Regenerative Cities in their Bioregional Context
By: Daniel Christian Wahl
Tags: Cities, Sustainability, Urban Planning, Culture, Bioregionalism

Regenerative Cities in their Bioregional Context

A conversation between Herbert Girardet and Daniel Wahl

On July 13th, I had a fascinating conversation with Herbert Girardet. His is a long-term member of the Club of Rome and the World Future Council, who has worked as a documentary film-maker for decades, is the author of many books spanning 4 decades, and one of the world’s leading thinker-practitioners on regenerative cities. His book ‘Creating Regenerative Cities’ came out in 2014.

We start by remembering when we last met at the NOW Assembly in Delphi where we were joined my Kenny Young who recently passed away and was a long term friend of Herbie’s. They co-founded ‘Artists Project Earth’ together to help fund environmental projects around the world through the music industry.

Here is Herbie’s obituary of his friend Kenny Young, who I had the pleasure to meet and spend three days with last October:

I invited Herbie to reflect on his 45 year journey from being a student at the London School of Economics in the 70s to becoming an environmentalist, meeting Satish Kumar and contributing to Resurgence, working on a TV series with the ‘self-sufficiency guru’ John Seymour on the human impact on the planet called ‘Far from Paradise’ that documented the increasing degradation of the Earth through human intervention.

We talk about the shift from hunter and gatherer societies to agricultural societies, cities and empires. We also address how many indigenous people around the world actively engaged in a subtle form of ecosystems management or being abundance generating key stone species in the bioregions they inhabited.

Summary of what we talked about (listen to recording below):

Herbie reflects on his work with the Kayapo in the Amazon. We talk about Terra Preta and biochar.

(min 14) We start talking about Herbie’s work in London and on the ecological footprint of London which he published in 2002 as a ‘Schumacher Briefing’.

(min 19) Herbie speaks about the impact of the city of Rome on the ecosystems around the Mediterranean basin and how Rome denuded North Africa.

(min 26) We speak about Herbie’s work as ‘Thinker in Residence’ at the city of Adelaide and his recommendations leading to the cities becoming among one of the best examples of city redesign. See:

(min 33) I asked Herbie about the balance between re-regionalisation and maintaining global collaboration in bioregional transitions everywhere. …

Herbie describes how his work on the ecological footprint in London made him realise that relocalising food production has to distinguish between the production of horticultural vegetables and grain production — the latter impacting on vast areas beyond a city’s boundaries.

(min 39) We talk about the relationship between cities and their bioregions. Herbert’s book ‘Creating Regenerative Cities’ offers 20 case studies of cities to learn from. “By an large the understanding that there is a conceptual systemic problem between an urbanising world and the every grater impacts on the global environment by the resource demand patterns of cities [needs to grow].”

(min 45) we briefly talk about the work of Sir Patrick Geddes … and my work on regenerative cultures … “Just looking at the physical metabolism of cities is only one aspect of the story we are talking about, which needs to be internalised deeply within the cultural context in which we live”

(00:47) Herbert starts talking about the new initiatives within the Club of Rome focussed on cultural change — reconciliation between humanity and “the environment”.

(min 53) … the dual path of ecosystems restoration as a way to build resilience to climate change and to contribute to mitigating (and possibly) reversing it …

(min 57) … local resilience and a return to local food as a widespread response to the pandemic …

(min 1:09) … is capitalism structurally dysfunctional or can it be redesigned to incentivise regenerative resource use?

(min 1:22) we talk about re-localisation again and have a brief chat of maybe getting Herbie involved in advising the city of Palma in the context of the island of Mallorca based on his experience in Adelaide … and I briefly mention some of the more recent developments on Mallorca aiming at creating a large scale integrated marine and terrestrial ecosystems restoration project within the context of re-inventing the bioregional economy in a way that makes it less dependent on tourism and a potential example of bioregional regeneration.

More about Herbert Girardet:

Here is the recording of our conversation:

(Warning: unfortunately the recording has some kind of interference every time Herbie speaks — a slight hissing in the background — but he can be understood well.)

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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.

Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures

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