Gene Miller of Gaining Ground

I spent last week at Gaining Ground’s Resilient Cities conference in Vancouver, BC.  Four years ago, Gene Miller—founder of this remarkable conference series, drew Bill Reed and me into a series of conversations about his new vision for conferences, one that broke away from the talking heads phenomenon to actually foster dialogue and thinking. A radical thought! I’d long before given up on conferences, finding most to be about “thoughting not thinking”—promoting old thoughts vs. developing new thinking.

Gene’s vision, and his passion for promoting urban sustainability when it was barely a blip on the horizon overcame my reluctance. So when asked to present at this year’s conference, the 6^th in the series, I didn’t hesitate. Once again, the range of subject material was rich and deep.  But while most people will remember the content, it was the process design that really caught and captured my attention and admiration. Gene and his team had once again lifted the art of conferencing to a whole new level.   More

Photo by Victor Bezrukov

At a recent conference, I heard David Orr express the need to ‘fall in love with nature.’ His point was that without a relationship of love and kinship, too many of us will continue to see nature as an enemy to be subdued (tornados and tigers), a nuisance (mosquitoes and poison ivy), or provider of a functional service (delivering clean water and food.) He went on to state that we need to focus on helping children experience this connectivity.

I thought, what about the adults? Have we given up on the people who can activate the change that we need right away? We might not have time for these children to move into positions of authority. Throughout their lives, people fall in love with one another. Adults marry at all ages, and elders experience profound love for their grandkids. Can this pattern be extended to love for nature? More

Current world trends indicate that increasingly the health of our Earth and its inhabitants are inextricably tied to the future of our urban centers.  According to the United Nations, the year 2005 marked the first time in our planet’s history that over half of the entire human population lived in cities.  In western countries, this percentage is even higher, with 80 percent of the population living in urban areas.  In addition, these trends of urbanization are on the rise, particularly in developing countries.  Between 1990 and 1995, 263 million people were added to cities in developing countries.  This is equivalent to the formation of a new Los Angeles or Shanghai every three months. More

spreading the story

When I was a keynote speaker for The Competitiveness Institute last year, I was swamped by people who wanted to talk about the failure of the clustering model of economic development. They were from Africa, Ireland, South America— many other nations and regions around the world. “Why did some work, some seem to work only to fail later and some never get off the ground””, they wanted to know. I stayed an hour talking with them.

Sept 29th, Obama gave a speech that may foster the same questions in a few years. The call is to return to innovation as the basis of greatness. They Office of the President’s Economic Council issued a white paper to announce and detail this call for a Strategy for American Innovation. The intention is very important—sustainable growth and quality jobs. And they are to be place-based, meaning in their case the “targeting of places and drawing on the compounding effect of cooperative arrangements”. The intention is a good start. But it has the same challenges as the concept of clustering, which is also promoted by the National Council of Economic Development. Until they understand the living systems approach to organizing economic planning and exchange among humans, we will have the same failures, shortfalls and episodic successes that cannot be rationally unexplained.

I will say here, what I said to the folks at The Competitiveness Institute, from regions, cities and counties who inundated me with their questions. You can only succeed IF you organize around the unique story of that Place. That is the true meaning of place-based. Otherwise it is like trying to change careers at mid-life because you want to make more money and you have defined your next career move based on what is paying the most at the moment. It likely is not something you are particularly suited to or even evokes something you are passionate about. Not a good career defining process. Better to be who you are in life, uniquely, and so it is for your city and region. That is what Story of Place branding and development process is about. It grows sustainable economies and quality jobs that spark and regenerate innovation as a part of its nature. It is built into the infrastructure. More

Photo: Heather Yaryan

That we are seeing a rapidly expanding focus on sustainable cities is hardly surprising. Cities have become the principal engine of economic growth in a global economy—and they are having a disproportionate effect on the ecosystems of their regions and the biosphere as a whole.

Currently, the pressing nature of climate change and peak oil, together with our long love affair with technology, have made efforts to reduce the impact of cities the central focus of the sustainable cities movement. While critical, meeting the challenge of a deteriorating planet requires more.  It demands that our cities become active contributors to the social and ecological regeneration of their regions. Cities at the forefront of sustainability are recognizing that they need to take up both halves of the sustainability challenge—reducing damage while growing connection to and among the living systems of their place. More

Photo credit: Dey Alexander

Recently, I sat down to read Nicholas Mang’s case study of Curitiba, Brazil, which is now available on the Regenesis Group website. As I read I was reminded of a powerful 1981 Wendell Berry essay, called Solving for Pattern. 

In the essay, Berry describes three kinds of solutions to the “problems of our time.” The first, he writes, is the solution that causes “a ramifying series of new problems.” A modern example can be found in energy-efficient lightbulbs that attempt to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but leach mercury into landfills when disposed of.

The second type of solution is “that which immediately worsens the problem it is intended to solve.” Berry gives the example of attempting to fix compacted soil with a tractor whose weight further compacts the soil. Bringing in a bigger tractor only makes the situation worse.

The third type of solution, the type that Berry advocates, is what he calls “solving for pattern.” 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

Carol Sanford and Joel Glanzberg on Chautauqua, KVNF, Public Radio. We explore the meaning of Story of Place® in creating Developmental Economies® and regenerating communities.

“Developmental Economies®” (DE) involve the Business community in a different and more effective way. DE is a way of improving the vitality and viability of existing business and creating and incubator for new businesses that extend the uniqueness of the region and its “vocation”. Every PLACE has a uniqueness and out of that comes an opportunity to create unique value-adding (rather than value-added) offerings that cannot be copied and as a result become valued in the region and beyond for their uniqueness and distinctiveness that mirrors the PLACE itself. The cities where this has happened, for examples Portland OR, Curitiba, Brazil, have increased greatly the wealth and prosperity of a place and overcome the hazards that traditional economic development causes. It also makes a more cohesive community within its diversity of creativity. You can stream it or download it for listening to later.

Developers are defamed and condemned regularly for raping the earth. And it is true that a good number of developers are quite inured to their effects. But there is a whole new breed who not only care, but are intentional about bringing a significant value into the communities and neighborhoods where they design and build. And not just for public relations. They see value coming to everyone when they engage this way, including themselves. One example is the idea of considering every project to be one one where the developer is in investing into a Regenerative Neighborhood InitiativeTM (RNI). More

by youngrobv (Rob & Ale)

Throughout history, countries that have shipped their raw materials to other counties for processing have lost out to the converters. The further along the conversion process a company is, in adding value, the more viable it is through time. Nations, and the businesses in them by and large, become stable and wealthy because they can make and provide goods and services, not because they own a source of basic commodities. Even with soaring international prices, the amount of income generated by mineral resources in a modern advanced economy remains relatively low compared to the converted products into which they are made. The tendency is to seek efficiencies for a competitive advantage, leaving other nations and businesses to make the real wealth off the resource. This is a losing strategy in the long run, and the long run is getting closer every day. More