4. Conclusion: Key Points – Main Steps

Key Points

The last section shows how traditional urban planning topics can be connected to one or more of the regenerative systems sustainability imperatives. The best approach practices would address one or more of them. However, the key point is that a regenerative systems sustainability approach would address all the challenges in a way that produces regenerative systems sustainability, not simply ad-hoc component sustainability. Each of the topics is a piece of the puzzle but solving for each piece with existing best “technical” practices will only reduce the impacts of the individual topics; it will not eliminate them nor produce regenerative systems sustainability of the whole puzzle. 

In summary, this latter point underscores the need to shift from a SAU approach to a regenerative systems sustainability approach, and regenerative urbanism when applied to urban and territorial planning. This shift of approach will not simply reduce the individual impacts of the current pattern (configuration) of our economy, but shift it to and create a regenerative, circular, ecological sustainability economy that eliminates impacts by design and creates the material basis for inclusive abundance. 

The Main Steps of the Regenerative Systems Sustainability Approach

The following provides the larger framework to use to implement a regenerative systems sustainability approach and regenerative urbanism using the best approach practices discussed above. The implementation has three common steps and then varies depending on who is implementing them, as follows. 

The three steps of regenerative systems sustainability planning for any action are as follows:

1. Use the systems performance imperatives to define the performance that needs to be produced for systems sustainability relevant to the current initiative.

2. Conduct a strategic assessment of existing performance along the systems performance imperatives to illuminate the gap to the needed performance that the current initiative can address.

3. For the current initiative, use existing technology and/or design new configurations of technique, context, and governance to achieve the performance imperatives of regenerative living systems sustainability that can be addressed by the initiative; 

• close the gap as much as possible with any one action at one point in time; identify barriers needing attention at other levels of the system

• identify existing R&D initiatives addressing them that are pursuing continuous innovation to eliminate the gap, or attempt to catalyze the needed R&D initiative. 

Note:  With a systems approach, it is not necessary to solve all barriers throughout the system when using a systems approach to a particular issue. However, some of the revealed points of the system that affect the particular issue of the initiative may be addressed by the initiative while others may be beyond the scope of the initiative. Those issues can then either be included in the initiative by rescoping, or they can be addressed by others after communication from the team and related teams and initiatives, either during the time frame of the project or subsequently. 

However, those simple three steps involve detail and nuance that varies by type of action, actor, etc., as follows in a simplified way. 

1. Actors:  Individuals, Professionals, Groups Working on Individual Projects, Plans, Products, Services:  

• Start with and Use the Imperatives. Design to achieve the regenerative systems sustainability imperatives applicable to any decision, plan, project, action, product, or service for development, maintenance, repair, or replacement. 

• Scale-jump to other domains and levels of the system to address barriers for the current action (barriers are at the level at which one is working but solutions lie in another area of the system). 

• For urban and territorial planning:  use all pertinent existing green planning and design best technical practices as a next step in projects and plans.

• Continuously Innovate. Address the remaining performance gap with continuous innovation, oneself or handing it off to another department, group, or partner responsible for continuing innovation.

• Train to Competency for your role:  Recognize, Learn, Study, Use, and Extend the emerging innovation of regenerative systems sustainability and regenerative urbanism when applied to urban and territorial planning. Become Certified (Cradle2Cradle, Biomimicry, Living Future, Learning Organizations, Strategic Sustainability, etc.) and use it to practice and advance regenerative systems sustainability planning. Master the five disciplines of learning organizations and apply them to your work as relevant. A 'Learning Organization' is a concept first described by Peter Senge as an organization where people continuously learn and enhance their capabilities to create. It consists of five main disciplines: team learning, shared vision, mental models, personal mastery, and systems thinking.

• Make the market for regenerative systems sustainability and urbanism. Start choosing it now, in current budgets, decisions, projects, plans, etc.;  specify it in contracts; offer it as consultant services; hold symposiums on the current leading edge and best practices, inviting the consultants, vendors, and “consumers of such services (municipal purchasing, planning departments, etc.) into a live educational event.

2. Planning Departments:

• Start with No. 1, above.

• Shift focus or add a primary work program and team to create the regenerative built environment/economy that achieves the regenerative systems sustainability performance imperatives.

• Conduct a strategic assessment to identify barriers, opportunities, and the best path forward.

• Revise regulations, zoning, and guidelines.

• Update (reinvent) the Comprehensive or General Plan focused on creating the regenerative built environment/economy (including infrastructure). Pursue/include scale jumping beyond the Department’s primary portfolio of land use planning to those of other departments responsible for other specific municipal functions (water, wastewater, energy, etc.) and beyond the city’s boundaries as needed to address barriers. Consider reaching beyond the obvious domain of buildings, roads, and infrastructure to the surrounding regional hinterland and beyond to the supply chains, agriculture, environment, and economy that connect to the city itself. The Comprehensive Plan focused on creating a regenerative built environment, economy, and city would:  

  • • • Allow Planning to fulfill its role in defining and establishing the values, goals, objectives, policies, and guidelines of a regenerative city.

      • It would allow planning to identify the full set of barriers across the system preventing regenerative systems sustainability performance, and to develop the policies, rules, and programs that that would eliminate current barriers at the level of the individual project and plan and that fully enable their contributions to whole systems sustainability success.

      • Accommodate growth.

      • Renovate the existing built environment.

      • Restore nature.

      • Fully mitigate climate change (carbon neutral or take back).

      • Defend against increasing damage and risk during the decade-to-100+ years of climate system recalibration.

      • Plan and design for the new context of increasingly inhospitable conditions, accelerating unsustainability, and new nature from the hydrological and ecological changes wrought by climate change.

      • Revise laws and regulations so that unsustainability is not legal or otherwise supported and sustainability is legal and supported. Also, do it to design the context of the market so the price system generates the market dynamic towards regenerative systems sustainability instead of catastrophic climate change and unsustainability. 

      • Invent new forms of governance, as necessary for any initiative, for shifting to, defining, and implementing regenerative systems sustainability to create learning organizations, institutions, and society.

      • Assess and define a new approach to local public finance that fully funds the operating and capital budgets required to deliver a sufficiently optimized service bundle. 

      • Based on a regenerative city comprehensive plan, assess the degree to which the city can influence the processes, materials, etc. – the design configurations – of the whole economy, local and nonlocal actions of locally based firms, and develop a strategic initiative and partnership to spur the transition to the regenerative ecological economy. 

• Implement it with monitoring, continuous innovation, mid-stream adjustments, and celebrating successes. 

3. Private business organizations

1. 1. Follow Nos. 1 & 2 above, as applicable, focused on producing the products and services.

   2. Follow the example of Interface Corporation, a long-time leader of business sustainability. https://www.interface.com/US/en-US/sustainability/sustainability-overview (from a Google search for “Interface Corporation”).

• Interface is the first global flooring manufacturer to sell all products as carbon neutral across their full life cycle.

• They provide ingredient details on their products through certification programs including Cradle to Cradle® and Health Product Declarations (HPDs). In addition, all Interface flooring and adhesives are certified to meet stringent indoor air quality standards for low VOC emissions. 

• After 25 years of pursuing “Mission Zero,” in November 2019, Interface announced Mission Zero's success ahead of its original 2020 target and turned its full attention to its next mission, Climate Take Back™ (link), which aims to reverse global warming.

4. Governmental bodies (legislative, service delivery, etc.):

• Follow Nos., 1, 2, and 3 as pertinent.

• Lead the public choice of the (macro) systems change required for regenerative living systems success: that is, reversing the twin interconnected challenges of climate change in time and unsustainability by creating the regenerative ecological economy of perpetual inclusive prosperity and abundance by using the regenerative living systems sustainability and urbanism approach.

5. Non-Governmental/Non-Profit Sector:

• Follow Nos. 1, 2, and 3 as pertinent.

• Lead the support for the government’s leadership. Use education for decision-makers and citizens, policy advocacy, and messaging regarding the public choice of the systems change needed for success over climate change and unsustainability; that is the shift to using the emerging innovation we are calling regenerative systems sustainability and regenerative urbanism.