We often hear about the phrase “net positive development.” What does this really mean?
The book, Positive Development, articulates and advocates a paradigm shift from our ‘managerialist’ approaches to environmental problems to a (positive) ‘design-based’ approach. It shows how our ideas about sustainable development have been built upon negative premises. It is all about restoring and reviving what has left by the inevitable damage caused by development.
‘Positive Development’ refers to built environments that have net positive ecological (and social) impacts - beyond pre-settlement conditions. The idea derives from a radical critique of how we plan, design, retrofit and manage the built environment (source: www.sustainability.org.au).
With our environmental management practices, it targets to offset ecological losses with social gains, which we often take for granted in the final design.
A system of development that does not pay its own way over its life cycle can no longer be seen as acceptable. Ecological restoration or regeneration is not enough, because we have already exceeded the Earth’s ecological carrying capacity. Therefore, just to support existing bioregions and populations, cities would need to increase regional carrying capacity. The premise of Positive Development is that built environment design can have net positive ecological as well as social impacts. That is, we can retrofit urban areas to increase net ecological carrying capacity in cities to increase natural and social capital. However, this would require a new approach to planning, management and design (source: www.sustainability.org.au).
In the case of how buildings are built, we should bear in mind that aside from producing clean energy, water, soil, air, and food, it should be net positive.
When you say net positive, it should create ecological and social positive
development for nature itself. Sustainability enters into the picture by balancing both our ecosystem and
our nature.
In contrast to restorative design, therefore, Positive Development would aim to expand both the ecological base (life support system), and increase the public estate (equitable access to means of survival). This will require nothing short of the ecological modernisation of the architecture and planning professions themselves (source: www.sustainability.org.au).
How do we measure impacts? We do it the right way by counting on positive ecological impacts and negative as well and try to balance both.
Thus, governments expend resources in trying to mitigate the impacts of developments proposed by investors.
· Meet a ‘sustainability standard’, where development leaves the ecology, as well as society, better off after construction than before.
· Be ‘reversible’ (demountable, compostable and/or highly adaptable).
· Over-compensate for both embodied and ecological waste in production through substantial positive offsite impacts.
Keeping the balance between our ecological system and environment is the best key to net positive development.
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