Purpose This paper aims to investigate how futures concepts may further existing regenerative sustainability thinking. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews existing regenerative fields, including regenerative design, regenerative development and regenerative sustainability as alternatives to conventional sustainability practice. It considers futures concepts that may deepen regenerative thinking and practice to develop a regenerative futures conceptual model. Findings This paper demonstrates how regenerative fields and futures studies have the capacity to reciprocally inform one another and builds upon this relationship through the development of a regenerative futures conceptual model. Originality/value This paper makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it demonstrates how regenerative fields and futures thinking may reciprocally inform one another and, subsequently, enrich regenerative practice. Second, by drawing from futures thinking, it questions and ultimately lengthens notions of reality and time from a regenerative perspective. Finally, through the proposal of a regenerative futures conceptual model, it offers an alternative lens to analyse human behaviours and their associated impacts. In this way, it introduces a theoretical model that is focused on deep individual and collective transformation and a starting point for future research and refinement.
Purpose This paper aims to analyse both traditional and regenerative fields across four layers, litany, systems, worldviews and myth/metaphor. It aims to provide in-depth insight into the beliefs, values epistemologies and assumptions that scaffold thinking and practice. As a result of this analysis, future implications for regenerative urban practice are also considered. Design/methodology/approach Prevailing sustainability approaches seek to mitigate further harm in urban centres by increasing efficiency and minimising resource consumption and impact. They are primarily underpinned by a reductionist worldview that separates human objectives from those of the natural world. In contrast, regenerative approaches to urban sustainability have emerged out of an ecological worldview and aim to achieve net positive outcomes as a result of co-evolutionary relationships between social and ecological systems. This paper explores both approaches in urban communities through futures thinking tool, causal layered analysis. Findings As a result of the causal layered analysis undertaken, this paper provides insights into regenerative thinking and practice in urban settings. These insights cover four main thematic categories: purpose, place, practice and progress. Moving to the deeper layers of worldview and myth metaphor analysis, in particular, has significant implications for ongoing practice, including facilitating processes by which communities can reflect upon, unpack and reconstruct their concepts of future “success”. Originality/value Anthropogenic climate change continues to deliver worsening ecological, social and economic impacts globally. Urban centres are particularly central to this crisis given their massive resource consumption and rapid population growth. This paper provides an alternative, deep analysis to consider thinking and practice required for urban regeneration. It reveals the need for a shift in purpose and a deeper understanding of place, illustrating the roles that futures tools may place in this transition.
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