An Economy of Place: Part 7 — From Extractive to Interconnected Economies
Thinking in Questions | Potential not Problems | Think Like An Island
If you would like to start at the beginning of the series, An Economy of Place Part I starts here. Our Spring/Summer 2022 learning journey is now open for registration: Power of Place for Regenerative Placemakers begins on 21st April 2022.
It is easy to be an armchair visionary and talk about re-designing the world according to living systems principles. It’s a lot more desirable to find ways in which to do it that the economic influencers of the age can adopt and apply. Given that I flunked every economics module I ever studied, I feel vastly under qualified to be writing about economics at all! But I am good at joining dots. It’s probably my only talent, but it is a superpower I recommend cultivating whatever area of future design you work in.
Sometimes we need a new framework or vision to work towards to change our thinking about the future. So I offer some metaphors for action that have popped out at me in my study of place, that I hope may be helpful to you, the place-maker. Whether you are a city-maker, a village-maker, a community-convener, a destination-doula, a regional economist, an estate owner or a fractal-farmer, these ideas are for you.
1. Think in Questions and Work from Potential
My first experience of an individual who conversed with me in questions was my Jungian analyst Oona. With the benefit of hindsight, putting myself into Jungian analysis when I was in the pit of depression after my first bout of cancer, wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done — but in my defence I didn’t know any better and didn’t have the capacity to think straight at the time! What I can remember is my despair and fury at arriving with someone with a sack of problems and hoping for solutions — a way through — and experiencing only probing questions. I experienced the same irritation with the first coach I ever engaged to work with me on designing a new enterprise. All I got were reflective questions when I wanted help to work out how to relaunch myself into a different field. At times I wanted to scream ‘Just tell me what to do’.
I share this story here to illustrate how very challenging it is to adopt the way of working or ‘being’ I’m going to try to introduce here if you’re not already familiar with the process of reflection. If you are an agent of change working with organisations, communities or people who are used to asking for solutions, you will from time to time experience this same fury and despairing sense of ‘just tell me what to do’ from them. We are used to buying solutions.
Only a few weeks ago the CEO of a multi-national corporation in Turkey, having listened to the projected scenarios for climate change and a living systems approached, felt the same. ‘But how does an organisation like ours change? We are in automotive, mining, construction, we are responsible for 1000s of jobs. Where do we start?” This question is in fact a good place to start.
Think and work in questions and potential, not problems and solutions.
What’s wrong with the approach of problems and solutions? After all, it’s how we are trained to work, isn’t it? Well, yes it is. But throughout most of history we can see that scientists, business people, politicians — whoever they are — have generally created tomorrow’s problems by taking a problem and solution approach to the challenges of the present.
Let’s take the so-called green revolution in agriculture in the 1950s and 60s where fertiliser and increasing industrial production of food was the solution to the growing global population’s need for food. By focusing on the challenge of the present, those willing and inventive scientists and farmers unwittingly created a serious problem for future generations of biodiversity loss, unhealthy soils and polluted waterways.
In more recent years organic farming methods and agroecological approaches, including conservation, low-input, and minimum tillage agriculture, are gradually becoming recognized as “nature-positive” and regenerative practices. More efficient use of animal manure and greater use, in rotations, of nitrogen-fixing crops — such as legumes which convert nitrogen from the air into a form that is biologically useful — will be crucial to replace synthetic nitrogen as part of the process of rebuilding soil fertility.
Producing antibiotics was a marvellous leap forwards for healthcare in humankind, enabling us to overcome a wide variety of illnesses. Today antibiotic resistance in humans is a global public health crisis. Did doctors foresee the potential consequences of over-use of antibiotics might cause either in the human population or through their use in industrial agriculture to prevent infections in crammed-in chickens, pigs and cattle to our water supplies? Perhaps, perhaps not. But they were solving an important problem at the time — helping vets and farmers with the production of safe food from healthy animals.
Did the chemists who invented plastic — a true game changer for humankind — foresee that impact on our oceans, or that micro plastic would eventually be found in small foetus? Probably not, although that doesn’t mean they deliberately set up future generations for difficult challenges. Focusing on solving only the problem in front of you, can often created unintended consequences for future generations and we can no longer afford to layer challenge upon challenge when those we have are existential.
Questions are much more powerful than problems and solutions. They are the transitory means — through inquiry and experimentation — to asking even better questions. The answer isn’t what matters as much as the quality of the question we ask. Asking questions is at the core of creating regenerative cultures; it is about living the questions together on a journey in which there is never a true destination. Once you realise and accept that, it creates a major shift in how you work and respond to the world. It enables you to respond different in a situation where two people or organisations present polarity solutions to any given problem. If you respond from a perspective of curiosity and questioning, you don’t fall into the trap of competition, judgement and right or wrong polarities. You can just look at a host of different solutions and search for the pathway that offers the highest potential for people, project or system.
In one of the seminal books on regenerative culture, Daniel Christian Wahl uses many reflective questions to get the reader to pause, reflect and consider the way ahead. In fact he has shared many times that he wanted to call the book Living The Questions instead of Designing Regenerative Cultures.
Potential Not Problems
Most dictionaries define a problem as ‘a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome’.
Most define potential as ‘latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.’
Why is focusing on potential so different to focusing in on problems?
If we are thinking about building housing, we’re solving a problem of a lack of affordable housing, or simply a lack of houses. But if we think about how we design a new housing estate from a point of view of its potential, we’ll be thinking about what its contribution could be to the future prosperity of the region and inhabitants, how it could increase their wellbeing and community spirit, how it could evolve and change as circumstances around it change, and how it could be built using materials designed and produced in its locality, to increase local industry.
In the UK Thakeham Homes is a good example of a forward looking home builder who is already thinking about designing community owned hubs and stores into its developments. The proposed development at Tipner West in Portsmouth is looking at a car and kerb-free design to minimise pollution and maximise air quality whilst encouraging community with people walking through the development rather than jumping straight into their car — cutting off the opportunity for dialogue and interaction.
If we are thinking about redesigning tourism, we’re currently solving a problem of a complete crash in the industry. Aviation is thinking about getting back to former performance levels. Destinations are thinking about how to increase visitor numbers. Theme parks are thinking about generating rapid footfall too. But if we think about the potential and a regenerative approach to tourism, we would be thinking about how to design a new kind of tourism that contributes as effectively to the wellbeing of hosts as it does to visitors. We would be thinking about how to maximise the impact of a visitor experience on their wellbeing, worldview and health. We would be thinking about what tourism looks like that enhances biodiversity. We would be thinking about how the whole destination experience adds to the capability of the venue and the people within it to continue to flourish.
This is well illustrated in New Zealand’s revolutionary new learning programme designed by Anna Pollock and Michelle Holliday — Back To Life — which is helping destinations learn about how to design to a living systems approach to tourism. It comes on the back of a 6 month long study into how New Zealand as a nation can re-design its valuable tourism economy to ensure the health and wellbeing of its natural capital and people.
If we are thinking about estate management, we might be thinking about the problem of generating enough income to survive. Or how to diversify to create more income. Or how to manage the increase in people walking across our land. But if we were thinking in potential, we might shift our gaze to considering how the estate could add to the capacity for surrounding villages to contribute to their ecological wellbeing and their community cohesion.
In the UK Knepp Estate has become a role model for rewinding, following the bold and brave experiment by Isabella Tree and Charlie Knepp to return their estate to its natural state. In Scotland, ambitious plans are beginning to emerge to allow the whole country to be a state of rewilding. Both projects are great examples of allowing ecological potential to emerge.
Eco-restoration villages have existed for some time, but are now beginning to shift from a place in which to escape the city and reconnect to the wild, to places where we can reconnect the wild to the city too. Bold projects like Wild Hotel, the brainchild of Anton Chernikov and colleagues that are starting to incorporate the relationship between urban and rural communities, incorporating learning and development opportunities as well as co-living spaces.
If we were thinking about the problems of urban design, we might be focused on solving air pollution, or traffic bottlenecks, or waste management. These are all important things. But if, like Jaime Lerner in Curitiba, we focus on improving the city as a whole being and design from its potential to creating thriving life for humans and non-humans alike, we might take an ecosystem acupuncture approach that lifts up the potential of air quality, but achieves it by finding the pinch points throughout the city where air quality can be improved. Such as inserting a waterway. Greening a district.
In Paris and Barcelona, they are currently taking this approach. Working on a grid-based approach, the community leaders of Barcelona are pedestrianising and carbon retro-fitting block by block across the city. Janet Sanz, Councillor of Urbanism has a plan to gradually reclaim streets from cars. Only cars who need access will be allowed within these blocks and they will be parked underground. Instead of busy junctions, parks, picnic benches, and play areas are emerging. By putting the potential for health at the forefront of urban design, they are finding ways to ensure previous pollution cannot return to the city post-pandemic.
Since her election in 2014, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has promoted an ambitious programme for new green spaces in the city we describe as made for lovers but which has had challenging air quality issues and traffic flows. At the centre of this plan is a scheme to “green” 100 hectares of buildings across Paris, with one-third of this green space devoted to urban agriculture. The most recent addition to the plan is the pedestrianisation and greening of the famous Champs d’Elysee — the iconic road down which Tour De France cyclists finish, and which is named for the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology.
If we are thinking about the problems of a farm, it might be about increasing productivity in a market which values productivity at the lowest cost. That could lead us further down the rabbit warren of fertilisers and pesticides. But if we thinking about the potential of a farm to contribute to the health of humans and the vitality of nature, playing its part in creating living systems, design leads you towards producing quality nutritious food in a way which must enhance biodiversity.
White Oak Pastures is a multi-crop, multi-animal regenerative agriculture farm which, not so long ago, was an industrial agriculture system. Owner Will Harris, a convert to regenerative farming, now runs this six generation, 152-year-old family farm in Bluffton, Georgia using farming practices that focus on regenerative land management, humane animal husbandry, and revitalising their rural community. From his previous industrial cattle farm, he now grows vegetables and raises 10 species of animals, most of which roam around freely in merged herds. Cattle and chickens share pasture, sheep and ducks work together to trim and fertilise grasslands in harmony. Together the animals create a stronger, healthier ecosystem.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t have many challenging complex problems in the world that we need to solve. That doesn’t mean it is easy to change your view and design for potential rather than solve problems. Any farmer will tell you that the market demands cheap food and lots of it and the only system in which you can do that is an industrial one. An estate has to create revenue to survive. City developers are under pressure and demand from governments to build houses — no matter what. We all still live and work in a world that is transitioning from an existing extractive economy to one we can’t yet quite imagine.
But if we consider that any solution to complexity is merely transitory, then it becomes much easier to consider multiple points of views and multiple different ways of doing things. It is an approach that helps us deal with the rampant competitiveness and polarity position that plague our politics, organisational culture and communities. It’s also a way of working that allows us to deal with the complexity of having multiple different worldviews, multiple different cultural experiences, multiple different life experiences, multiple different characters and personalities — in one room, team, or community at any one time. It is the basis for building cohesion that people like Gandhi saw but one which is not passive but highly active.
It puts us squarely on a pathway towards a better future that will always change, adapt and evolve — and this is where we return to working and living like living systems.
2. Think like an island
Think like an island. A watershed. Or a foodshed. Or a bioregion.
Islands have long been fascinating studies for economists and planners, biologists and geologists alike. They are contained spaces with clear boundaries which naturally offer themselves up as living laboratories for experimentation and learning. Island biogeography emerged as an earth science in the 20th century but has its roots in Darwinian studies of how species diversify as they move from one island to another. In more recent times they have become the focus on the tourism industry, attraction millions of tourists every year, mainly driven by their special location and rich natural and cultural capital.
Islands also concentrate creativity, since in constrained boundaries you cannot easily create a sustainable economy without deeply interacting in the global economy. They face the challenges of resource pressure, limited economic diversity and particular vulnerability to climate change. Yet there are some rather spectacular experiments around the world from which local and regional designers, city planners, landowners and estate managers, can learn. Islands can be perfect regenerative economies. They can restore water cycles, grow food on healthy soil, and embrace renewable energy.
In a globally oriented economy, there are exports, and also imports. Once an island becomes dependent on imports, whether those are tourists or water and food, they are headed for an imbalanced economy. So the focus is on being self-sustaining wherever possible, which starts with basics like water, food, transport and energy.
In the Canary islands and the Azores archipelago, water management and local food production are fully integrated into the social fabric of life. The levada systems — small channels which descend gradually from mountainous regions to where agriculture and populations are based — were first built was early as the 15th century. In the colonial era, Madeira for example, built a very strong export economy based on sugar production which required much more water than fell on the fertile volcanic soil of the lower regions of the island.
In many places levadas were built by local collectives, carried out by owners of springs or the lands to be irrigated — either individually, or grouped into associations of heréus, co-owner farmers who own a share of the levada water and pay for the preservation of the waterway, electing an administrative committee from among their number. Over time as sugar production gave way to wine production and today to bananas and the populations grew, demand on the water systems increased and the state began to step in to provide a regulatory framework for water management. As more levadas were built, they also integrated the production of energy into the system through water turbines and hydroelectric plants, ensuring both energy and agriculture needs were combined.
The topography of the bioregion of Madeira for example, where that the majority of flows suitable for catchment were located higher than 1000m and the crop areas started at 600m, allows the waters to go through turbines with a drop of about 400m, before sending them on for irrigation. This is a great example of designing water and energy systems based on the unique bio-regional landscape — even if they originated for colonial purposes!
Today if you are visitor to the Azores islands, you can still see this simple, accessible system working within the socio-cultural landscape. Networked channels spread out as they descend from the mountains to drains that are opened and run at regular periods of time to feed household gardens that are a feature of this culture. Most people have a small piece of land on which they produce their own food and contribute to the collectives across the islands that together make a banana export economy.
Further north in Europe lie the islands of Vlieland and Samsø. Vlieland is the smallest inhabited island of the Dutch Wadden Islands, in the north of the Netherlands and farthest from the mainland coast and set up a programme to become energy self-sufficient as early as 2007. Samsø lies almost directly between the east and west mainlands of Denmark, just south-east of Aarhus and west of Copenhagen and launched a ‘full circle’ island project back in 2015. But both islands have enormous potential to go further.
Other than energy, almost everything else is imported onto Vrieland on diesel-fuelled ferries, and all waste is transported back to the mainland to be processes. There are many opportunities to improve these processes. Further energy savings and more renewables in the form of increased wind turbines and PV panels; waste can be significantly reduced with measures on smart, recyclable or perhaps reusable packaging, as well as flows for potential upcycling on the island. Manure and food wastes could be used locally instead of being shipped back to the mainland. In 2020, in partnership with circular specialists Metabolic, the island is now exploring next steps through a comprehensive “material flow analysis” in order to holistically address issues of waste management, imported goods, logistics, transport, mobility, and sustainable tourism.
Samsø in Denmark reached its renewable energy goal by 2009. Critical to achieving the zero-carbon goal was the development of wind turbine collectives — a combination of private owners, investor groups, municipal government and local cooperatives. Anyone who could see the turbine from their home to sign on as a co-investor. Søren Hermansen, a Samsø native vegetable farmer–turned–environmental teacher led the Samsø Energy and Environment Organisation, and is chief executive of the Samsø Energy Academy which enabled residents to arrive at a carbon footprint of negative 12 tonnes per person per year, compared to the Danish average of 6,2 tonnes.
Mallorca is home to one of the regenerative movement’s leading lights, Daniel Christian Wahl (you’ll notice I mention him a lot!). For many years he has been building up an international practice of bioregionalism on the island. One of his many experiments in bioregional economics was with household cleaning products provider, Ecover. As the island has a strong tourism economy, it also has a healthy cleaning industry that runs alongside it. It also happens to successfully grow a lot of lemons, a key ingredient in many cleaning products. The experiment was to see if Ecover could design its business to create local products using local materials for local economies. Early pioneering projects like this have not yet gained commercial traction but they are an important indicator of how our economies could change in the future.
In Colombia, regenerative culture designer Joe Brewer is working with the campesinos and local land owners to regenerative a bio park in highly degraded land above Barichara. A town in the northern Andes of Colombia, Barichara is situated on a plateau where there was once a tropical dry forest — a threatened type of ecosystem that is at risk of disappearing from the Earth. The forest is 98% destroyed and in urgent need of restoration. This plateau is an estimated 400–500 square kilometers (40,000–50,000 hectares). The community that Joe is part of is working around three major areas of focus:
1. Reforestation across the plateau with native plants to protect and restore the tropical dry forest.
2. Bring the primary river, Rio Barichara, back to life along with its estimated fifteen tributaries by restoring aquifers and building landscape-scale water management systems.
3. Build a regenerative economy of solidarity and cooperation among the local campesinos, families in the town, and businesses in the region.
There are so many initiatives around the world that look at lifting potential of communities and ecosystems, it is impossible to name very many. There are many excellent examples of the imagination, innovation and creativity of islands — and projects that design with island boundaries in mind. In the next part of this exploration we’re going to look deeper into bioregional design.
The Economy of Place is a series of articles by Jenny Andersson that are edited parts of her unpublished book Renewal. There are 20 parts to this paper which will be published here in due course. If you would like early notification of future releases, please register at Really Regenerative — Economy of Place.
Further Reading & Study
The work of Metabolic in Vlieland
Designing Regenerative Cultures, Dr Daniel Christian Wahl
Earth Regenerators on Mighty Networks
Paris Greening Programme
Barcelona Urban Development
Urban Acupuncture, Jaime Learner
