An Economy of Place — Part 6
How close are the stewards of our places to a living systems paradigm?
When I think of place-based enterprises, I think of the management of regions, cities and towns, the design and construction of buildings and homes, destination management within tourism and leisure, and land-based businesses like estates, farms, marine reserves and national parks. But they can also be large brands whose places of work extend like giant spiders webs across the world, creating their own unique ecosystems. These are big fields to study but there are common threads to most of them.
Urban Development. If we consider the process of design of a new urban development or housing development, what usually happens is that a cascading list of beneficiaries are the recipients of the financial benefits from the project that may be a long way removed from the impact and potential the development has on the locality.
- A regional or city authority may be designated to build a certain number of houses, driven by population rises, shifts or changes in ways of inhabiting place (more single people, young people not staying as long in the parental home etc).
- Property investors stand to make less money from affordable housing, so preference is given to executive homes which are placed on the premium sites with a few affordable houses thrown into a corner somewhere.
- The concept and design is done by a group of architects, consultants, designers who all benefit from the project but may have no vested interest in the health of the locality, just their profit.
- The community will be ‘consulted’ once the design and plans have been made without their input, and the consultation designed in such detail that every possible question and spark of ‘opposition’ will be prepared for and crushed as soon as it raises its head.
What the place wants to be, what its potential to contribute to the growth and development of its ecosystem and people, is rarely taken into account. Usually a smart brand strap-line is smacked onto the development to give it some added pizzazz that helps sell properties within it. That strap-line that may, or may not, have any true relationship to the potential of place. Nature rarely has a seat at the table, other than in a few imperatives which talk about managing biodiversity trade-offs. However stunning or technologically proficient the design, if the net benefit is extracted from the local economy and taken elsewhere there is no value added to the project or nested system in which the development will be built.
Place-sourced regenerative development looks at the deep essence of a place, through the unique patterns of energy, movement, culture, biology, geology, wildlife, ways of habitation and helps to surface the emergent potential of a development and the role it could play in the evolution of the systems within which it sits. This is a complex process of research and data and sensing deeply into what wants to emerge through the collective intelligence of the stakeholders that are interested in the development — all of whom are involved.
There are innovations arising though. Portsmouth City Council’s new plans for Tipner West are groundbreaking in seeking to leverage technology to deliver both social and environmental advantage. They plan to bring kerb-free and car-free living to the new development; one to encourage better communication between neighbours, the second as an environmental bonus. They’re looking closely at circular and modular design, local production, and have a very strong locally-source team in place to steward the development. They’re working closely with the education system to ensure there are school learning journeys and partnerships that can eduate young people on good design and the challenges of building in the 21st century. It’s never without challenge, and there are some tricky environmental and ecological decisions ahead, especially in relation to wildlife habitat and land reclammation, but the vision of something radically different is emerging.
Home-builder Thakeham Homes in the south of England has an ambitious net zero agenda, but more excitingly is integrated social projects such as resident-owned and managed stores and community centres in its developments — a start towards encouraging owner-based intervention in design.
There are yet more radical ideas emerging in reconnecting urban and rural experiences. Two such projects in England are Wild Hotels and Re:Live, the brainchildren of Anton Chernikov. Re:live is a smart village model designed for individuals, couples and families who aspire to live with greater community, wellbeing and connection to nature which will combine multi-generation co-housing and regenerative farming which you might expect, but at its core a developmental learning centre aiming to support residents and visitors alike in personal, place-based and systems-based regenerative development.
This is critical to being able to design regeneratively. Finding a role for the place-sourced project within the evolution of the system in which it sits.
Tourism. In tourism, the existing economic model for destination management is usually numeric and quantitative. The destination manager’s aim is to grow footfall, per capita spending, contribution to GDP, and increase jobs. There is very little consideration given to the needs, impact on or benefits to the local host population, and there are no measurement systems in place to look at the potential for increasing the wellbeing of the people and businesses in a destination. As a strategy, you could argue that increasing visitor numbers has been enormously successful, but it has left a legacy system which regenerative tourism specialist Anna Pollock describes as one in which destination managers have to work with a “(mal)adpative mix of brands, venues, amenities, agencies, people and businesses, which exert a significant impact on the local environment and infrastructure”.
In the UK in Devon and Cornwall for example, water authorities are under enormous strain in the Summer to provide for the demand that the influx of tourists impose on the area’s water supply. Frequently water must be pumped from one side of the county to another. We have seen iconic destinations such as KoPhiPi beach — made famous by Leo DiCaprio’s film — overwhelmed by demand and have to close. As the pandemic has radically altered travel patterns, we have seen many localities around Europe that would normally ‘export’ their tourists and their associated impact to Southern Europe, struggle under the sudden pressure of increased footfall — the Bournemouth beach effect.
Within the economic model, time and again, it can be seen that the extraction of wealth generated by tourism goes to a small fraction of the population that actually provide, and are affected by, the growth in tourism. From Caribbean hotels owned by distant corporations where the local population can aspire to work as waiters or cleaners, to day-trip destinations where hoards of people decamp, spend very little money, but leave huge amounts of litter behind them — the numeric strategy is neither working for destination, people or planet.
But things are changing. Pioneers like the government and tourism boards of New Zealand, destination management centres like Visit Flanders, place-based projects like The Burren in Ireland — all under the systemic guidance of Anna Pollock — are breaking new ground and designing tourism economies with a different, more mutual and reciprocal relationship between host and visitor, where the experience has a developmental opportunity designed into the connection. In a conversation I hosted between Anna, Elke Dens of Visit Flanders and Tina O’Dwyer who worked with The Burren, acknowledged that regenerative culture takes a much more holisitic approach to combining human wellbeing with the wellbeing of the entire ecosystem in which humans live, but that many parts of the tourism industry are still only just embracing the idea of sustainability — so a long way to go to living systems.
Cities have long been magnets for people and centres of wealth generation. As our models of business have changed from agricultural to industrial and on to services around the world, so cities have become ever more important icons where a ‘better life’ is anticipated. Just 200 years ago only 5% of the world’s population lived in cities; it passed 50% of a much larger global population in 2008 and is scheduled to reach 80+% by 2040.
Cities play a vital role in economic development through providing economies of scale, agglomeration, efficient infrastructure and services through density and concentration in transportation, communications power, human interactions, water and sanitation services. We have seen some of the highest increases in GDP in the past few decades, in the global south where urbanisation has been strongest. Cities are magnets for talent and skilled labour that comes seeking its fortune, and are hotbeds of creativity and innovation. Urbanisation also transforms culture and behaviour, forcing people to learn new skills and ways of working.
They also tend to grow wealth exponentially in a reinforcing feedback loop, where those that start with more, tend to accrue more. This is particularly true in the case of property and land in cities, where property ownership from Dubai to London and Shanghai is the privilege of the uber-wealthy only. The polarity of that ownership is often the rapid development of urban poverty, slums and social disruption such as crime. In 2011 McKinsey’s Global Institute predicted that 2000 metropolitan areas in the world could be expected to contribute 75% of global growth. That growth is also a significant driver of consumption. Cities have voracious appetites for energy and goods, and produce prodigious amounts of waste. Estimates suggest that cities are responsible for 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, with transport and buildings being among the largest contributors.
In China alone megacity growth is seeing a strategy of combining cities, including Shenzhen and Guangzhou, a new megacity could have a population of 80 million, and Jing-Jin-Ji which will be home to no fewer than 130 million people, combining the three existing cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Through the National New-type Urbanization Plan’ unveiled in 2014, China aims to move 250 million of its citizens from the country’s rural areas into cities by 2026. Will they create the conditions conducive to life or to its destruction?
Worldwide there are many positive city projects in place to reduce urban impact; from the C40 Cities network, to the Joint Work Programme between UNEP, the World Bank, UN-Habitat, under the facilitating role of Cities Alliance to address cities and climate change, to the bi-partisan peer-to-peer Climate Mayors group in the US. Alongside these many leading think tanks like the Ellen Macarthur Foundation have substantial city-based projects in place.
Perhaps the most talked aboutof all these is economist Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. Adopted at first by a handful of pioneering global cities like Amsterdam and Portland, they Doughnut is now the go-to model for regenerative change in ambitious places like Berlin and Melbourne, Ireland and Copenhagen. The Doughnut’s flexibility as a framework is appealing to regions, cities and villages alike, because of its adaptability of use. Although Kate’s Doughnut Economics Action Lab has produced recommended pathways such as the City Portrait method for Amsterdam, it can be used in innumerable ways from simply sparking discussions about what really matters to village communities and helping them shape where they take action, to integrating existing circular strategies with social development, and sourcing solutions from nature-based intelligence — as they are doing in Amsterdam. If combined with a regenerative developmental approach, it can also provide a bridge and window into the future regenerative economy we need. I am hoping to experiment further with that combination in 2021 so watch this space.
Estates, Landowners, Visitor Attractions. Throughout Europe, there are many large private estates. Many of these have been held in the care of titled families for many generations, gifted to them by royalty over centuries as the prime beauty spots and agricultural land was placed into the control of the ruling aristocracy of the time. In the UK some of these great estates have been passed into the care of the National Trust as funds to maintain them ran out due to the changing patterns of industry. In the South Downs National Park in England over 25% of the park is in the hands of private estates like Goodwood, Wiston, Firle, and Barlavinton as well as the Forestry Commission. The main modern operating model for estates has been a varied combination of tenant farming, event management, a visitor attraction and more recently in the south east, wine production. Events range from high profile projects like Glastonbury and The Festival of Speed at Goodwood, to small open days and educational courses. Their way of being with their stakeholders has been very philanthropic. Stewardship of the land and care of the community is seen as a duty of the estate.
Yet more and more dialogue is suggesting that the philanthropic model — so beloved by the socially-focused giants who emerged in the late 19th century and have continued to develop across the charity, funding and NGO sectors — does not provide the potential for necessary human growth. Philanthropic economy sits firmly in the ‘do more good’ paradigm of thinking that, by its very nature, while seeking to help improverished or degraded others, often imposes its own value and ideal model onto that other without taking into consideration the local desires, culture, and need to express its own ideals through its own development. We have seen this happen through international aid, charity, and even the foundational work of giants like Gates Foundation and the UN.
In his book Winners Take All published in 2019, Anad Giridhiradas is one of an increasing number of people who are deeply critical of the relationship between wealthy elites and social “purpose”, suggesting that framing problems as “win-win” excuses the rich from making real sacrifices. In interviews and in the book, Giridharadas shares that his thinking was informed by Thomas Piketty, a French economist who wrote Capital in the 21st Century and wrote that rising inequality relied, “perhaps primarily, on the effectiveness of the apparatus of justification”
The ‘right to roam’ movement — though fragmented, is gaining traction. The citizen democracy process is currently being channeled through citizens assemblies focused on climate change in Europe. But they could switch to land management and biodiversity as it becomes increasingly clear this is as great a challenge as climate change itself.
Where does this leave owners and managers of large estates and national treasures? Currently a bit stumped but gradually waking up to the need for change. In the UK places such as Wiston Estate are looking at whole estate regenerative plans. Many estates are looking towards Knepp Castle Estate as an example of rewilding. Scotland as a nation is aiming to become the first rewinding nation. Steps are afoot, they are just not yet fully integrated between ecological action and social justice.
Place-Based Business: The Amazon rainforest is a living system. It has parts, wholes, aliveness and is constantly changing and evolving. Prior to the intervention of humankind, it has operated as an ever-changing, robust contributor to overall planetary health and to the health of its own ecosystem through a mutually beneficial exchange of gasses, water, nutrients and life for its millions of inhabitants.
Amazon the retailer is also a complex adaptive system. It has as many different parts as the rainforest it is named for, and arguably creates a ‘whole’ highly complex retail system. It has been hugely successful in adapting and changing to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. What’s the difference between the two?
In simple terms we could argue that the Amazon rainforest is a net contributor to the conditions conducive to life and Amazon the retailer is a net extractor to the conditions conducive to life — if we measured what matters to the future resilience of people and planet rather than growth and profit. Amazon’s exponential growth has helped Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man, and his ex wife one of the world’s greatest philanthropists. Yet it is consistently considered to be a poor employer. Angry Twitter threads in 2020 exposed saw many of the 798,000 people at the company sharing stories about their poor work environment, sub-par safety standards, and unfair pay, calling Bezos an autocrat and suggesting that he accumulates his wealth at their expense. Although most of us have accessed its services, its lack of developmental care for employees, its enormous environmental footprint, its contribution to rampant consumerism hardly qualify it as a source of human renewal and planetary health.
So in brief conclusion: we’re not very close to living systems design then? Maybe not, but there are hidden green shoots all over the world that are changing the story. In the next four episodes of An Economy of Place, we’ll explore some of them.
