Understanding

SYNTHESIS: Accurate Understanding for an Effective Response — Overview and Resources

Accurately understanding the challenges and the requirements for an effective response is a prerequisite for effective action. The approach presented here — that of regenerative systems sustainability — is such an understanding. It arises from a synthesis of an emerging approach implicit in green planning, design, and sustainability innovation over the past 30-plus years.

For a quick orientation, skim the Regenerative City Newsletter designed as a “first-stop” resource for interested planners and professionals, a special issue of InterPlan, APA International Division’s Newsletter.

Distinguishing Characteristics

Regenerative Systems Sustainability (RSS) is the general method. It is distinguished from other sustainability approaches as follows:

  • It defines sustainability as a systems state or condition, not a static part of characteristic, and not of any system, but of living systems.

  • It shifts sustainability planning from addressing the environmental symptoms of the problem to addressing the source or root of the problem: the design of our economy’s materials and processes.

  • It extends biomimicry to bio (or eco) systems mimicry as the primary approach for redesigning the economy’s materials and processes to stop the destruction of the regenerative production system of nature by adapting its principles and practices to the human economy. This move creates the regenerative, circular, ecological economy that not only enhances nature’s regenerative production capacity, but human economic production capacity.

  • It illuminates the core set of living systems principles that are used to plan and design the materials, processes, and the systems condition of sustainability. These principles illuminate the guardrails for human activity that destroys life vs affirms and enriches life.

  • It sets out a path forward based on current possibilities for the biggest steps, illuminating the on-going innovation agenda needing attention, and the new governance needed to accelerate, scale, and extend the momentum over the long run to ultimate success. It is a “meta” method overlaying and including contemporary urban planning method, but also extending it to address a set of issues that have confounded urban planning to date, but are now essential to address.

Applied to the city (urban and regional or “settlement system” planning), it becomes the Regenerative City. The highest value first move is creating the Regenerative Built Environment (RBE; buildings, infrastructure, landscape). Doing so simultaneously creates a fundamental component of the larger regenerative, circular, ecological economy that is the required basis for sustainability.

Results

This approach produced the following results:

  • It is the antidote to the compounding twin, intertwined, accelerating problems of climate change and unsustainability.

  • It reframes the necessary climate change solution FROM simple GHG elimination TO GHG elimination PLUS accelerated global economic regenerative systems sustainability development. This approach increases economic production while eliminating negative environmental impacts through the redesign of materials and processes that also restores and enhances nature. Doing so means that we can solve the climate crisis by inventing and advance economic development instead of slowing economic development.

  • It illuminates how the “green” built environment creates the local sustainability economy needed for sustainability success, and how because it has been undervalued in practice it has been under produced.

  • It creates the most resilience and best defense against the increasingly inhospitable environmental and economic conditions that will intensify during the 100-year-long-plus climate recalibration period of mitigation success.

Regenerative Systems Sustainability - An Emerging Methods Synthesis

This methods synthesis has arisen over the past 15+ years through a variety of engagements, presentations, studies, products, and practice. Sampling or diving into them is the quickest way to engage as follows.

  • The Regenerative City Newsletter is designed as a “first-stop” resource for interested planners and professionals; a special issue of the American Planning Association International Division’s Interplan Newsletter. The articles introduce the reader to the challenge, key concepts, method, the emerging global movement, and key resources. See also, “Resources,” p. 20, for further exploration. Appendix 1, State of Practice & Resources, covers the primary actors that have been advancing aspects of the emerging Regenerative Systems Sustainability approach, along with representative "case" projects and training resources. Appendix 2, RegenCity Bibliography, presents a limited set of primary works on regenerative cities and the systems sustainability synthesis.

  • The Regenerative City Symposium (Sept 2024): Recording Link (1.5 hrs) Slide Deck, Description & Resources, and the “Responses to Questions” document. The symposium summarizes the emerging regenerative systems sustainability approach, and that of the regenerative city and regenerative built environment when applied to urban and regional planning. It situates this emerging approach within the primary initiatives that have and will advance this leading edge of planning, some of which have turn-key capacity, like the Living Building Challenge, LEED for Cities and Communities, EcoCities, and the Biophilic Cities Network.The Symposium was produced by the American Planning Association, Climate & Sustainability Working Group of the International Division in collaboration with the APA Sustainable Communities Division and Sustainability2030.

  • The Regenerative City, Part 2, of the Environmental Sustainability Planning Guidelines, listen to the summary introduction (20 mins., page down to “An Introduction to Part 2: The Regenerative City”), Mar. 2024 (or the PDF with more detailed footnotes, 55 pp). APA International Division’s Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group (URAG). This report develops the understanding and practice steps to shift from creating parts sustainability to authentic systems sustainability.

  • The Resources Page for Regenerative Urbanism & the Systems Thinking Panel of the American Planning Association’s Sustainable Communities Division Climate Change Symposium, February 2023. Listen to the presentation, “Applying Systems Thinking Yields Regenerative Urbanism - A Platform for Inventing Sustainability Success,” Pre-recording (20 mins) and skim through the Slide Deck PDF, 2023. This work deepened the systems understanding of the sustainability challenge and response. This resources page contains a range of resources that provide a glimpse into the larger context of this emerging response.

  • The White Paper, Regenerative Urbanism — A Synopsis:  Inventing the Platform for Sustainability Success (13 pp, Feb. 2022):   PDF Link, Resources, Proceedings p 801 here, EcoCity World Summit 2022, EcoCity Builders (https://ecocitybuilders.org/ecocity-world-summit/). Watch the summary recording (15 mins). This paper developed the initial synthesis or regenerative urbanism.

  • Presentation (15 mins.), “Enabling Sustainability Success with Regional GIS,” Esri GeoDesign Summit, 2021 (Recording, Slides, Resources Page; see the middle column of the Resources Page). It integrates regenerative sustainability and city into modern GIS and geospatial practice of systems simulation tools and into California’s every-four-year regional sustainability strategy planning workflow already in place. The integration enables the scaling and acceleration of sustainability success for California in particular.

Some Key Resources of a Regenerative, Systems, and Integrative Approach

These resources present domain-specific regenerative practices that a regenerative systems sustainability approach synthesizes.

  1. Sustainable Infrastructure - The Guide to Green Engineering and Design (S. Bry Sarte, John Wiley, 2010), presents a comprehensive integrative systems approach from engineering, to design of infrastructure and buildings to sustainable communities. It provides an in-depth look at sustainable engineering practices from watershed master-planning, green building, optimizing water reuse, reclaiming urban spaces, green streets initiatives, and sustainable master-planning. It also covers the role creative thinking and collaborative team-building play in formulating solutions that transformation the built environment from producing degenerative to regenerative impacts. The book is based on the path-breaking work of the Sherwood Institute and Sherwood Design Engineers, which Bry Sarte leads.

  2. The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook (Nico Larco & Kaarin Knudson, Routledge, 2024, Book Review: Urban Studies J), comprehensively covers the components of and an overarching framework for sustainable urban design. The approach is aimed at the scale of the city-scale of the problem and solution. Urban design and architecture are essential in the decarbonising process. The Handbook is a resource for normalizing sustainability planning and design. This book is an expansion of Larco’s earlier Sustainable urban design framework (2015) reviewed by Wheeler (2015). It provides a positive and rich contribution to the research and practice of sustainable urban design.

  3. Regenerative Development & Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability (Pamela Mang, Ben Haggard, Regenesis, Wiley, 2016).  A comprehensive and practical textbook on regenerative design, master planning, and real estate development from one of the pioneers.

  4. Natural Capitalism - The Next Industrial Revolution, (Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, & L. Hunter Lovins, Earthscan, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2010), focuses on the environmental performance of the economy and illuminates under-the-radar innovation and strategic ecologic-economic principles embedded in that innovation. It argues that the next industrial revolution is emerging as biologically-based, will be more productive, and is the basis for sustainability success. Pursuing it as an entrepreneur, CEO, or policy professional and elected official is the only real path to future proof an organization and the larger economy. (For convenience, see the 20-page Harvard Business Review Summary, original, 1999, reprint, 2007).

  5. Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design (Timothy Beatley, Island Press, 2016), summarizes the value and theory of biophilic cities and presents the emerging global practice in a set of eight cases, summarizes a global survey of innovative practice, and reviews lessons learned and future directions (see also, American Planning Association, PAS Report 602, Planning for Biophilic Cities). Although the focus is adding nature to cities for their principal biophilic effect on humans, doing so also can be combined with nature-based solutions and ecosystem services approach. A biophilic approach also includes a nature-cognizant citizenry, stewardship, and city budget support. A biophilic approach can be extended to the conceptual level of using the principles of nature’s regenerative production system as guidance in creating the basis for sustainability: the regenerative, circular, ecological economy.

  6. Other key works include Biomimicry (Janine Benyus) and Cradle to Cradle and Upcycle (William McDonough and Michael Braungart) for redesigning the economy’s materials and processes — one product and one service at a time — to use, not violate, the principles of nature’s regenerative production system. Of course, there are policy implications for these practices that have yet to be recognized and realized.

Contributory Work: Presentations, Webinars, Articles.

This earlier work contributed to the synthesis developed in the above papers and presentations.

  • Two San Francisco Planning Studies:

  • Presentation: Regenerative Urbanism – Concepts, Tools, SF Cases, in the Webinar “Regenerative Urban Developments are Changing Planning” (2019), a repeated and recorded session originally presented at the APA National Conference in April 15, 2019 repeated and recorded by the APA Sustainable Communities Division on Nov. 13, 2019 (session slide deck PDF, webinar recording), webinar description (page down to APA-SCE Webinar #24 for a description, presenter bios, etc.). Other Presenters: Kirstin Weeks, Arup Building Ecologist, Geeti Silwal, AICP, Perkins+Will Cities+Sites Lead, and Greg Taylor, City of Sacramento Architect and case of Sacramento Valley Station Master plan, one of the first Living Community Challenge Plans.

  • Presentation: The Case of Biophilic City Planning in the Webinar “Integrating Urban & Regional Sustainability Planning” (2019), a session originally presented at the APA National Conference in April 2019 and repeated and recorded by the APA Sustainable Communities Division on Oct. 11, 2019 (webinar recording, webinar slide deck PDF, Biophilic section slide deck PDF) (NOTE: lost from SCD Archive). Presenters: Tim Van Epp, FAICP, Managing Director, Eurasia Environmental Associates LLC; Bruce Stiftel, FAICP, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Tech; Vincent Riscica, AICP, Integrated Planning, Arup; Scott Edmondson, AICP, ISSP-SA, SF Planning (slide deck PDF); Sharon Rooney, RLA, AICP, Chief Planner, Cape Cod Commission. 

  • Presentation: “Creating Living Communities – the Living Community Challenge & Living Community Patterns” Webinar (2016), slide deck only (PDF Link), presented as an APA SCD Webinar #9, November 17, 2016, Webinar Recording. Alicia Daniels Uhlig, NCARB, LEED Fellow, LFA, Directory, Living Community Challenge + Policy, International Living Future Institute presented on the Challenge. Scott Edmondson, AICP, SF Planning Dept., presented on the planning study funded by a matching Grant with ILFI’s first year of the Living Community Grants. The study developed a method and tools for reweaving the existing urban fabric of neighborhoods for sustainability: Living Community Patterns—Exploratory Strategies for a Sustainable San Francisco.

  • Presentation: Regenerative Urbanism Rising – Next Generation Practice Webinar (2015), (Slide Deck PDF Link), July 15, 2016, presented as an APA SCD Webinar #8 (Link), originally at the APA National Conference, April 2016. This webcast characterizes the current sustainability challenge as a necessary pivot from ad-hoc greening and net negative mitigation to net positive, regenerative urban planning across multiple scales. It presents an emerging approach, tools, and technology.

  • Article: “Championing Sustainability in California,” (Link), (2016), APA Sustainable Communities Division, Newsletter, Summer 2016, p 3.

  • Article: “The Challenge of Sustainability Planning,” (Link), (2013), APA Sustainable Communities Division, Newsletter, Spring 2013, p 4.

  • Article: “Regenerative Urbanism: the Meaning, Challenge, and Value,” (2019), (Link, extract; Link, Newsletter), APA International Division, InterPlan (Link series), Fall 2019, p12.

  • Blog Post: San Francisco -- A Partner City (What is the difference between a green city and a biophilic one?),” (2012), (Link), Biophilic Cities Network, August 2012.

Earlier Work

  • SF Sustainability Plan, 1997. Advised leadership, Advised Plan. Co-led the Economy and Economic Development Group, produced report chapter (welcome, whole plan, economy chapter).