Regenerative Built Environments: An Ambitious and Essential Path Forward

Despite recent progress, our current sustainability trajectory is still falling short. We urgently need profound and transformative change to leave the prevailing systems of extraction and growth behind. Regenerative development offers a compelling and ambitious alternative pathway towards a healthy, resilient and thriving future. It aims to realign human activities in co-evolutionary partnership with nature. It seeks to restore, heal and transform the living world and our role and relationships with it. It places life at the centre of every decision and action. This chapter emphasises the central role the built environment can and should play in enabling this regenerative transformation. It argues that we need to shift the way we plan, design, build and operate our buildings, neighbourhoods and cities so that they become a fundamental good for everyone and all life. It defines what a regenerative built environment is to support this ambition and discusses the theoretical foundations of where they come from, why they are so urgently needed and what needs to change to enable their implementation.