Pulling together the threads from this week’s posts so far on infrastructure, discussions about regenerative infrastructure often confuse three distinct factors:
- Metabolim
- Ecological participation
- Resilience
Untangling these questions can help us gain clarity in what we are trying to design, so that we can then look for solutions that are win-win-win on all three counts.
Metabolism.
The first question is about ecological metabolism, which we looked at yesterday.
In other words, what kind of economy does this infrastructure enable?
Is it an economy of high energy and high material throughput? Or is it one that enables the economy to operate within its ecosystem limits? Or does it enable a metabolism that demands every increasing energy and materials?
This question is the most contentious as it challenges fundamental assumptions about our economy.
When we are discussing regenerative design in the context of buildings, this challenge is easier to side step because the scale is smaller. But when we get to talking about infrastructure, we are talking about the plumbing of the economy itself.
Ecological participation
The second question is about how does the infrastructure engage with the living world itself.
Some infrastructure depletes ecosystems as it passes through, for example by fragmenting habitats, disrupting water cycles or creating pollution.
Other infrastructure systems seek to minimise damage or contribute to ecosystem enhancement, for example, by creating wildlife bridges, protected nature reserves,or blue-green corridors alongside transport routes.
Some infrastructure is actually created to support ecological processes for the wider benefit of humans and the rest of the living world — for example wetland restoration integrated into flood management systems.
The question here is: does the infrastructure damage the ecosystem, try to minimise harm or play an active part in enhancing life systems.
Resilience
The third question comes down to system design. Is the proposed system resilient? Is it decentralised, modular and capable of adapting and evolving?
When conditions are stable, highly centralised systems can work very efficiently. But when conditions are unstable then modular, distributed networks are more effective.
This is where the writing of Donella Meadows and David Fleming is so helpful in understanding how complex systems can be made resilient.
Getting in a knot
When these three factors get tangled together, debates about infrastructure can get into a knot.
For example, we can be building a wildlife corridor along a piece of infrastructure. That may be good from an ecosystem participation point of view. But if that infrastructure intensifies the metabolic rate of the economy beyond what the ecosystem can support, then the overall effect is still damage.
Without separating these questions, it becomes difficult to see what we are designing for.
Three tests for regenerative infrastructure
Any proposal for infrastructure should pass three regenerative tests. Does it:
- Support an economy operating within ecological limits?
- Enhance the living systems it participates in?
- Remain structurally resilient?
If we can design infrastructure that performs well across all three, then we are building the backbone of a system that can create thriving rather than exhausting the ecosystems our lives depend on.