Katri Einola
Escalating sustainability challenges—including climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion—demand a transformative shift in how human life and the environments that support it are organised, developed and governed. Urban environments are shaped by intersecting ecological, social and economic pressures, yet they also hold significant potential to generate new forms of value and collective wellbeing. However, current processes and the ways of organising within urban development are often grounded in linear thinking, siloed approaches, and a human-nature dualism, limiting the capacity to address these multifaceted issues. Regenerative development (RD) has emerged as an evolving paradigm that aims for a transformative, systemic, co-creative approach that reframes cities as living systems, where renewal emerges through dynamism, change management, co-evolution, and continuous learning. This requires new ways of operating and organising among different actors. The purpose of the paper is to introduce my PhD research plan. The research aims to explore what regenerative urban development is and how adopting a living systems approach could reshape urban development at different levels, focusing especially on the processes and operating models. Through qualitative research with a literature review and case study focused on Nordic city organisations, the research tries to identify how the regenerative approach currently occurs in the urban context and identifies leverage points and barriers within current urban development systems to reimagine the future of organisational and design processes.
Keywords: regenerative development, living systems thinking, social-ecological systems, urban transformations, process