3. Applicability and Current Use of Best Approach Practices 

This section examines how well the regenerative city planning BAPs apply to the 11 IGUTP recommendations addressed in this Ukrainian Recovery Guidelines document and the extent to which current leading sustainability organizations use them.  

The Eleven Environmental Recommendations of these Guidelines

All the best “approach” practices of regenerative systems sustainability described above are applicable to each of the eleven topical recommendations of this Ukrainian Recovery Guidelines Document. The method is not to simply substitute a new “regenerative” topic for the existing topic, but to use the regenerative systems sustainability performance imperatives to generate innovative best “technical” practices that would not arise otherwise. In some cases, they may generate cross-topic practices that address multiple issues simultaneously and potentially create multiple co-benefits for other topics. Doing so harnesses the best technical practices to the larger challenge of shifting the approach from SAU to creating the prosperous future of regenerative systems sustainability, urbanism, and cities.

The eleven topics of these Guidelines are as follows, in their order of occurrence, with a short title and descriptive phrase to represent their longer descriptions in these Recovery Guidelines.  

1. Climate:  Use land use planning to create communities that mitigate, adapt to, and are resilient to climate change.

2. Energy and Land Use:  Develop energy-efficient urban forms using renewable energy.

3. Risk Relocation:  Relocate high-risk built environments to low-risk areas.

4. Extreme Events Protection:  Defensively harden key urban functions to increasingly extreme hazardous events and climate conditions.

5. Pollution-free water planning:  Undertake planning for river basins, watersheds, water scarcity, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure (water quality), equal access to water and sanitation services, and green infrastructure. .

6. Green Space Design:  Create high-performing public and green spaces.

7. Historical & Cultural Assets:  Preserve and use historical and cultural assets to strengthen social identity when revitalizing areas of decline.

8. Waste Management Land Use:  Include waste management in land use planning, along with mine/UXO removal, land contamination cleanup, hazardous waste management, and debris management.

9. Integrated Utilities:  Integrate sectoral utility services into one system when synergies create higher value.

10. Green Building:  Promote green buildings.

11. Sustainable Transport:   Create a new integrative system of non-motorized and public transportation modes that also sequester carbon. 

In summary, the best approach practices apply to all the Guidelines’ eleven topical recommendations. Using them encourages creativity and synergy that can lead to solutions solving more than one goal. Doing so harnesses the best technical practices to the larger task of creating regenerative systems with sustainable performance. 

The Leading Sustainability Organizations

Although many sustainability organizations have been leading the innovation initiatives in best practices, most of the best practices would still be considered as working within the SAU approach (partial reduction not elimination of impacts, and insufficient for success). They only reduce the small subset of regulated environmental impacts to a “safe” level prescribed by a regulatory agency. They do not redesign the economic processes, technology, and materials to eliminate the impacts and to meet the regenerative systems sustainability performance imperatives. Meeting the imperatives is the way to generate systems sustainability, regenerative built environments, sustainable cities, and sustainable economies. Nor does SAU use full-cost economic analysis to inform decisions based on the real economic costs and consequences, and it does not connect the regenerative built environment to the local economy as a fundamental, powerful, catalyzing sustainability move. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but a useful generalization.

Although standard SAU best practices are insufficient, this characteristic cannot be viewed as an individual error of practice, a bad choice, or an evil intent. All leading sustainability practitioners are operating inside nested systems of systems; they are being as innovative and creative as possible within their contextual constraints. They encounter conventional thinking and practices in banking, finance, economics, politics, and practice areas that are rooted in a different time and reality, and they most often cannot be changed at that point in time to meet the needs of the project. These conditions prevent the needed regenerative systems sustainability moves. In many cases, needed sustainability moves are illegal. Often, the traditional practice is subsidized, giving it unfair market advantage, often locking in path-dependencies to unsustainability and systems destabilization, and eventually collapse. These conditions underline the need for regenerative systems sustainability practices to work across the whole system and the four practice areas discussed in the Introduction, at the beginning of this section.

Leading edge, pioneer organizations at the forefront of sustainability innovation include the following: 

1. ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives)

2. GCoM (The Global Covenant of Mayors, ICLIE)

3. C40 Cities, Planning 2050

4. IUCN (International Union of Conservation of Nature)

5. USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council)      

6. ISO 37101 (Sustainable Development in Communities)

7. WRI (World Resources Institute)

8. BCN (Biophilic Cities Network)

9. ILFI (International Living Future Institute

10. TNS (The Natural Step)

11. the MNAI (Municipal Natural Assets Initiative)

12. Biomimicry Institute

13. Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII)

14. EcoCity Builders

Many of them would recognize and agree with the best approach practices of regenerative systems sustainability described above and likely have even initiated some or many of the component ideas, generated programs to implement them, etc. The last seven organizations (nos. 8-14) show the strongest affinity and limited overlap with the regenerative systems sustainability and regenerative urbanism approach. Few explicitly use the best approach practices described above. Yet, they each are pursuing important, innovative, and inspirational aspects. 

• The Birmingham UK Biophilic Cities Network member is pioneering a “natural capital city” approach. 

• The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) has been advancing the understanding and practice of living buildings, living communities, and living materials since 2007. Their approach uses a mandatory framework of performance imperatives in their Living Community Protocol (20 imperatives across seven topics). It overlaps those of a regenerative systems sustainability. The City of San Francisco partnered with ILFI to use its approach to explore strategies it could use to move towards sustainability. That planning research project developed “Living Community Patterns” as action strategies to catalyze creative designs that achieve multiple imperatives simultaneously. 

• The Natural Step (TNS) developed a strategic sustainability framework in 1989 rooted in systems performance imperatives many companies and governments around the world have used. This approach was adapted to municipal sustainability planning in the U.S. and Nordic countries. 

• The Canadian TNS partnered with the Canadian Planning Institute of Planners and the federal government to develop the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan initiative (discussed above in Best Approach Practice 2.1). 

• Over the past five years, the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative has been developing a Natural Assets Management tool that levels the playing field for public infrastructure investment decisions by directly valuing and including destroyed or used nature in gray engineered vs green nature-based-solution infrastructural options (see Best Approach Practice 7). It has been used by over sixty local municipalities in Canada to date. 

• The Biomimicry Institute and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII) develop, use, and advance the biomimicry approach for product design and development but have yet to manifest substantially in public policy development or urban planning practices. However, their value is in demonstrating not only “proof of concept,” but proof of practice, where the redesign of economic processes and materials eliminates the environmental impacts, enhances nature, creates a better product, and often lowers price and increases productivity (doing more with less). 

• EcoCity Builders has been advancing an ecological (ecosystems) approach to land use planning,  design, and community development for over fifty years. They have formulated an Ecocity Framework and Standards to provide a vision and practical methodology for setting direction and inspiring innovation. 

All these organizations are focused on a particular practice and domain. They are not focused on the larger question and challenge of achieving global sustainability in time, nor the macro-level systems change it requires, which is the focus of regenerative systems sustainability and regenerative urbanism, as discussed above. 

It is important to note that it is not surprising that the leading-edge sustainability organizations do not embrace, and reference regenerative systems sustainability more fully nor explicitly use the best “approach” practices. This new approach of regenerative systems sustainability and urbanism has yet to be formalized, recognized, defined, and therefore visible as a whole. The synthesis presented in this section attempts to highlight the key characteristics of this emerging approach from over 20 years of plan, project, product, and services level innovation in response to the challenges of climate change and unsustainability. The purpose is to illuminate it so it can begin to be appreciated and advanced as a whole new approach.  However, various regenerative characteristics are visible in the work of these organizations. Yet, without shifting to use of regenerative systems sustainability imperatives instead of traditional planning and environmental goals, the practices and solutions remain in the incremental, net negative realm. They do not shift to the circular regenerative realm of net positive impacts on nature, the built environment, and the human economy, cities, and communities. Each of the organizations have their defined mission focused on a part of the larger challenge. They have not been tasked with perceiving or assessing the net results of the whole effort to date. They have been developing new, innovative best planning practices for their mission and purpose. 

It is also important to note that the new move that each individual actor would undertake in shifting to a regenerative systems sustainability approach is not to change their mission or program (necessarily, although it could occur), but to examine it from the perspective of the regenerative systems sustainability performance imperatives to understand how their current work can create more value and advance progress towards real sustainability success (close the gap to systems sustainability performance).  Use of the regenerative systems sustainability imperatives in each moment, level, domain of human activity is the way that the multitude of human actions create sustainability success without micro-management and direct coordination. Success would be a self-organizing result from using the imperatives. 

In summary, the leading organizational sustainability practitioners do not directly use the best approach practices of regenerative systems sustainability. However, their work includes related initiatives directed at their subsystem or practice area missions. Yet, without switching to the regenerative systems sustainability approach, addressing the larger challenge of (whole) systems sustainability will not be pursued nor realized. In addition, the self-organizing benefits of a regenerative systems sustainability approach will remain inactive.