Regenerative thinking and Nature-based solutions: beyond green design

Abstract

Since its first issues, TRIA journal has dedicated specific attention to landscape design and territorial ecological planning. The scientific discussion reported in some issues (no. 2-3-15-19-20-26) followed a progressive line of maturation of the reflections on these themes, emerged in recent decades: from approaches based on the recognition of cultural and aesthetic values ​​of the landscape to methodologies linked to environmental protection and to the evolution of sustainability towards resilience, from green infrastructures to NBS (nature-based solutions). In the previous issue, also dedicated to the application of NBS in urban planning, the growing difficulties in the application of these innovative processes to operational practices were studied, and above all how complicated it is to conform to natural processes that sometimes require a long time to rebuild the balance after degenerative impacts.
In the actual practice, the applications of “green” interventions have been proposed for some decades now, intended as technological devices that are connected to energy saving and to the protection of natural resources, especially at the building scale and only recently at the urban one. With the introduction of regenerative thinking, a theoretical reflection is proposed in order to stimulate actions towards an improvement of practices: from conventional approaches that respect the planning standard rules to green design aimed at improving the energy behavior of the architecture, to sustainable design capable of becoming neutral with respect to the increase in resource consumption, to the restorative approach that aims to return to nature what has been taken away from it in centuries of highly energy-intensive activity up to the highest stage of the regenerative design that supports and aims for perfect integration in the co-evolution of human society and nature.