GREEN
to the Power of Three
Regenerative development can improve the living and working conditions for both natural and human communities by healing the earth through development. By Ben Haggard
T
hese days there seems to be a common feeling of frustration among green designers and builders. We’re making advances in green building technology, there’s growing market acceptance for our efforts, and yet we’re left with a nagging sense that the real problem hasn’t been addressed. Sure, we’ve made major headway in energy and resource conservation, waste reduction, materials replacement and quality of life improvements for employees and residents. But when we step back and look at our progress, it’s usually in terms of doing less damage — less pollution, fewer toxins, less open space lost, and less consumption of non-renewable energy. How many people would say they got into green building just to slow down the damage to earth? Most of us got involved because we want to reverse the degradation, not just slow it down. The good news is that the means for initiating this reversal are not only available now, they are synergistic with current green
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building practices — amplifying their effectiveness, in some cases exponentially so. The key to achieving this level of amplification, to getting to “green cubed,” comes from a comprehensive approach that starts from a radically different perspective — an approach called “regenerative development.” Development, per se, seeks to create an improved environment for human activities. Green development also seeks to accomplish this aim, but in a way that minimizes the impact on the earth. Regenerative development goes one step further by aiming to improve the living and working conditions for both natural and human communities, and to do so by healing the earth through development. How can the earth be healed through development? Even the question seems startling in the context of increasingly bitter pro- vs. anti-development debates, in which protecting dwindling resources such as open space, agricultural land, clean water, etc., is seen as www.EDCmag.com
regenerative development antithetical to healthy economies. Yet the idea of development as a force for ecological and social regeneration may be the only way we can reconcile camps that currently see themselves as sworn enemies. This is not an idle question for developers and builders. Even green developers find themselves caught in the middle of battles that drain resources and spirit away from our ultimate goal: the regeneration of the earth’s systems as a source of productive life for all its inhabitants.
Concepts Behind Regenerative Development Integrated design, which grew out of the insight that a building is a system of systems, has given a major boost to the effectiveness of green building. Among other benefits, it has allowed designers and builders to eliminate many of the interface and transition problems that result when new green technologies and materials are introduced in a fragmented way. It also optimizes the effectiveness of each of the individual technologies by seeing them as interactive and interdependent elements of an integrated whole. Regenerative development can be seen as an extension of integrated design in that it recognizes that the site into which a building is embedded is an even more complex and dynamic system of systems, with both ecological and social/cultural dimensions. Understanding this dynamic picture enables us to match human activities and aspirations to those of the land, integrating what we build into the living fabric of a site to create a successful marriage of built and natural systems. Regenerative development not only enhances the effectiveness and benefits of green technologies within the built environment, but also turns buildings and infrastructure into vehicles for regenerating the health and increasing the value of the site, enhancing the generative capacities of both human and natural resources. Learning how to apply regenerative development begins not with a change of techniques but with a change of mind — bringing a new way of thinking about how we plan, design, construct and operate our buildings. This includes shifting our paradigms, discerning a site’s core, learning from nature and building to place. Doing the Paradigm Flip. Regenerative development derives much of its creative power from a fundamental shift of focus, a flipping of paradigms. It’s akin to the way drawing teachers try to shift focus when they teach their students to see “negative space” rather than just looking at objects. Rather than seeing a site, or a development project, as a collection of things (slopes, drainages, roads, buildings, etc.), a regenerative designer cultivates the ability to see them as energy systems — webs of interconnected dynamic processes that are continually structuring and restructuring a site. Going to the Core. Seeing the complexity that surrounds us on a site can be overwhelming if we don’t have some way to understand it in relationship to our own efforts. Another essential step in regenerative development is thus being able to discern the core of a www.EDCmag.com
At a private residence in the White Mountains of northern Arizona, aboveground cisterns catch clean roof runoff and hold it where it can be gravity fed for gardens and other purposes.
At the White Mountains residence, the clients used locally available materials with low embodied energy.
given place. The core is what organizes all of the dynamics that make up a place, giving it a recognizable character and nature. For example, at the Rodale Institute in western Pennsylvania, the site organizes itself around growing forests as a way of supporting the soil’s hydrological balance. By contrast, Sundance Resort, in the mountains of Utah, is located in a place that is organized around responding to periodic catastrophic events (avalanches, floods, fires, etc.). Failure to adequately take these core processes into account makes any development susceptible to ongoing problems, and even failure. On the other hand, organizing the patterns of development to align with and enhance these processes creates the basis for a truly successful and mutually beneficial relationship between people and place. Learning from the Master. Once one makes these mental shifts, the genius of nature is revealed. Some of the most exciting ecological advances in manufacturing are coming out of “biomimicry,” the recognition and use of the wisdom of nature’s “manufacturing” processes. A new exterior paint that essentially cleans itself when it rains came about by March I April 2002
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regenerative development
Every aspect of the design of the White Mountains residence attempts to reduce or eliminate the need for mechanical or electrical energy, while taking advantage of solar and biological energy.
Site selection was a careful consideration in building the White Mountains residence.
asking the question: How does nature keep things clean when needed? We have as much, if not more, to learn in the arena of development. Nature is the master developer, continuously at work developing a site in harmony with its unique character to create optimum conditions for generating and sustaining life. For example, through understanding how nature manages and processes water as a source of life, we gain insight into how to organize our human developments around water to achieve the same purpose. Building to Place, Not Formula. Infrastructure is usually a product of engineering formulas that are adapted to specific site conditions. However, in starting with formulas, we tend to miss creative opportunities to use natural infrastructure. In contrast, regenerative development starts from the belief that we can achieve continuous improvement of living conditions on earth for human and natural communities by developing in harmony with nature. Harmonizing our efforts with nature requires us to see each place as unique, as having its own distinctive nature that acts as an organizing core for all of the life processes that occur in that place.
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Regenerative development thus requires close attention to the uniqueness of a site, using the particularities of a given place as parameters for determining the kind of engineering and design solutions that are appropriate and possible in that place. Such designs are able to deliver projects that are ultimately more practical, as well as more effective in their larger ecological goals. Regenerative development reduces hazards that result from a failure to adequately account for site dynamics (such as movement of water, cold air, wind, fire, wildlife, etc., or social and economic factors, such as local cultural significance). It also takes advantage of unique opportunities that a given site offers, such as distinctive soils and vegetative communities, or solar aspect. This attention to minimizing hazards and optimizing opportunities releases energy and resources that would otherwise be used for mitigation and maintenance, allowing them to be used to pursue the ongoing increase in value for a project. In regenerative development, we ask the questions: “What is the nature of this particular place? What role would it ask us as human beings to play so that it can better realize the full potential of its nature? And how can we weave our own life processes, including the way we house, feed, and employ ourselves, into the fabric of this particular place so that both land and people move toward higher and higher expressions of health and aliveness?� These are not rhetorical questions. They can be successfully answered within the context of a given place, though not by depending solely on conventional methods of evaluation. To some extent, they require the subjective engagement in questions of meaning and purpose by all those who will be involved in a project — designers, developers, builders and end users.
Regenerative Development in a Residential Setting Over the last five years, a Santa Fe-based team of design and development consultants, trained in permaculture and systems thinking, has been applying the insights of regenerative development to projects around the country. Their aim is to shift the way the development industry views and carries out its role with regard to the social and ecological communities it operates within. The examples included in this article come out of the experience of this group as it has engaged a wide range of clients and institutions, generating in the process a variety of principles and frameworks that enable A few of these principles are laid out in this article as a way of indicating how specific aspects of the projects were derived. It would be easy to interpret these examples as collections of ecological design techniques and solutions, many of which are already familiar. However, the real power in these projects comes not from techniques, but from the multiplicity of connections among the different elements of the design: water harvesting supports biological regeneration; biological regeneration
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shifts thermal dynamics and hence the context for energy use; more sophisticated energy systems affect economic performance and potential; economic viability provides a basis for social vitality; and so on. Let’s look first at a fairly simple example — a family who wanted to build a home on a semi-rural site in the White Mountains of northern Arizona. The clients wished to be actively involved in every aspect of planning, design and construction for the project, and have acted as their own general contractor. Their aspiration was to create a home that was ecologically appropriate — not only in terms of its use of materials, energy, water, etc., but also in terms of its relationship to wildlife and the adjoining forest ecosystem.
Some Principles for Regenerative Development •Work from the embedded wisdom of nature. Living systems respond to their environments by structuring themselves in ways that optimize opportunities for life. By studying these systems in the context of their environment, we can do the same. •Orient all aspects of design toward maximizing the use of “free” energies available on the site. •Regeneration of land through development depends on the regeneration of spirit within those who have a stake in development. •Find the leverage point in the system where land will benefit from development.
Principle: Work from the embedded wisdom of nature. Living systems respond to their environments by structuring themselves in ways that optimize opportunities for life. By studying these systems in the context of their environment, we can do the same. Regenerative development begins with a site assessment that seeks to understand the complex and dynamic web of relationships that make a place what it is. Without that understanding, human communities too often find themselves unintentionally in conflict
•Stability in natural systems derives not from the diversity of elements present, but from diversity of connections among those elements. •The ongoing development of new intelligence about systems is the real basis for increasing the value of those systems.
with the natural forces that are themselves continuously “developing” the land. The assessment work begins with the recognition that each place is a dynamic entity with its own unique history and future and set of dynamics — growing and evolving, forming and
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regenerative development Regenerative development starts from the belief that we can achieve continuous improvement of living conditions on earth for human and natural communities through developing in harmony with nature. decomposing, continuously influenced by the larger system it is embedded in. A regenerative site assessment investigates: •how the present site was shaped by interactions and relationships among climate, geology, biological communities, and human history and patterns of use (and therefore what it’s likely future patterns of response will be); • the state of the health of those relationships today; and •where the greatest potential lies for building healthier, mutually beneficial relationships in the future. In the case of the Arizona family, the initial assessment of the site indicated that the location they had chosen for the house had a number of problems — it was in a low place where cold air moving off the adjacent mountains would collect; it had poor solar access due to adjacent forest; it was associated with heavy clay soils; it was exposed to seasonal wind patterns, and it required extensive road cutting through most of the property to access it. After careful consideration, the clients chose a far superior location. The new site was protected from fire and wind, had good solar access, was adjacent to an alluvial fan with excellent agricultural soils, and required carrying the access road and utilities a minimal distance (thus reducing both construction costs and impacts on wildlife corridors.) They were able to select this new location by close observation of patterns on the site: patterns of fire scarring, erosion and soil deposition, vegetative communities, weather and wind, archaeological remains, and wildlife movements. What eventually emerged was an understanding of how nature was responding to the site, which clearly indicated where the clients should be in relation to the site. The new house location was also on the keyline, the place where the topography shifts from steep upper slopes to flat areas below. This strategic location enabled the clients to begin conceptualizing their
Located at the interface between the Lower Sonoran Desert and the oak woodlands of the higher elevations,Willow Springs has the potential to be a repository of great biological diversity and richness. 28
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development project in terms of water and how it moves in the landscape (a critical issue in the arid west). Water tends to be shed rapidly off the skeletal soils found on steep slopes. It decelerates once it hits the keyline, depositing sediments and (if vegetative communities are still intact) infiltrating into soils. Unfortunately, more than a century of poor land management practices in the region have stripped the vegetative cover, leaving soils prone to erosion and desertification — water that falls runs off, carrying soil with it, rather than soaking in where it can support life. In this context, carefully placing buildings and infrastructure along the contour, and linking them to gardens, swales and other water harvesting structures, enables the project to act as a filter or net, directing runoff to where it can be infiltrated and put to work to support vegetation.
Principle: Orient all aspects of design toward maximizing the use of “free” energies available on the site. Buildings on the site have been carefully designed with regard to energy. First, the choice of post and beam with straw clay infill as a building material allowed the clients to use locally available materials with low embodied energy. Second, the buildings are passive solar structures in a climate that is both sunny and cold. But perhaps most significant, the buildings are located in relation to landform in a way that will optimize their energy performance over time. They are protected from cold air drainage and pooling, as well as cold northwesterly winds in the winter. They are clustered to amplify these benefits, while creating sheltered outdoor spaces that are temperate year round. Clustering minimizes ongoing costs of maintenance and operations and reduces the amount of infrastructure and landscaping that need to be installed and maintained. Gravity is taken into account as a means of transporting water and other materials on the site. Distances that tools, equipment, or materials need to be transported are reduced. Systems for managing both rainwater and wastewater have been carefully laid out to eliminate any need for pumping. Above ground cisterns catch clean roof runoff and hold it where it can be gravity fed for gardens and other purposes. Runoff from other sources flows gently into infiltration structures, and wastewater is treated in a biological wetlands system below the house and is then gravity fed underground to orchards. Every aspect of the design attempts to reduce or eliminate the need for mechanical or electrical energy, while taking advantage of solar and biological energy. Runoff water supports deciduous trees that provide shade in summer and solar access in winter. www.EDCmag.com
Stages of Regenerative Development While regenerative development takes on many forms depending on the specific place and project, it is possible to identify some of the distinctive stages of a regenerative development process: 1. Elucidating place as a living system into which the project must integrate. The ability to see a place as a living system requires both the rational processes of assessment and data collection, and intuitive processes for discerning how the data comes together into a meaningful whole with an identifiable core. 2. Envisioning the higher order potential that exists in that system, and how integration of project and place can bring that into being.
Once a place is understood in terms of its core nature, it is possible to describe the new potential that could be realized, if the system is allowed to evolve toward greater and greater expression of its nature. 3. Generating a concept for the project, based on this understanding of place and potential. Now that a living and dynamic understanding of place has been developed, a project concept can be generated capable of real synergy with place. 4. Enabling stakeholdership in what could be. The key to the ongoing evolution of the potential being envisioned is active engagement by all the players, in a way that enables them to see the stake they have in
Principle: Regeneration of land through development depends on the regeneration of spirit within those who have a stake in development. Ultimately, we protect the things we really care about. In starting a development with a learning process about how one’s land works as a living system, we lay the basis for reawakening the connection people experience between themselves and the place they inhabit. Even in the early stages of construction and development, the project has galvanized both interest and support from neighbors, friends, subcontractors and county officials. Parts of construction have been done through “barn-raising” style gatherings, with friends and family participating to contribute and to learn. Eventually, the clients hope to share the insights and wisdom they are acquiring from living with and developing their land.
Reaching Mainstream Developers Many of the concepts described in the example above translate readily (and very cost-effectively) to largescale development. One example is Willow Springs, a large-scale project in southern Arizona that is currently in planning. Located at the interface between the Lower Sonoran Desert and the oak woodlands of the higher elevations, Willow Springs has the potential to be a repository of great biological diversity and richness. However the land is badly degraded from grazing, the economies of small communities in the area have been devastated by mine closings, and the entire region is threatened by a tidal wave of development moving up from Tucson and down from Phoenix. Willow Springs is conceived as a coherent and economically viable new town, an alternative to and bulwark against the bedroom and retirement communities mushrooming just south of it. What distinguishes it as www.EDCmag.com
that potential so that they can organize themselves to bring it into being. 5. Generating an aim for the project, the project team and the system as a whole. The project team will need to be able to keep a steady aim as it encounters the vicissitudes of the development process. 6. Translating this vision into reality without collapsing into automatic patterns. To generate an entirely different, or regenerative, outcome from a planning process, the project team will need to continually regenerate for itself an evolving understanding of the unique core of the project against which to reconcile the various issues and design concepts that will emerge.
The understanding that is gained with regard to the possibilities for regeneration of natural systems will become Willow Springs’ most valuable asset as a community. a regenerative development is that it sees the regeneration of the biological health and productivity of its extensive land base (it is located within a 180,000 acre ranch) as the cornerstone for its design, construction, and economic development. In this part of the country, political opposition to any new projects of this scale is usually organized around three key issues: impacts on water quality and availability, threats to critical wildlife habitat and open space, and impacts on social and physical infrastructure. Water is the critical factor when thinking about the future viability of any of the communities in the desert southwest. Water resources are arguably already overallocated, and desertification and urbanization have served to decrease (and continue to decrease) the amount of water available in these systems. Given recent history, any new development is a recipe for disaster. Yet most analyses of water use have an engineering bias and tend to ignore the biological dimension of hydrological systems. It is this biological dimension that can be stimulated and revitalized through careful and intelligent design.
Principle: Find the leverage point in the system where land will benefit from development. Much of Willow Springs, like the residential example described above, is located at the keyline in the broad landform. This is one of the important recharge zones for the aquifer that serves the entire region. Because of March I April 2002
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regenerative development Learning how to apply regenerative development begins not with a change of techniques but with a change of mind. past grazing practices, much of the stormwater flows off site in destructive “flash” events. Water that speeds off the rocky slopes of the mountains above the project has the opportunity, if adequately slowed, to soak in and recharge the aquifer on which local communities depend. Willow Springs is conceived as a net, an extensive water harvesting structure. This is accomplished primarily by laying out the community, its roads, its open spaces and its infrastructure in relation to contour. This allows the harmonious development of broadscale infiltration structures to be introduced in parallel with development. Simultaneously, these infiltration structures allow Willow Springs to address another significant issue associated with development — runoff from impermeable surfaces. Development of any scale introduces a large amount of impermeable surface into a landscape. This is one of the ways that development becomes such a destructive influence. However, if all impermeable surfaces are organized along the contour, and if they are always coupled with forested water infiltration structures, then roads and buildings become concentrators, collectors, or decelerators of stormwater. They provide the source of irrigation for reforesting the developed area. An additional benefit to this approach is the reduction or elimination of the need for costly and detrimental storm drain systems.
Principle: Stability in natural systems derives not from the diversity of elements present, but from diversity of connections among those elements. Many of the design solutions that address water use also address questions of habitat. By buffering, stabilizing and reforesting the watercourses of the site, primary wildlife corridors are not only maintained, but also improved. On-contour forested areas and open
spaces (supported by and functioning as water harvesting systems) create a web of connectivity between the drainage corridors, allowing wildlife greater range. Rehydration and revegetation of the landscape permit a greater range and diversity of species. And higher clustered densities in portions of the developed areas decrease the impact of development, allowing higher percentages of open space.
Principle: The ongoing development of new intelligence about systems is the real basis for increasing the value of those systems. Finally, Willow Springs is conceived as a net employer for the region. As a concentrated population center, Willow Springs will become a net generator rather than a consumer of key services (including shopping, health care, professional services, etc.) for the region — services that local residents currently must drive an hour or more to obtain. The ongoing restoration and management of watersheds, a key to the community’s longterm health, also offers additional employment opportunities. The project’s extensive land base provides opportunities for a wide range of economic enterprises — from ranching, hunting, agriculture, wild-crafting and the value-adding industries associated with these activities, to bird-watching and outdoor adventures. But ultimately, it is the understanding that is gained with regard to the possibilities for regeneration of natural systems that will become Willow Springs’ most valuable asset as a community. Given its ambitions and the care with which it is being planned, Willow Springs stands to become one of the most interesting living laboratories in the country for studying the potential for evolutionary collaboration among people and ecosystems (and, as such, has begun to attract the attention of some of the major universities in the area). The expertise that is developed there will become a valued export as more and more communities grapple with comparable issues in the coming decades.
New Hope and New Challenges
At the Willow Springs development, rehydration and revegetation of the landscape will permit a greater range and diversity of species. 30
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Regenerative development holds out new hope for understanding how we can harmonize human activities with the continuing regeneration of life on our planet even as we continue to develop our potential as humans. It has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the green development industry precisely because it takes the core aspirations of that industry to heart: design and construction need to serve the wellbeing of people, the planet and all living things. By integrating the lessons being learned from the study of living systems and how they are organized and evolved, regenerative development places that aspiration within reach. Regenerative development conceptualizes projects as www.EDCmag.com
engines of positive or evolutionary change for the systems — both natural and human — into which they are built. Rather than looking at how to minimize impacts on wildlife habitat and corridors, for example, regenerative designs look at how to increase the quality and effectiveness of habitat through the design and development process. Regenerative development takes into account the importance of delivering new capability into the communities that surround a project. And it recognizes the need to integrate the economic activities associated with construction and operations (and eventual decommissioning) into the ongoing development of economic health and stability of local communities. However, regenerative development requires a shift in the way we think and where we place emphasis. It’s not tied to formulas or rules. What’s required, rather, is the ability to combine intuition and traditional knowledge with scientific methodologies and information. Our projects need to respond to the uniqueness of a given place, and therefore we need to come to each project fresh. Automatic and conventional or cookiecutter approaches are antithetical to regeneration. To sustain the ongoing enrichment of potential that is the hallmark of regenerative development, projects must act as a continually unfolding source of inspiration and spirit for all of the stakeholder constituencies that are affected by them. They must enable all of us to
Regenerative development takes into account the importance of delivering new capability into the communities that surround a project. perceive and pursue new orders of potential — in ourselves, our families and communities, and in our work. Fortunately, making the shift to a regenerative approach is feasible, delivers more value into every aspect of a project, and is inspiring to everyone involved. EDC About the Author: Ben Haggard has spent 18 years designing and building ecologically appropriate landscape and reclamation projects. His award-winning designs have been featured in a number of magazines and newspapers, including Architectural Digest, Garden Design, National Wildlife Magazine, Sunset and Organic Gardening. He is a co-founder of Regenesis Design and Development Collaborative, Inc., where he has been working for the last four years with a wide range of clients to develop projects that are beneficial for both people and the earth. He can be reached at 505-9860631 or benhaggard@earthlink.net.
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