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Towards a sustainable future: Adopting a regenerative approach to development
A summary document

This document presents cutting edge thinking on the future of New Zealand's built environments and how they can be made socially, financially and environmentally sustainable. It focuses on the regenerative development approach where the built environment becomes the conduit for producing resources and energy, improving physical and psychological health, remedying past pollution, and transforming and filtering waste into new resources.

Prepared by
Maibritt Pedersen Zari, Victoria University

‘No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.’
- Albert Einstein

Executive Summary

This document presents cutting-edge thinking on the future of New Zealand’s built environments and how they can be made socially, financially and environmentally sustainable.  It is both inspirational and challenging.

The negative environmental impacts of New Zealand’s built environment are immense.  The challenge is to create a built environment that has environmental, social and economic benefits.  Our current move to eco-efficiency practices is an important first step towards achieving a short-term sustainable built environment, but is not sustainable in the long term.

To stimulate thinking, the Ministry for the Environment (‘the Ministry’) commissioned a study to evaluate four different development approaches and compare these with a business-as-usual approach (defined here as conventional and eco-efficiency).  Of these, the regenerative development approach offers the greatest economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits for central government organisations, and for New Zealand more generally.

Regenerative development departs from the thinking that the best a building can be is environmentally neutral.  In regenerative development, the built environment becomes a conduit for producing resources and energy, improving physical and psychological health, remedying past pollution, and transforming and filtering waste into new resources.  It represents a fundamental rethinking of architectural and urban design.

Central and local government is responsible for approximately 30 per cent of all construction in New Zealand.  By changing our approach to one focused on long-term sustainability, we have a great opportunity to make meaningful and tangible changes to the way we plan, design, construct and use New Zealand’s built environment.

October 2009
Ref. ME 915

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