Regeneration & the Potential of Place
When I was first introduced to the field of Community Development it was in a role as a Rural Business Advisor in the Peace Corps. As a young professional just out of university, this was a challenging assignment because unlike my colleagues that went to teach English everyday at the local schools, there was no structure or guidance in my work.
Instead, what we were taught was to listen to the community about the problems that they faced and then develop projects to solve said problems. This approach was even echoed throughout my graduate school which focused on international development, and is the general approach that international aid organizations such as USAID and the United Nations take.
Identify the problem. Create the solution.
The funny thing that I’ve learned about problems though, is that once you solve one another typically crops up as an unforeseen consequence. It becomes a game of whack-a-mole. My theory as to why this is comes from anthropologist Gregory Bateson and scientist James Lovelock, whose work is grounded in ecological philosophy and their work helped to underscore my understanding that everything is interconnected.
Rather than taking a linear approach to problem solving, I’ve found that there is a more holistic approach offered through the emerging field of Regenerative development and design, pioneered by the Regenesis Group. That is by focusing on potential.
In order to look at potential it is important to understand the context of a place. At face value this can seem similar to what I described above, because it is still important to understand the needs of the community by listening to the members of the community (others may call these people stakeholders), but it encompasses a broader context of the place that includes the environment — ecology, hydrology, geology, etc — and the community resources that includes assets, organizations, and people.
By bringing together the diversity of the community and facilitating generative sessions focused on the potential that is inherent within place can we begin to see the interconnectedness of everything. This is important because while there are many different opinions and perspectives within a community, this process can reveal the interconnectedness of issues and lead to greater outcomes. This is the process of harmonization.
Harmony is not a word that we typically use in Western society. Instead we think the highest achievement of society is compromise, and we all know how well this works within governmental process (hint the sarcasm). In nature, however, there is no such thing as compromise, only harmony. This isn’t to say that things are always at equilibrium within dynamic systems, but the guiding pulse is to bring the system back into harmony.
Within the context of community development and real estate, harmony shows up when we are able to move past problems and orient towards potential. By doing this, we can begin to create projects that go towards serving the larger whole than just the physical boundaries of a property. And when these projects can sustain themselves and continuously reinforce the whole, that is when they truly become regenerative.
