRST, leads to the mostly ineffectively process of setting priorities, seeking trade-offs and being very inefficient in pursuing ventures and initiatives that divert energy from the pursuit of the best place to generate wealth— potential.

There is one other inefficiency that gets lost in the looking for the biggest challenge in existence and working to solve them by priority setting. That is the silos, and all the budgeting and staffing processes that attend them, have produced people and groups of people who have, at best a perspective that is limited, and  ideas to which they are attached as truth, thereby blocking additional perspective. And at worst, they have defensive positions on turf that throws reason to the wind and substitutes rationalization. These divisions cannot be reassembled by integration and dialogue processes any more than humpty dumpty can be put together again. You have to start with whole eggs.

But every experienced businessperson knows you can’t make a healthy business by only reducing inefficiencies. The experience of running a successful business teaches that it’s the ability of a business to generate value that is the real source of its vitality and viability. You can only make a healthy business by figuring out what you want to grow, how to grow it effectively, and then defining inefficiency as anything that doesn’t produce what you are trying to grow. What is true of business is also true of the planet.

One of the most unfortunate consequences of the sustainability movement’s emphasis on impact reduction has been its focus on managing behavior without growing systemic understanding. We are left with someone else’s version of what we should do to stop the degeneration of the Earth’s ability to support life, rather than a creative atmosphere that encourages each of us to invent new possibilities for ourselves. This “we know what you should do” approach is reflected in everything from LEED guidelines for greener buildings to conservation plans developed for corporations—plans that tell us what to do without helping us evolve who we could be. People may think they mean something more when they talk about sustainability, yet almost every example and effort is an attempt to work on what exists. This leads to mitigation efforts rather than generation of new potential.

If a person does something because someone else tells them to do it, and they don’t fully understand it, there is none of the fulfillment that comes from having been the source of a meaningful contribution. All the person experiences is effort and money spent. Businesses are spending enormous amounts of money on reports, sustainability plans, measurement of impacts, and other well-intentioned efforts. But if they were working on building understanding and action based on how the living systems actually work, and if they were linking these actions to their core business, they would have a greater effect for far less cost.

As far as I’m concerned, a living systems approach would not even work on sustainability. Sustainability has come to mean a return to the way things would be if they were working as “nature” intends them to be. But this thinking leaves humans out of the picture as a contributing and creative member of the whole planetary system—and an important part of nature. A business should be interested in regeneration, the moving of a living system (the business itself along with the larger living systems it is part of) up to a higher level of expression. A business cannot survive without the services a community provides nor the resources and services the Earth provides. And I believe that human beings (and the organizations they create for themselves) are an excellent instrument for doing that work. This interdependency is why communities and the value adding processes of the Earth are stakeholders in the success of a business.

An example of moving a living system up to a higher level of expression was demonstrated by the nation of Costa Rica in one of its forest restoration projects. As the team responsible for the project began to think more deeply about forest restoration projects, they began to see that humans could work with nature and let nature create the forest. Rather than plant the trees themselves, they installed posts where fruits from the desired trees could be set out. Birds were attracted, ate the fruit, and deposited the seeds in a “nutrient bundle.” Result? The forest regenerated itself using the same processes that nature would use. Human ingenuity helped create the conditions for a natural process of regeneration to occur. Businesses too can model themselves after nature to create conditions that set in motion natural processes of regeneration.

Earlier I said that what is true of business is true of the planet. Well it also works the other way around—what is true of the planet is true of business. We have a lot to learn from natural systems about how to evolve our businesses to levels of effectiveness and profitability beyond anything we have imagined. This learning from nature is the real opportunity that lies behind corporate efforts to bring their actions into harmony with nature. In learning how to achieve that harmony lies the future evolution of business itself.

Gratton’s post reminds me of a frequent conversation that surfaces over here at Regenesis–namely, what it is that organizes or bounds a community. Virtual communities may organize themselves by an idea, a trend, or an exchange of services. In other words, virtual communties are driven and bounded by human forces.

Physical human communities, however, are organized by something much larger than just human drives and desires. They are shaped and influenced by the forces, resources, and limitations of an evolving place. As physical human communities work to become regenerative communities, then, they must work to integrate the drivers of human progress with the forces that drive the evolution of the natural environment that surrounds them.

As we all seek to form and strengthen the bonds of community in our lives, I feel that it is important to differentiate between our physical community and our virtual community. Gratton sums it up well:

…whilst the virtual will naturally evolve faster than a wink of the eye, the physical will also have to evolve – and this time we cannot expect technologists to take the lead.

by mikebaird CC

The Importance of Birds

© 2010 Kenneth Cohen

The observation of birds and natural bird migration patterns are absolutely essential for the survival of Native American healing, spirituality, and culture. Hunting, planting, and ceremony are often coordinated with the appearance of particular birds. Birds also remind storytellers that it is time to teach children about the lessons learned from the eagle, the hawk, the heron, the dove, and so on. A bird such as the eagle does not simply represent flying close to Creator or seeing from a higher perspective. Rather the eagle teaches and is this value and power. This is very different from the perspective of EuroAmerican culture in which birds and animals may symbolize human values. There are numerous examples of bird symbolism in the Bible. If Native Americans only valued birds for their symbolic value, then they might be satisfied to read or think about them or view them in an aviary. But they are not, because birds must be observed in their natural state in order to learn directly from them.

Bird behavior plays a central role in the origin/creation stories of many tribes. The raven is linked with the sun among the Tlingit of Alaska. The eagle teaches early humans how to survive among tribes as diverse as the Hopi and the Ojibwe. The Innu, an Algonquian people closely related to the Mikmaq, Passamaquody, and Cree, revere the Canadian goose because, in their creation story, he/she helped bring the warmth of the South. Geese migrating south to north mean that the snows are melting and it is time to hunt again. When they return south, it is time to store goods for winter. And at the end of a prayer, or in closing a ceremony, instead of “Amen,” Innu will sometimes exclaim “Ho ho ho Eshqua.” Eshqua is Innu for the goose.

The presence of birds is essential for the protection of nature’s diversity. The great Mohawk elder Ray Fadden lamented the loss of songbirds in New York forests. No more spreading of seeds to nurture the once rich undergrowth, healthy trees, and the insects and animals that depend on them. Mr. Fadden told me that even the bear were ill as a result: far less plants to eat, fewer roots to dig. The bear, ancestor of one of the three Mohawk clans (turtle, bear, wolf) and first teacher of herbal medicine, is threatened by the loss of birds.

Value-adding has gotten a bad rap. Mostly because we are used to hearing the term “value-added,” which has come to mean a financial reward for our step of the chain on the way to consumers.

I spoke in Beirut in November to the ministers of energy, environment and other arenas, plus 120 CEOs of corporations in related industries. The video is above. Value-adding is the subject of the talk. Value-adding means to change positively the lives of the stakeholders every time you engage them. The ‘ing” is indicative of a never-ended commitment to increase the value to the system of stakeholders.

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?

In the absence of large predators, ungulates (elk, moose, deer etc.) were unafraid and spent most of their days lolling and grazing along the watercourses. They soon overgrazed the willows and other riparian growth, exposing the riverbanks to flood-damage and erosion, and stripping the water of all shade. The rivers got hotter, less stable, and full of silt. This lowered oxygen levels and clogged the clear gravel beds that trout need to thrive.

The wolves quickly put an end to that. Grazing animals quickly relearned to stay in the open uplands in tight groups where they could protect their young and weak members, coming to the streams only to drink. The grasses, willows, and cottonwoods rebounded, holding stream banks together and shading the water. Water flowed clear, cold and oxygenated—ideal trout habitat once again. Without the wolves the whole system had started to fray, like a sweater snagged on a nail.

Perhaps this is how a mountain thinks: all parts of the community are necessary, all provide essential services and restraints.  The interconnections and exchanges are primary and the elements (individual animals and plants) are secondary.  The whole (mountain or watershed) is the smallest unit of thought.

Carbon release

I sit and listen to the speakers at the Energy conference in Beirut, Lebanon present their papers and reports.  One after another they describe what it will take to become a low carbon society. I wonder, do they really not understand that carbon is the basis of all life?  A low carbon world is one where little or no life is happening! “Low carbon society” points to the biggest problem we have with reversing global warming, and creating healthy watersheds, cities and even our planet:  not the carbon itself, but our way of thinking about it.

If we stood in the shoes of Life, we would hear her call us to increase our connection to the natural cycling of carbon as it regenerates life again and again.  Life isn’t looking for carbon neutrality or carbon negative solutions. She wants carbon active, carbon engaged in life-generating processes.  She wants us to be educated about carbon and how it works. She wants us as partners in the cycling processes that engage carbon with water and oxygen—molecules in motion that evolve the expression of a living planet. She wants us carbon positive, doing positive things with carbon.

We humans have a bad habit of seeing everything only in terms of ourselves.  We define carbon as an element, observe its elemental effects, and set out to solve the carbon problem (a problem that we have created.)  We work on carbon directly, elementally, not engaging with the system in which carbon “lives” and “works”.   But we cannot get there—a healthy global atmosphere and climate—from here.  We can only regenerate living systems by working with them as living systems.  As long as we see carbon outside of Life we won’t be able to embrace and creatively work with it to generate life.

Sense of place is an embodied experience, not an abstract concept.  Our home and the street we live on may feel meaningful and alive because we have an intimate relationship and experience with it. According to Jaime Lerner, the visionary three-time mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and a founding father of the modern green city movement,

“People, they are not living in the city just for survival.  You have to love the city.  They have to have this relationship that has to do with identity, with a sense of belonging… There are some (ghettos) that don’t have (great bus service or nice schools), and the people are happy.  Why?  Because their father lived there; and their grandfather lived there.  There’s a sense of belonging to a place”

Sense of place therefore starts with caring, with a sense of meaningful connection.  In Lerner’s terms, “you have to know your village and you have to love it.”  Without this, one cannot fully develop a sense of  “complicity with people,” a capacity to “understand what are (people’s) problems, what are their dreams.”  Yet how often as planners do we forget this?  How often does a demarcation for a neighborhood become an abstract concept rather than an immediate and felt reality?

There is growing evidence that this fragmented approach to planning is failing. Urban centers are feeling overwhelmed by the mounting economic, environmental and social costs resulting from their inability to manage growth in a way that benefits the community and its natural environment. Purely regulatory approaches run into buzz saws of opposition, creating divisiveness and ultimately a failure of political will. Community visioning processes bring different interests together but, by themselves, fail to translate the resultant lists of desired values and qualities into sustainable, coherent policies and actions. Even more daunting is the task of developing sufficient understanding of the intricately interleaved relationships of the natural and man-made systems of a place. Lack of this understanding, which is needed to be able to accurately track and anticipate the potential ecological impacts of constantly changing human activities, has generated many well-intentioned policies that produced the opposite of their desired effect.

As the pace and scale of change increases and our communities grow in scale and complexity, the ramifications of the issues planners are dealing with are growing accordingly, and the need to find a better approach is becoming increasingly urgent. Simply tinkering with the old approach has proven inadequate, primarily because it is being done, to paraphrase Alfred Einstein, by the same mind that created the problems in the first place. A new approach will require a new mind—i.e., a new way of thinking about the question based on a profoundly different set of premises than those that engendered and shaped traditional approaches.  Core to this new mind is seeing the world as alive, where life works through networks of nested living systems.

Working from a living systems perspective shifts attention from simply solving today’s problems to working to realize the upper limits of creative potential a healthy system is capable of manifesting—i.e. toward the creation of regenerative communities. This focus builds from an understanding of the unique nature of a community and of the inter-reliance of human and natural systems that create that uniqueness. It awakens a deep and caring sense of place and thus becomes the source of a new community spirit that reconciles longstanding deep divisions as people work together toward increasing vitality, viability and capacity for evolution of the whole.

Such planning is organized from fundamentally different premises, among them:

1. The purpose of regenerative planning is ultimately to guide the evolution of the whole of a system toward its highest creative and productive potential based on its unique nature and capacities. Planning solutions are thus measured by their impact on the health of the whole, which is defined by its improving vitality, viability and capacity for evolution, not just by their problem solving effectiveness.
2. Understanding of the uniqueness of a place and its value, and what created and continues to create that uniqueness, is the fundamental basis for all regenerative planning. The urban and cultural environment we call a community is a living system that is a composite of many complex, dynamic cultural and natural systems that form a web of mutual support. This web of systems defines a place and gives it its unique identity. In order to address issues of long term quality of life in any community or place, it is necessary to gain an understanding of the influences that have shaped and continue to shape that place through these systems. The recognition that cultural systems and natural systems are interdependent is fundamental to this understanding.  Further, the health of cultural systems is ultimately dependent on the health of natural systems. To plan successfully for sustained livability and an overall improvement of our quality of life, it is necessary to understand and address the interrelationship between these systems at a local level.
3. Regenerative planning, in order to sustain itself through time and realize its full potential, must include as one of its primary goals the use of the planning process as a vehicle for building the capacity for systems thinking among all members of the community.
4. Regenerative planning must be organized around all four of the levels of potential described below, with the upper levels providing the guidance for work at the lower levels:

• Awakening across the community a deep sense of caring about the evolution of the unique place it inhabits. This creates the basis for regenerating the spirit and creative potential of the system as a whole and of all its members,  evoking the public and private will that is necessary to sustain any evolution.
• Identifying the system leverage points that are critical to that evolution, and developing appropriate interventions that stimulate the system’s innate capacity for improving the health of the whole.
• Using the knowledge of how the web of relationships affect the operations of the different elements of the system to amplify the effectiveness of each planning intervention.
• Developing a process for mapping systemic interactions that builds a knowledge base that can used to model intervention scenarios as well as track how the system operates and responds to actual interventions. (When an attempt is made to adjust one element in any one constituent system all other systems are potentially affected, as is the health of the whole.)