- Beyond Sustainability - The Case for Regenerative Design
- Understanding Place - Climate, Site, and Solar Geometry
- The Six Integrated Systems - An Overview
- Building with the Earth—Natural Materials
- Passive Solar Design - Heating and Cooling Without Machines
- Off-Grid Energy Systems - Power from the Sun
- Water - Catching, Storing, and Cycling
- Liquid Waste Treatment - Botanical Systems
- Food Systems—Buildings That Feed
- Community Design - Scaling Up
- The Integrated Design Process
- Appendix A: Glossary of Key Terms
- Appendix B: The Pangea Textbook Series
- Appendix C: Key Design Principles at a Glance
- The Regenerative Community Vision
- Site Assessment and Land Reading
- Land Use Law and Legal Frameworks
- Master Planning for Regenerative Communities
- Infrastructure Systems Integration
- Housing Typologies and Density Design
- Community Governance Structures
- Economic Models for Community Development
- Phased Development Strategy
- Community Resilience and Long-Term Stewardship
- Appendix A: Legal Entity Comparison Chart
- Appendix B: Community Design Checklist
- Appendix C: Glossary of Community Development Terms
Before designing any community, regenerative practitioners should study the land stewardship traditions of the people who lived on that land before. In Taos and across the American Southwest, the acequia tradition of communal water governance represents centuries of refined community land management — a system that has outlasted empires and colonial disruptions.
Acequias are community-managed irrigation ditches. What makes them extraordinary is not the earthworks themselves but the governance structure that maintains them: shared labor obligations, community voting on water allocation, elected mayordomo leadership, and cultural norms of mutual aid. This is regenerative governance in practice, evolved over many generations.
Modern regenerative community design learns from these traditions — not by copying them, but by understanding the underlying principles and letting them inform new designs for new contexts.
“We do not inherit the land from our ancestors — we borrow it from our children.”
— Indigenous Proverb