REGENESIS

Partnering people 320 Aztec Street 505 986 8338

and their place Santa Fe 505 986 0339 fax
to regenerate New Mexico www.regenesisgroup.com
ecosystems and 87501 regenesis@qwest.net
the human spirit
regenesis@regenesisgroup.com

THE REGENESIS APPROACH:

SUSTAINABILITY AND THE PATTERNS OF PLACE

Amidst the current widespread shift toward green values and practices, many institutions are
seeking to transform their impact as determiners of environmental health. This is no simple task.
New technologies, tools, metrics, and guidelines combine to form a seemingly endless list of
considerations that often leaves a project stretched thin. Further, even on those projects that reach
or surpass their goals for higher efficiency and lower impact, virtually all of the larger
environmental issues surrounding soil, water, and habitat degradation remain unaddressed. In
short, going green is not only a stretch—it is also simply not enough.

True sustainability requires more than adding green components and techniques. Achieving
sustainability requires the integration of nature and people into a living system in which each
element supports and is supported by the whole for long-term viability. This whole-systems
approach does not leave out green technologies, but rather integrates their use into a larger and
more meaningful context. In order to create an environmentally sustainable condition, we must
arrive at an understanding of how the natural ecological system functions so that we can design
effective relationships between the project, or built environment, and the natural environment.

The question of how to generate that understanding, and then how to translate that understanding
into design concepts and principles, remains one of the fundamental challenges of our time—and,
it is the specific challenge addressed by the Regenesis Approach to development. Core to this
approach is the understanding that ecological systems, through the forces of their geology,
hydrology, and biotic communities, organize themselves around certain identifiable patterns that
are unique to each place. Cultural systems, woven over time through human settlement, economic
development, and social interaction, also organize themselves into patterns that shape and are
shaped by the ecology of the landscape. The fundamental underlying cause for this
interdependency of patterns is that both human and biotic life forms require the same basic
resources to flourish—only very recently in human history has the ability to drastically alter the
pattern of natural resource availability become possible and accepted.

This premise is nothing new: human integration with nature is a hallmark of the pre-industrial
indigenous cultures, and is observable through not only folklore and spiritual beliefs but also
through their relationship with the land and natural resources. However, because our modern
human communities are often separated from direct and meaningful connection with the ecology
of place, these patterns no longer shape our conscious decision making with regard to land-use
practices and resource use.

The Regenesis Approach develops a “pattern understanding” of how a place as a whole works in
order to identify and make explicit new possibilities for sustainable engagement with natural
systems. It moves past the model of mitigating the “damage” caused by human development into
creating a built environment that actually contributes to the health and viability of its place.
Designs (including stormwater management, landscaping, and infrastructural components)
generated from an understanding of these patterns of place are:
 • ecologically healthful and health-generating (rather than just lower-impact);
• inspiring to and supported by the community; and
• resilient against economic hardship.

The Regenesis Approach consists of three distinct but overlapping streams of work.

Integral Assessment™: Understanding Place

Our ecological and cultural systems consultants conduct a whole-systems assessment of a site and
its larger geographic context to uncover the fundamental patterns of place that can be seen in the
geologic, hydrologic, biotic, and human cultural systems.

Story of Place™: Making that Understanding Comprehensible and Transferrable

A place’s community is often made up of many diverse groups of people with unique histories and
viewpoints. A community is made further diverse by the multiple perspectives of members of a
design and development team entering the community to work on a given project. While each
person, family, and community group is unique, each shares the unifying context of place. While
the uniqueness of place can be discovered through scientific data or historical texts, not every
community member is a scientist or historian. To make the unifying context of place accessible to
all community members, including the design team, Regenesis delivers a Story of PlaceTM. The
story or narrative form creates a sense of identity of place that design team members and
stakeholders can engage with and carry forward in a way that lists of facts and data cannot provide
a basis for.

Through their engagement with Story of PlaceTM, design team members are able to create specific
principles and design concepts that:

• Enable different specialists to find their specific niche without losing sight of how their
contribution serves the whole, and how it is co-dependent on the work of others;
• Ensure that sustainability goals and indicators for the parts (water, energy, etc.) are tied to
the desired evolution of the whole system;
• Build a foundation of shared meaning and purpose that supports deep collaboration.

Stakeholder Engagement: Inspiring the Community

Each person in a place’s community holds a unique thread that can be woven into the story of the
whole. In the past, Regenesis has worked with scientists, business owners, historians, landowners,
and other community members to elicit their valuable contribution to the Story of Place™, which
can then be presented to and regenerated by other community members. This organic engagement
process is both educational and inspiring for all involved. The participatory-action research
method employed amplifies a sense of stewardship for the place and for the project, reconnecting
people to what they care about in their place and community.

Often, the resulting growth in understanding and community support of the project enables a
“community charrette” in which community members become co-creators, shaping a vision for
their own distinctive contribution to the project’s purpose and/or to the evolution of the place’s
potential. In past projects, these endeavors have ranged from the creation of educational programs
and/or processes, community stewardship organizations, community gardens or land use trusts,
new local businesses or other economic development opportunities, and more.