CO-CREATING A REGENERATIVE SYDNEY

We’re enabling systemic collaboration for an ecologically safe and socially just Sydney

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visionary action for resilience and regeneration

Regen Sydney is building a citywide movement for regeneration to address climate change and prevent the worst effects of environmental catastrophe. The interconnected crises we presently face point to deep flaws across our cultural, economic and political systems, which continue to chart us towards a dystopian future. Recognising our entanglement with living systems, we require an ambitious collective re-imagining of our city.

We convene systemic collaboration to develop pioneering demonstrator projects and transdisciplinary research that suitably address the complex ecological and social challenges of our time. Through its various programs, Regen Sydney experiments and models new civic infrastructures that embody our interdependence with one another and nature. We explore how we make decisions, produce our food, protect our watersheds, and measure progress, all in service of the health of people and planet.

Sydney can indeed thrive in a safe and just space where social foundations are secured, and ecological responsibilities are met. It is not only possible, but is already underway.

OUR Program Areas

Civic Neighbourhoods

Foster civic engagement amongst residents, anchor institutions, local businesses and councils, developing collective agency and ecological resilience. Build participatory governance, map transition pathways, form Cornerstone Indicators and advise council strategy. First examples include projects with Waverley and Inner West LGAs.

Food Futures

Convene a community of practice on food system transformation: prioritising food security, supply chain resilience and food sovereignty. Work with leading producers, urban farmers, academics and government experts to develop demonstrations of diversified localised food production, agroecological practices, reforestation and low food miles.

Living Waters

Enable a whole of catchment approach to waterway health, bringing a bioregional lens to co-design, supporting collective governance and policy advocacy. Support precinct master planning to rewild and renaturalise blue-green infrastructure. Key initial contexts include the Cooks River catchment and Sydney Harbour.

ENABLING CONDITIONS

Underpinning the tangible demonstrators that make up the programs of work described above are shifts required in various invisible structural dynamics. Without transformations of the deep code of our systems the more tangible expressions of a regenerative society cannot meaningfully be fostered.

We are creating experimental third spaces for collective innovation by institutional actors in government, academia and industry. To foster shifts to the underpinning enabling conditions, Regen Sydney is developing capability for transdisciplinary research in the following areas. These enabling conditions also intersect across the three program areas.

PROGRESS MEASUREMENT

  • Co-create a dashboard of measures to see the ecological and social dimensions where the city is excelling and where we are falling short.

  • Foster a shift away from GDP towards holistic frameworks, that are better able to guide policymaking in systems complexity.

participatory governance

  • Foster trust in our decision-making systems, including through deliberative democracy, citizens assemblies and juries.

  • Develop prototypes of bioregional and watershed based forums for place-based participatory governance.

systemic capital

  • Enable collective sensemaking of the landscape of capital and ownership in Sydney, letting the system see itself.

  • Support development of systemic modes of investment in regenerative initiatives, including bioregional, decentralised and blockchain funds.

NARRATIVE PARADIGMS

  • Conduct storytelling to mobilise a broad-based movement across predominant polarised segments of society.

  • Help to attuned cross-sector efforts to the needs of people and place across the Sydney bioregion, including through inner regeneration.

Convening a platform for systemic Collaboration

In creating a platform for systemic collaboration, Regen Sydney plays the critical role of convenor, fostering the formation of unusual alliances through ambitious demonstrator projects.

We employ convening as a form of systems leadership to encourage strategic coherence - across silos and sectors, as well as over longer time horizons. The collaborative forums we curate are vital for innovative experimentation, sensemaking in complex systems, and for collective upskilling in regenerative approaches.

Through convening, we seek to uplift key changemakers across every level of the system, underpinning all our program areas.

OUR PARTNERS AND COLLABORATORS

Some of those who we are working with towards a regenerative Sydney

Field Notes

Field notes from a city learning to regenerate. Read our blog posts here and sign up to our Substack.

“The challenge the Doughnut sets us is simple, yet formidable: to improve the lives of people everywhere, while radically reducing our impact on the world.”

— David Attenborough, A Life on Our Planet

PROJECT REPORTS

Regen Waverley Program

Building Civic Capabilities for Neighbourhood-Scale Regeneration. This report presents insights and reflections gained through the 12-month Regen Waverley program that Regen Sydney conducted in partnership with Waverley Council.

Sketching a Sydney Doughnut

This report presents the first sketch of a Sydney Doughnut - a compass for regeneration in Greater Sydney. We detail the findings from a series of community workshops and stakeholder roundtables held in late 2022.

Growing the Movement for a regenerative Sydney

This report showcases Regen Sydney’s formative journey, and communicates the exciting potential of growing the network. The narrative and findings included in this report draw from public events, community workshops and desktop research conducted in 2021.