Newport Lakes Stories and Contributive Practice

Ten years ago, Chrisna du Plessis and I proposed something bold in Designing for Hope: that design, grounded in the right values, could do more than reduce harm. It could heal, co-create and regenerate.

Back then, ideas like biophilia, mutuality, and positive reciprocity felt radical. We were just starting to talk about “net-positive” outcomes instead of “net-zero” goals. Just beginning to imagine design that could enhance life, not just sustain it.

Now, a decade later, these values have become urgent.

We’re living in the world we predicted

The world today looks more like the one we wrote about in Chapters 2 and 3 of Designing for Hope:

• climate disruption is no longer abstract: it’s flooding our cities and scorching our soil
  
• social inequality is rising
  
• the illusion of control, permanence, and separation from nature is collapsing.

And yet, the values in the book have become a survival guide. We wanted the chapters to offer something few policy frameworks or design guidelines do: a way to navigate complexity with care, coherence, and connection.

Values are strategic

It’s tempting to think of values like harmony or respect as soft. But in regenerative development, they’re strategic tools. They shape how we respond to uncertainty, how we collaborate and how we let go when something isn’t working.

Take non-attachment, for example. In the wake of COVID, political instability, and climate unpredictability, we’ve seen again and again how clinging to rigid systems backfires. Schools, cities, businesses and institutions that refused to adapt, fractured under pressure. Those that embraced responsiveness—letting place, people, and relationships guide decisions—found resilience.

That’s structural integrity by not holding onto the ways of the past and listening to what needs to be addressed now.

The myth of independence is cracking

We’re also witnessing the fallout of values that once drove early sustainability movements: individualism, isolation, survivalism.

In our next episode, Chrisna and I revisit the Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico—a fascinating example of eco-architecture that left us both cold. It was off-grid, self-contained, and “green” on paper but it lacked fellowship. There was no sense of community of place or one another. But this was coming in as an outsider. Especially in contrast to the community we visited the next day: Taos Pueblo.

Taos Pueblo is a community that’s lived sustainably for centuries through shared stewardship and cultural continuity. There, sustainability isn’t about separation. It’s about interdependence and fellowship. That’s the regenerative future we need.

The real shift: from doing less harm to doing more good

Mainstream design still orbits around “net zero.” But regeneration asks: ‘how can we maximise our contribution?’

That’s where values like positive reciprocity and integrity come in. They remind us that buildings, policies, even social systems can be in service of life—not just an attempt to avoid damaging it.

This thinking is finally making its way into design studios, urban planning, community engagement, and education. But we’re still scratching the surface.

We don’t need more checklists, we need a compass

Designing for Hope laid out ten values that act as a compass for regenerative design:

• Integrity
  
• Inclusivity
  
• Harmony
  
• Respect
  
• Mutuality
  
• Positive reciprocity
  
• Fellowship
  
• Responsibility
  
• Humility
  
• Non-attachment
  

These are practices we return to, again and again. They’re humble. Relational. Evolving.

They remind us that change isn’t just something to plan for—it’s something to participate in.

What comes next?

As Designing for Hope enters its second decade, the real invitation isn’t to revisit the past. It’s to re-commit.

• Re-commit to designing with place, not over it.
• Re-commit to listening before leading.
• Re-commit to showing up not as experts with answers, but as humans with values.

Because if the first 10 years of Designing for Hope was about imagining what could be, the next 10 should be about stepping into what must be.