regenerative community development framework©
Process Tool, Integral Perceiving Tool, and Evaluation Tool
​
Regenerative Community Development Process Tool. This tool guides human communities through a co-creative, iterative process of regeneration across scales. Regeneration is a process that manifests new and increasingly higher expressions of life and levels of health, well-being, prosperity, and happiness. The process begins with “Explore Regenerative Development,” moving to the right through a series of developmental sub-processes to help communities think and act holistically and systemically in both the short- and long-term. The flower graphic reminds us that sub-processes are dynamic, linked, overlapping, and working holistically to develop capacities in whole living systems to thrive. Since sub-processes are linked, they may be revisited as necessary to continually increase learning, awareness of, understanding of, and regenerative relationships to place.
​
​
​
​
​
Sub-Process 2. Exploring Place--Integral Perceiving. This tool guides communities in perceiving/discovering relationships and patterns that give, have given, or need to be present to bring life vitality to a place. It helps people work holistically with complex living systems, exploring key life-giving elements and their relationships across scales. For example, one might explore how water moves through a landscape, from the scale of region to watershed, community, site, then individual, contributing to life-giving processes. One would also explore how water interacts with soil across scales and their relationship in enabling life. One might then add food to the exploration, and so on. Through this process, key life-giving patterns emerge that provide the basis for regenerative development concepts and designs specific to a place.
Map It
Map current and potential (i.e., life-giving) flows, relationships, patterns, and nodes.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Figure 1. Levels of Work in living systems. Every community—i.e., living system—engages in different levels of work. All are essential to the system’s continuing vitality, viability, and evolutionary capacity. Lower levels of work (operate and maintain) focus on the current existence of the system itself, often improving operating efficiency or maintaining effectiveness. Upper levels (improve and regenerate) introduce potential life and creativity by asking what is a system’s unique role in contributing to increasing health and vitality of the larger systems of which it is a part.
From Mang, P. and B. Reed. (2012). Designing from place: a regenerative framework and methodology. Building Research & Information 40:23-38.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Regenerative Community Development Evaluation Tool. This tool guides communities at a variety of scales through a holistic process of evaluating to what extent and in what ways living systems are regenerative. It may also be used to evaluate development and design plans. Regenerative Development Principles and Core Characteristics of Regenerative Living Systems guide the development of Indicators and Strategies for regeneration. This is done simultaneously in Ecological and Social dimensions of living systems as well as Process and Product domains of development and design activities. The Integral Perceiving (IP) sub-process guides the translation of general Indicators and Strategies into those specific to place and aids in manifesting potential in a place. Users may note system alignment &/or potential in the Dimensions and Domains columns. The flower graphic reminds us that this process is dynamic and integrative; users may find it helpful to move fluidly between components.
​
​
​
​
​
