I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between fixing something that’s broken and actually making it better than it was before. It’s a distinction I never really considered during my working years, but eight years into retirement, I’m seeing it everywhere – especially in how we approach buildings and land use.
This all started when I got a call from a woman named Sarah Chen, an urban planner out in Portland who’d somehow found my blog about the accessibility modifications I’ve been making to our house. She’d been following my posts about creating healing environments for aging in place, and she had a question that stuck with me.
“What if we didn’t just design something that wouldn’t harm the land further?” she asked. “What if we actually designed something that could heal it?”
She was talking about a twelve-acre brownfield site – contaminated industrial land that had been sitting empty for eight years. The city wanted to turn it into a community hub, but every conventional development proposal felt dead to her. Just another building slapped on damaged earth.
That conversation introduced me to something called regenerative design, which goes way beyond the sustainable building concepts I’d been reading about. It’s not just about being less harmful – it’s about actively making things better.
I’d heard plenty about green building and LEED certification over the years, but this was different. Instead of just reducing damage, regenerative design asks how a project can leave the site healthier than it found it.
The more I learned about Sarah’s project, the more it reminded me of the challenges my wife and I have faced with our own property. When her stroke forced us to rethink how our house and yard worked, we didn’t just install grab bars and call it done. We asked deeper questions: How could we create spaces that actually supported healing and wellbeing? How could we work with natural systems instead of fighting them?
Sarah’s team took the same approach but on a much larger scale. Instead of just testing soil for contamination levels, they looked at biological activity – mycorrhizal networks, beneficial bacteria, organic matter content. Decades of industrial use had essentially sterilized the earth, but they wanted to understand what the land was trying to become, not just what was wrong with it.
Their three-part process fascinated me because it reminded me so much of the systematic approach I’d used in my engineering work, just applied to living systems. First, they assessed what wanted to be right – natural water flow patterns, native plant communities that would thrive there, wildlife corridors that could be restored.
Second, they designed systems that could repair damage while serving human needs. Instead of importing clean soil to cap contamination, they researched plants that could actually extract heavy metals and break down chemicals through something called phytoremediation. The community building channeled rainwater through constructed wetlands that filtered runoff while creating habitat.
The third phase was integration – ensuring human activities would contribute to rather than detract from the regenerative processes. Community gardens were planned around the soil remediation timeline, with different crops rotating in as earth health improved. Workshop spaces for environmental education overlooked the restoration areas, turning the healing process into a teaching tool.
This approach took four years from planning to completion. I’ll admit, there were times I wondered if they were being naive. Traditional developers could have built something functional in eighteen months. But the results spoke for themselves.
After two years, soil tests showed measurable improvements in both contamination levels and biological activity. Bird species that hadn’t been seen in the area for decades started returning. Property values increased in the surrounding neighborhood, but not in a way that displaced existing residents – they’d developed a community ownership model that ensured long-term affordability.
Most importantly, people using the space became active participants in its ongoing regeneration. Kids who’d grown up thinking nature only happened in distant parks became experts on native plants and pollinator habitat. Adults who’d never considered themselves environmentally minded were leading neighborhood composting programs.
That’s when it clicked for me. Regenerative design isn’t really about buildings or landscapes – it’s about relationships. Between humans and natural systems, between individuals and communities, between present actions and future possibilities.
I started seeing connections to the modifications I’d been making at home. When I built my wife’s accessible raised garden beds, I wasn’t just solving a mobility problem. I was creating a space where she could nurture living things again, where she felt needed and useful. The therapeutic benefits went way beyond what any doctor could prescribe.
The greenhouse project became something similar. Yes, it extends her growing season and gives her a warm place to work during Michigan winters. But it’s also become a gathering spot where neighbors stop by to chat, where grandkids learn about plants, where the isolation of aging gets replaced by connection and purpose.
What I’ve learned is that regenerative design isn’t just about environmental outcomes. It’s about shifting from taking what we need to giving back what we can. Instead of asking how much we can extract from a site, we ask how much we can contribute.
The principles work at any scale. I’ve been applying them to our own property – designing for small-scale food production, setting up greywater recycling from the washing machine to water the garden, choosing materials that will actually feed the soil when they eventually decompose.
It requires different thinking than conventional approaches. You need to understand ecological processes, think in decades rather than quick fixes, and embrace the fact that you won’t get everything right the first time. I keep detailed records of what I try, revisiting projects years later to see what actually worked.
Some of my proudest successes looked like failures initially. The rain garden I installed to handle runoff from the roof was a soggy mess the first year. Now it’s a thriving habitat that manages stormwater beautifully while attracting birds and butterflies that my wife enjoys watching from her chair.
The financial piece is still evolving. Regenerative projects often cost more upfront but deliver benefits over time – improved water quality, better air, enhanced property values, reduced maintenance needs. We’re still figuring out how to capture those long-term benefits in ways that make sense to people working with tight budgets.
But I’ve learned that when you start seeing built environments as part of larger living systems rather than isolated objects, every decision becomes an opportunity to either support or undermine the health of the whole. That changes how you approach not just design problems, but life problems too.
Sarah calls me periodically with updates on new projects inspired by their Portland work. The approach is spreading because people can see and feel the difference it makes. That brownfield is now a thriving community hub surrounded by productive landscapes, but more than that, it’s become a model for healing damaged places while serving human needs.
At our scale, my wife and I are doing the same thing – creating spaces that support our health and wellbeing while contributing to the larger ecosystem we’re part of. It’s given us purpose in retirement and shown us that aging in place doesn’t have to mean just hanging on. It can mean actively participating in making things better.
Robert is a retired engineer in Michigan who’s spent the past few years adapting his longtime home for accessibility and wellbeing. He writes about practical, DIY ways to make homes more comfortable and life-affirming as we age — from raised-bed gardens to better natural light.
