The idea
was simple enough: gather an experienced bunch of
permaculturalists, add corporate consultants who base
their work on living systems models, blend at high
speed and see what happens. Nearly five years later,
the experiment is beginning to show results not that
it's gotten any easier living in a high speed blender
and Regenesis, Inc. is slowly establishing itself as
a leading innovator in the field of green
development. Regenesis was born out of a series of
two-day meetings held in Santa Fe, NM, in the winter
of 1997. About a dozen people with ties to
permaculture wrestled with questions about how to
increase the effectiveness of the permaculture model
to shift what was going on in the world, and how to
use business as a way to bring permaculture into the
mainstream. We focused on the field of development,
which includes builders, architects, planners,
engineers, etc. Our strategy was to evolve the
industry itself by working as consultants with these
professionals, helping them to be more effective at
making their world a better and more sustainable
place. After all, making the world a better place is
what draws many people into these professions in the
first place. But development requires them to evolve
their understanding of the living systems they are
working in, and consequently to evolve their goals
and their methods. As a result of this focus, we have
formulated a number of innovative approaches and ways
of thinking about development that have, we hope, the
potential to set an entirely new standard for how it
occurs in this country. We call this approach
Regenerative Development.
An important premise that lies behind the thinking at
Regenesis is that human beings have a potentially
beneficial and even evolutionary role to play in
natural systems and that development can be a
powerful tool either for destruction or for good. But
in order to play that role, humans must come to
understand, and then align themselves with, the
essence of a place.
If we think of places as alive and dynamic, then we
want to understand the inherent potential in them,
and to enable them to evolve more and more toward
realization of that potential. It's not so different
from the way we might want to treat our children,
seeing their unique potential and then doing whatever
we can to help them bring that potential into flower.
To be more specific, let's think about site
assessment, a commonly discussed process within the
permaculture community. Site assessments often end up
yielding a laundry list of characteristics we learn
about the effects of wind, water and other energies
on a site. We study soils and underlying geological
structures, we classify plant and animal communities
and attempt to describe their relative health. But
this is like trying to understand a person by
describing the color of eyes or hair, or the way they
walk. When it comes to living systems, the whole is
far more than the sum of the parts. If we actually
want to know someone, and if we want to know a place,
we must penetrate beneath the surface characteristics
to discover the organizing core that generates those
characteristics. Like people, places have soul.
The soul of a place is unique, distinctive. It
engages in it's own processes for organizing life,
and it has its own evolutionary tendencies based on
its own inherent potential. If we want to create
projects that are truly regenerative, then we must
discern this underlying evolutionary tendency and
shape our actions to support and nourish it. We need
to see the will (or essence) of the living system so
that we can align with it.
One of the problems with many green developments
(including many permaculture projects) is that we
design them beautifully with regard to their parts.
But then we forget that those parts need to come
together into a meaningful whole, one that is in
appropriate relationship to the larger community and
natural systems it's nested in. Part of what makes a
relationship appropriate is when our project
contributes back to the health of its environment,
enabling it to be more itself rather than diminishing
it.
At Campo Verde, a small subdivision of five homes in
northern New Mexico, Regenesis described the core
process of the place as one of concentrations and
then slow dissemination of resources. Located in a
fertile river valley, the site had a long history of
traditional agriculture. Every aspect of the site
design attempted to regenerate the site's
agricultural potential, even as it was being
converted to residential use. Acequias, the
traditional irrigation systems of New Mexico, became
the organizing core of the project, just as they had
organized the village design and lifeways that
dominated this site in the past. Designing Campo
Verde to be an "acequia neighborhood,"
Regenesis used the irrigation network to link this
new community to all the other neighborhoods up and
downstream, to link it to the unique history of this
place, and to link it to it's future as a perennial
agricultural forest.
Over time, it has become clear that our work needs to
focus on helping our clients and their professional
consultants to think more systemically to be able to
understand the impacts of their designs on the health
and evolutionary potential of the land and the
communities they are working in. Inviting and
assisting people to think outside of the paradigms
they are accustomed to can be challenging, but it is
also rewarding. The sense of inspiration and
excitement that enters a project when it is clearly
aligned with the spirit of a place is palpable.
Neighbors who have typically opposed development find
themselves supporting projects that they can clearly
see enhance the well-being of the communities and
landscapes they care about. These projects bring a
new spirit into communities, since they point the way
to a possible future of harmony between people and
nature.
Currently, Regenesis is working on projects
throughout the United States. We describe ourselves
as eco-logical resources to design and development
professionals. The scale of projects we work on
ranges from individual homes and farms to entire new
towns. We work with city planning departments and
community organizations, as well as with developers
and architects. In every case, our objective is to
create a deeper and more enduring relationship
between people and place.
Ben Haggard
is an author, educator, and design consultant. He
authored Living Community, A Permaculture Case Study
at Sol y Sombra. He spent many years working in the
permaculture field and was a founder of Permaculture
Drylands Institute. He is a principal and founding
member of Regenesis, Inc. and lives in Santa Fe, NM.
For more information about Regenesis, please visit www.regenesisgroup.com.
