An exploration in progressing a paradigm shift in built environment thinking, from sustainability to restorative sustainability and on to regenerative sustainability.
Do you want to explore the new frontiers of sustainability? From the work of the COST Action CA16114 RESTORE: REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy, Working Group 1. Restorative Sustainability, here is our first booklet (downloadable for free). Enjoy 🙂
With contributions by Martin Brown, Edeltraud Haselsteiner, Diana Apró, Diana Kopeva, Egla Luca, Katri-Liisa Pulkkinen, Blerta Vula Rizvanolli and many others …
This publication, with contributions from over 20 EU countries is an exploration in progressing a paradigm shift in built environment thinking, from sustainability to restorative sustainability and on to regenerative sustainability.
It presents a reference document for future work of the RESTORE Action, for other Cost Actions and for built environment academia and industry organisations.
VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver (CAN)
Summary
- Introduction
- Definitions – the Language for Sustainability
- Social, Health and Participation in Sustainability
- Living Buildings
- Regenerative Heritage
- Circular Economy
- WG1 Activities
- Epilogue
- WG1 People
Portland Japanese Garden, Portland (OR, USA)
(From the Introduction by Martin Brown and Edeltraud Haselsteiner)
It is now some 30 years since Brundtland defined sustainable development, broadly defined as not doing anything today to compromise tomorrow’s generation, and in doing so defined sustainability for business and enterprises globally.
Many in the built environment have taken this passive ‘do nothing’ approach, as license to do the least possible. Consequently, we have and we continue to compromise future generations.
The built environment is a huge influencer on ‘sustainability’, we spend over 90% of our time working, living and playing within our buildings. Despite sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiatives it is irresponsible that we have generally failed to grasp our influence and to address the potential to move the needle on wider global sustainability and climate issues.
Buildings, and the manner in which we design, construct and maintain them have been a significant contributor to climate breakdown we are witnessing.
Restorative and regenerative approaches can flip this enabling buildings to become part of climate regeneration solutions.
Maybe sustainability is not a journey, but a state of equilibrium, based on giving as much as we take. On the negative side where we take more, we are unsustainable and no matter how much we reduce our impacts we will always remain unsustainable. On the positive side ‘to do more good‘ we open doors to
restore environments and communities, and to create and enable conditions for environmental, social and economic regenerative growth […].
“We no longer have the luxury of just being less bad.” (RESTORE)
For the First Rio Conference in 1992, Yann decided to prepare a big work for the year 2000 on the state of the planet: 
In 2006, Yann started the series 
Atlas Shrugged 
Ayn Rand O’Connor (nata Alisa Zinov’evna Rozenbaum, San Pietroburgo, 2 febbraio 1905 – New York, 6 marzo 1982) è stata una scrittrice, filosofa e sceneggiatrice, autrice di 
Mi è tornato in mente Carlo M. Cipolla, storico di economia (la M. fu un’invenzione da parte sua di un inesistente secondo nome, che viene di solito erroneamente interpretato come Maria …) che in 
Carlo M. Cipolla (August 15, 1922 – September 5, 2000) was an Italian economic historian. Cipolla produced two tongue-in-cheek essays on economics, published in 1988 (in Italian) under the title “
By creating a graph with the first factor on the x-axis and the second on the y-axis, we obtain 4+1 groups of people: 1. Intelligent people (top right), who contribute to society and who leverage their contributions into reciprocal benefits; 2. Naive people (top left), who contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it, 3. Bandits (bottom right), who pursue their own self-interest even when doing so poses a net detriment to societal welfare, 4. Stupid people (bottom left), whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others’ interests, 5. Helpless/ineffectual people (center).
