Incorporating Living Systems Thinking in Place-Based Planning

Most of our current planning starts from a position of control and certainty. Whether it's a Destination Management Plan or a planning strategy, a plan is made, approved, and implemented within a system that is embedded with values and agendas. Outcomes are sometimes measured against targets. But the reality is that conditions change so much between when the plan and its solutions were conceived, and when the cycle requires a new plan, that outcomes and achievements of that plan are rarely examined. That's how redundancy gets built into the planning cycle and accountability falls by the wayside. The old plan is let go and a new one comes into play.

This is how institutions are structured to work. But this process is poorly matched to the nature of places, which are not able to be controlled or planned with certainty. Places are complex living systems that shift and adapt as conditions change. These circumstances are often outside the control of any agency. That's why planning often becomes a reactive or corrective process rather than a proactive one aimed at creating the right conditions for lie to thrive.

What living systems thinking actually means in practice

A living system is characterised by interdependence, feedback, emergence, and the capacity to self-organise. Incorporating living systems thinking in place planning means designing for relationships rather than outputs. Paying attention to feedback loops, and what the ecosystem signalling? What are communities telling us about what is working? It means holding the potential ambiguity of mutiple perspectives about what the 'right' outcome looks like, while remaining committed to the conditions that allow the system to thrive.

The Ten Pillars as a living systems framework

The Ten Pillars of Regenerative Tourism were developed to translate living systems thinking into a practice that practitioners, communities and planners can work with. Each pillar names a dimension of the relationship between tourism and place that, if attended to, contributes to the system's capacity to regenerate: ecological embeddedness, social reciprocity, economic circularity, cultural vitality, governance responsiveness, and more.

The pillars are not a checklist. It is a set of lenses through which to examine the relationships that constitute a place, and to ask, honestly, whether a proposed intervention will strengthen or weaken those relationships.

You do not need to redesign your planning process from scratch. Start with a single question: What would it mean for this plan to strengthen the capacity of this place to regenerate itself? The practice begins there.

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References:

→ The Islander Way project on Flinders Island offers one example of living systems thinking in practice.

→ The Ten Pillars of Practice