17
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
P. B. Roös, Regenerative-Adaptive Design for Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development
Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53234-5_2
Chapter 2
The Importance of a Sustainable Future
Abstract Globally, there is an acknowledgement that the inclusion of sustainability in our day-to- day
operations is necessary. The United Nations has put forward the adoption of the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), many governments have agreed to them, and are putting in place actions
to achieve the targets. However, the mantra of sustainable development has been challenged by various scholars, scientists and philosophers, and there is a need for change to move beyond it. This
chapter investigates the concept of sustainability, questions our linear throughput system of an industrial society that still prevails in the twenty-first century, and puts forward an implementation of a new
integral sustainable worldview. With regenerative systems thinking at its core, this chapter introduces
the fundamental thinking of deep sustainability by Christopher Alexander (Sustainability and morphogenesis: The birth of a living world. Berkeley, CA: Centre for Environmental Structure, 2004), and
progresses further with the Integral Sustainable Design theory by Mark DeKay (Integral sustainable
design: Transformative perspectives. London/Washington, DC: Earthscan, 2011), where an integral
approach to sustainability is found in the consideration of multilevel complexity, and the intersecting
of the domains of self, culture, and Nature. The chapter concludes with the fundamental pattern
Integral Sustainable Worldview [2], supporting an argument that we need to move beyond sustainable development, towards a regenerative- adaptive paradigm which will consider sustainable
design practices and that fundamentally forms a new integral, sustainable worldview.
Keywords Sustainable development · Sustainable development goals · Integral sustainable design ·
Regenerative design · Ecological design · New worldview · Resilient future · Integral · Sustainability
Upward links:
… when we want to consider a sustainable future where both humans and nature can co-exist in harmony, implement human settlement practices that are to scale with the surrounding environment, designing and planning
according to levels of scale and levels of complexity that ultimately are part of The Whole [1].
2.1 Introduction
The starting point is our crowded planet. It is estimated that our global human population will keep
growing, rising from 7.7 billion in 2019 to 10.9 billion at the end of the century (UN, 2019). Further,
nearly all of the global population growth is occurring in cities. The global trend is rapid urbanisation.
The issue is that rapid urbanisation demands more resources to sustain our cities, but these resources
are running out. Due to our global crisis, sustainable development became a central concept of our age
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
P. B. Roös, Regenerative-Adaptive Design for Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development
Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53234-5_2
Chapter 2
The Importance of a Sustainable Future
Abstract Globally, there is an acknowledgement that the inclusion of sustainability in our day-to- day
operations is necessary. The United Nations has put forward the adoption of the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), many governments have agreed to them, and are putting in place actions
to achieve the targets. However, the mantra of sustainable development has been challenged by various scholars, scientists and philosophers, and there is a need for change to move beyond it. This
chapter investigates the concept of sustainability, questions our linear throughput system of an industrial society that still prevails in the twenty-first century, and puts forward an implementation of a new
integral sustainable worldview. With regenerative systems thinking at its core, this chapter introduces
the fundamental thinking of deep sustainability by Christopher Alexander (Sustainability and morphogenesis: The birth of a living world. Berkeley, CA: Centre for Environmental Structure, 2004), and
progresses further with the Integral Sustainable Design theory by Mark DeKay (Integral sustainable
design: Transformative perspectives. London/Washington, DC: Earthscan, 2011), where an integral
approach to sustainability is found in the consideration of multilevel complexity, and the intersecting
of the domains of self, culture, and Nature. The chapter concludes with the fundamental pattern
Integral Sustainable Worldview [2], supporting an argument that we need to move beyond sustainable development, towards a regenerative- adaptive paradigm which will consider sustainable
design practices and that fundamentally forms a new integral, sustainable worldview.
Keywords Sustainable development · Sustainable development goals · Integral sustainable design ·
Regenerative design · Ecological design · New worldview · Resilient future · Integral · Sustainability
Upward links:
… when we want to consider a sustainable future where both humans and nature can co-exist in harmony, implement human settlement practices that are to scale with the surrounding environment, designing and planning
according to levels of scale and levels of complexity that ultimately are part of The Whole [1].
2.1 Introduction
The starting point is our crowded planet. It is estimated that our global human population will keep
growing, rising from 7.7 billion in 2019 to 10.9 billion at the end of the century (UN, 2019). Further,
nearly all of the global population growth is occurring in cities. The global trend is rapid urbanisation.
The issue is that rapid urbanisation demands more resources to sustain our cities, but these resources
are running out. Due to our global crisis, sustainable development became a central concept of our age