regenerative cities mood board

“The Need to Grow” movie ~ REGENiTECH LLC’s Earth Power Lodge / RegeniFarm / ThreeFold / Masterminding EDEN / Camara Cassin / The Venus Project

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series), by Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel

“While sustainability has long been a goal for many cities, it often focuses on minimizing harm rather than creating a net-positive impact and economic prosperity, both equally important for thriving cities. Regenerative cities go beyond a basic understanding of sustainability, by actively restoring ecosystems, enhancing community well-being, and fostering economic resilience. They do not merely reduce negative impacts—they contribute positively to their environments, making them healthier, more equitable, and more adaptive to future challenges.”
- article written by Tom Bosschaert

from Charles Marohn of Strong Towns:

“Abundance is a powerful idea. But what kind of abundance? And who decides?

Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s new book, Abundance, is a thoughtful, energetic call to reform the systems holding us back. Housing, infrastructure, clean energy -- it’s all stuck -- and the book rightly asks: why can’t we build?

I agree with much of the diagnosis. But I’ve seen this movie before. From The Lexus and the Olive Tree to JC Nichols’ “Planning for Permanence,” the belief that smart people can fix complex systems from the top down has a long, seductive history and a deeply fragile legacy.

The Strong Towns approach offers something different. Not bigger reform from above, but a culture of bottom-up action. A belief that better decisions come from local feedback, iteration, and care, not from confidence in the machine.

This isn’t about “local control” as a sacred principle. It’s about local capacity: the ability for communities to solve problems at the scale of lived experience. We’re not anti-state or anti-policy. We’re anti-fragility. A system that only works when the “right people” are in charge isn’t strong enough.

Start with a local challenge.
Shift the narrative.
Show one example.
Build on success.

Abundance asks us to empower others to fix what we already have the power to change. We think you don’t need to wait for permission.”

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note from J. Baldwin’s book “BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today”:

Megastructures ::: the idea of a one-building town. Gave examples of many “towns” in Alaska that consist of “a single, funky building that simultaneously serves as a gas station, motel, restaurant, general store, bar, repair garage, bait shop, public telephone, school bus stop, post office, kennel, and quarters for the folks running the show. These agglomerations all look about the same for good reason: Tough conditions and expensive supplies cause people to think clearly, if not elegantly. They intuitively put everything under one roof over a small plot of land. Total loss in the event of a fire is the only serious disadvantage.”