Net Positive Sustainability
According to PD, the original precepts ofTerminology Clarification
The term net positiveThe term also appears as ‘net-positive’ or ‘netpositive’. A special issue was dedicated to net-positive design. See Cole, R. (2015) ‘Net-zero and Net-positive Design: a question of value’, in ''Building Research & Information'' 43(1), pp. 1-6. is increasingly used by green designers, developers and businesses.For example, see Forum for the Future, WWF, and The Climate Group (2015) ''Net Positive: A New Way of Doing Business''. Available at http://www.theclimategroup.org/what-we-do/publications/net-positive-a-new-way-of-doing-business/ Accessed June 2015. However, in context, it usually means just ‘giving back’ - that is, without fixed baselinesBenchmarks are relative to the present, so eco-restoration is seen by some as net positive, yet this does not account for past biodiversity losses and increased human consumption. - by optimizing material resources, energy and stakeholder benefits, etc. This was the aim of 20th Century green building design.There are a wide range of 20th Century green design books, including: Papanek, V. (1971) ''Design for the Real World: human ecology and social change'', Pantheon Books, New York; Johnson, R. (1979) ''The Green City'', MacMillan: S. Melbourne, Australia; Todd, N. and J. Todd (1994) ''From Eco-Cities to Living Machines'', N. Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA.; Vale, B. and R. Vale (1975) ''The Autonomous House: Design and Planning for self-''sufficiency, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London; Wann, D. (1996) ''Deep Design: Pathways to a Liveable Future'', Island Press, Washington, DC.; Lyle, J.T. (1994) ''Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development'', Wiley & Sons, New York; van der Ryn, S, and Cowan, D. (1996) ''Ecological Design'', Island Press, Washington, DC. Mackenzie, D. (1991), ''Green Design: Design for the Environment'', Lawrence King, London; Girardet, H. (1992), ''The Gaia Atlas of Cities: New Directions for Sustainable Urban Living'', Gaia books Ltd, London; and Yeang, K. (1999) ''The Green Skyscraper: The Basis for Designing Sustainable Intensive Buildings'', Prestel Verlag, Munich, Germany eang has written numerous books on green design Although environmental ethics and social justice remain central concerns in PD,Social factors have always been a part of sustainable design paradigms, but the focus is generally on the (psychological, social, physiological, experiential, etc.) needs of building users, and less on using a building project to solve social inequities in the wider community. therefore, ‘eco-positive’ is increasingly used to underscore the ecological dimension. The term ‘net’ also causes some confusion.See for example, Baggs, D. (2015) Buildings Alone will Never be Regenerative, in ''Sourceable - Industry News and Analysis'' https://sourceable.net/buildings-alone-will-never-be-regenerative/ June 29. Accessed July 2015. This claims net positive design only concerns resource balances and does not use a life cycle perspective, but this has no basis in PD literature. In PD, ‘net’ means public benefits ''beyond'' neutral impacts - not just reducing the total negative impacts to zero by, for example, making tradeoffs.For an overview ofTheory Origins
PD theory built on eco-philosophies that emerged in the 1980s.See for example, Merchant, C. (1980) ''The Death of Nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution'', HarperCollins, New York; Warren, K. (1997), ''Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature'', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana; Naess, A. (1989) ''Ecology, community, and lifestyle'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, UK; Warren, K. and Wells-Howe, B. (1994) ''Ecological Feminism'', Routledge, New York; Salleh, A. (1997) ''Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern'', Zed Books, London; Shiva, V. (1988) ''Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development'', Zed Books, London. Calling for social transformation, they deconstructed the hierarchical cultures, dualistic thought patterns and linear-reductionist analyses of modernity. PD added a positive/negative overlay to explain why these theories did not contemplate increasing nature to offset consumption. Later, sustainability was absorbed into the dominant paradigm (DP) which assumed that current institutions could resolve the problems they fostered.See WCED (1987) ''Our Common Future'', Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. This seminal report couched sustainability within the dominant economic and policy making frameworks and did not engage with the sustainability literature critical of the dominant paradigm. According to PD, existing institutional and physical structures reduce future options and are thus terminal.''Planning for Sustainability, Ibid.'' Birkeland, J. (2008) ''Positive Development, Ibid.'' The hypothesis was that, by converting negative systems into positive ones, genuinely sustainable planning, decision and design frameworks would materialize.Design-decision Distinction
The distinction between decision-making and design is central to PD.See Birkeland, J. (2012) ‘Design blindness in Sustainable Development: From Closed to Open Systems Design Thinking’, in ''The Journal of Urban Design'', 17(2), pp. 163-187. Decision-making processes/tools divide, compare and choose. They use bounded or ‘closed system’ thinking which excludes considerations that are difficult to quantify. Essentially, decision methods simplify issues and options to facilitate finding the best path from the present position or desired future. Back-casting and scenario planning, while powerful tools, presume the future can be predicted and selected.''Positive Development, Ibid,'' pp. 165-179 Such methods decide now how future citizens must live. They also reduce future options by narrowing resources, adaptability, space and biodiversity over time. Sustainability therefore requires rethinking decision-making and design tools from first principles.Decision-making (reducing costs)
The reduction of the ecological base and public estate continues, PD argues, because new sustainability goals were spliced onto the old (anti-ecological) closed system models, methods and metrics of the DP.''Positive Development, Ibid.'' Given escalating human consumption, even globalDesign (multiplying benefits)
Whereas the internal logic of decision frameworks (choosing) tend to diminish ecosystems and land eco-productivity, eco-logical design (creating) can multiply functions and public benefits synergistically. Eco-positive design involves open systems thinking (i.e. with transparent/permeable boundaries). For example, building rating tools are based on limits or thresholds (borders) and do not contemplate net public gains. Perhaps because of the deeply-embedded historic elevation of rationalist decision-making over design, green building design templates and rating tools are decision-based. Being reductionist, they encourage tradeoffs between costs and benefits or nature and society in physical development. Hence they tend to reduce adaptability, diversity and reversibility.There are many critiques of green building rating tools. Brandon, P.S., and Lombardi, P.L. (2011) ''Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment'' (2nd ed.) Chichester, West Sussex, Ames, Iowa, Wiley-Blackwell; Gu, Z., Wennersten, R., and Assefa, G. (2006) ‘Analysis of the Most Widely Used Building Environmental Assessment Methods’, ''Environmental Sciences,'' 3(3), pp. 175-192; Birkeland, J. (2004) ‘Building Assessment Systems: Reversing Environmental Impacts’, Nature and Society Forum, ACT, AustraliaGovernance
Decision systems in governance (i.e. legislative, executive and judicial) resolve conflict by allocating rights and resources - not by increasing the ecological base and/or public estate. Hence PD suggests different frameworks for environmental governance.Birkeland, J. (1996) ‘The Case for a New Public Forum’, in Furnass, B., Whyte, J., Harris, J., and Baker, A. (Eds), ''Survival, Health and Wellbeing into the 21st Century'', Nature and Society Forum, pp. 111-114. Birkeland, J. (1995) ‘Ethics-Based Planning’, ''Australian Planner'' 33(1), pp. 47-49. These include a modified constitution with a new decision sphere to deal with the unique ethical dimensions of biophysical development, planning and design.Birkeland, J. (1993) ‘Towards a New System of Environmental Governance’, in ''The Environmentalist'', 13(1), pp. 19-32; Birkeland, J. (1993) ''Planning for a Sustainable Society, Ibid''; Birkeland, J. (2008) ''Positive Development, Ibid,'' pp. 220-233. Given real-world political barriers to change, PD also suggests default strategies to enable incremental reform by changing institutions from within. PD contends that gaps can be avoided in new governance and planning systems by simply reversing each ecologically terminal convention into eco-positive ones.Planning
SMARTmode (systems mapping and redesign thinking) is a PD planning process''Positive Development, Ibid,'' pp. 251-173. that includes two dozen environment gap analyses to highlight sustainability issues that are almost never assessed in planning or design. Some of these are forensic ‘flows analyses’ that identify (local/regional) social and ecological deficits that developments could ameliorate by design. They can be undertaken scientifically using emerging multi-dimensional digital mapping tools, more pragmatically by design teams, or more subjectively in community ‘charrettes’ (aka working bees) for workshopping planning criteria and design briefs. Until planners perform these analyses routinely, therefore, they can serve as design thinking exercises, guidelines and/or criteria.Design
While improved systems of governance, decision-making and planning can assist, biophysical sustainability is ultimately a design problem. To compensate for past system design errors, fundamental reforms of design methods and processes are required. PD proposes means to reduce material flows without tradeoffs by, for example, creating mutual gains and ‘low-impact luxury’ environments. PD contends that eco-positive design is already possible, partly through the integration of natural systems with building structures, spaces and surfaces (e.g. ‘ living machines’,Design for Eco-services
The term ‘ecosystem services’ generally applies only to human benefits, which are usually valued by units (e.g. money, carbon or energy. PD uses the term ‘eco-services’ to include not only nature's instrumental (pragmatic) values like ecosystem goods and services, but its intrinsic (priceless) and ‘biophilic’ values. PD considers the value of nature to be ‘infinite’ as it is not only the basis of the economy, but essential to human existence itself. To counteract the ecological footprint of existing development, ‘surplus’ natural and social capital - assessed from fixed biophysical baselines - must be created both off-site and on-site by design.Carbon-neutral Design
Net positive energy is barred by the laws of physics. Moreover, calculations of ‘net energy’ seldom include the embodied energy - let alone ecological impacts incurred during resource extraction, production and transportation. With substantial passive solar design and renewable energy, buildings can send unused energy back to the grid, but it might be used for unsustainable purposes elsewhere. Nonetheless, a building could sequester more carbon than it emits over its life cycle with substantial building-integrated vegetation, using PD design principles. A case study (conducted by a cross-disciplinary team) showed this would within under twelve years, well under its life span.Design Reporting
The PD eco-positive design reporting process (EDR) aims to avoid many shortcomings of decision-based approaches to design. In contrast to green building rating tools, the EDR aims to uncover opportunities to create net public gains. Design teams answer questions based on PD design criteria and SMARTmode analyses. This forces education, collaboration and ‘frontloading’ design (i.e. investing more in preliminary design stages). Exposing the research and reasoning behind decision and design concepts facilitates input from community, assessors and independent experts, and should therefore occur be undertaken in development project. Being affordable and flexible, it is also easily adapted to developing nations.Design Strategies
Eco-positive retrofitting is a priority PD strategy. Due to the massive ongoing impacts of buildings, biophysical sustainability is impossible without retrofitting cities. Replacing buildings with greener ones costs too much in materials, money, energy and time, as new buildings represent only 1-3% of the building stock. It is now accepted that retrofitting can be profitable in resource, energy, health savings and worker productivity. It can happen quickly and simultaneously, or when buildings are repurposed or refurbished anyway. Green buildings may last a hundred years but few are designed for upgrading/adaptability, so they will soon need retrofitting to a higher standard.Design Assessment
Most rating tools prioritize resource efficiency and treat ‘reductions in negative impacts’ as if positive. Their baselines and benchmarks preclude net-positive impacts. Some provisions consider respective rights/responsibilities, but not broader ethical issues like improving human-nature relationships, reducing total resource flows or increasing social capital in the vicinity. Also, innovation is often valued for its own sake, not outcomes, and eco-efficiency saves owners money anyway. PD's ‘hierarchy of eco-innovation’ analysis instead prioritizes positive system-wide outcomes and net public benefits. Being non-numerical, it allows self-assessment during design when scientific data is unavailable, time and ego has vested or irreversible decisions are made.PD Starfish
The PD ‘starfish’ design and rating tool enables quantification while assisting designers to consider more dimensions of sustainability. It is a modified radar diagram with added layers and satellite diagrams. Since mostReferences
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