Regenerative Partnerships

Why regenerative practice could drive place-based partnerships

There’s a growing interest in “regenerative practice” as the key to long-term environmental and economic sustainability. Future of London asks if this concept could transform partnerships in the built environment sector.

Senior leaders in our network highlight partnership working as both essential and frequently problematic in practice. They require compromise and renegotiation, with trust often expended to get projects over the line.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if a partnership actually generated trust and goodwill during the project lifecycle, creating the resources that nourish and sustain long-term collaboration?

We are seeing the emergence of regenerative practice as a response to climate change, from agriculture to architecture. In the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the UN’s innovation think tank defines regenerative practice as “active restoration and enhancement of ecosystems and communities”.

Could this concept be used to frame partnerships in the built environment sector that sustain a focus on long-term goals that are socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable?

From transaction to transformation

Partnerships between public and private sector organisations – as well as not-for-profit organisations such as housing associations – are widely recognised as the foundation for delivery from accelerating housebuilding to reaching net zero.

However, the differing aims, timescales and governance arrangements can cause trouble between partners. Private sector partners struggle to understand politically led organisations while the public sector is less attuned to the expectations of shareholders.

Some senior leaders we spoke to cite trust issues and a lack of clarity on project objectives. In other words, “them and us”.

Partnership working in complex systems

As the name suggests, systems thinking seeks to understand and work with complexity. The systems approach looks at connections between people and human constructs, including social networks, organisations and economies. Finding shared, top-priority goals is another relevant feature of systems thinking.

The urban environment is undoubtedly complex and sits within a larger, all-encompassing system – the natural environment of our planet. Regenerative practice was conceived literally to regenerate the environment and reverse our carbon-fuelled trajectory towards climate disaster.

If sustainability focuses on reducing harm, regeneration puts something back. Regenerative practice treats nature as a stakeholder of equal importance to humans and the world we have created.

This is where the regenerative approach could help. By drawing on the disciplines of systems thinking, which focuses on interconnectedness and prioritises relationships between stakeholders, regenerative practice reframes problems and increases understanding from different perspectives.

So could the regenerative lens help us think about the way partnerships can work to lessen the built environment’s impact on climate change and address many other social and economic challenges?

From regenerative design to regenerative partnerships

We have been inspired by several organisations that have applied regenerative practice to placemaking.

Arup defines the goal of regenerative urban design as creating systems and environments that generate positive impacts on human and natural systems, while fostering co-existence and co-evolution between humans and nature.

The Really Regenerative Centre was set up to develop regenerative, place-based practice and advocates a radical paradigm shift in thinking about urban development.

In a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the centre studied “the enabling conditions for communities to steward regenerative transformation of their places at the level, longevity and depth required by the polycrisis”.

According to the RSA, the regenerative mindset requires a fundamental shift in the values that guide our decisions and, ultimately, a reframing of economic objectives that drive growth and exploitation of natural resources.

They all exhort us to develop long-term, multi-stakeholder perspectives to tackle major urban challenges, such as climate adaptation and growing inequality.

So are partners from across all sectors – public, private and community-based – ready to work together to deliver projects with these challenging goals related to society, economy and the environment?

Based on feedback from the Future of London network, we think so. That’s why we want to start a conversation that we hope will spark the development of new models for collaboration.

To find out more about the regenerative partnerships project, contact chief executive Nicola Mathers.

Thanks to the project sponsors

Arup | Inner Circle Consulting | Montagu Evans | TLT

Image by Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay