More and more, architects and planners are jumping on the band-wagon of “place” and “placemaking” as a hot new trend in sustainability. While this is good news, it also has the potential of becoming more of the same.  If we continue to see place and placemaking in human centric terms, we will engage in this movement with the same mind that got us into this mess in the first place. What is required, therefore, first and foremost is a metanoia (a fundamental change of mind) in how we view place.

From a living systems view, the phenomena of place and placemaking are not just human processes but rather larger planetary processes in which we as humans have a role to serve. To gain perspective, take the Andean perspective of the process of placemaking More

 

 

Photo by Rich Lem

When Malvina Reynolds sang about “little boxes on the hillside,” she was describing the monotony that is created when our homes and neighborhoods fail to reflect the essence of people in a unique place. While the song illustrates this with the image of a housing development, the same observation holds true for businesses.

People intuitively react negatively to big chains that give no consideration to a local community and its distinctiveness. Many cities fight back, trying to stop the flood of commodification of their communities that box stores bring. It is often said that this fight is about losing local businesses, but it may be better said that it is about losing the “essence of place” with which local businesses are more connected.

Communities are fighting valiant battles. These battles would be more effective if they focused not only on slowing or stopping the pace of commodification of their towns and villages, but also on beginning to attract and build what is distinctive to their place.

This is done by growing what we call Developmental Economies—economies based on the unique “Story of Place” for where you live. Growing a Developmental Economy begins with assessment, integrating the diverse aspects (social, cultural, and natural) that make your place unique into a narrative framework that all can understand.  unique It then uncovers the unrealized potential implied by that assessment, and sets out to develop the capacity of local business and community infrastructure to cultivate it. This creates an inspiring and engaging framework from which businesses can grow, and with which economic development councils and city councils can hold people’s feet to a fire that warms then, instead of scorching them.

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 21^st 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.