Las Salinas, Viña del Mar, Chile

Reconciling the health of the whole Ecological System (the Community, ‘Nature’, and the Developer)

When confronted by community activists fighting against a real estate development project, the conventional reaction by many developers is to engage public relations firms and lawyers to “solve the problems” with the various special interest groups (e.g., environmentalists, historical design, zoning law, urban designers, transportation, neighborhood concerns). This time consuming and expensive approach often results in a pastiche of compromises with which no one feels satisfied. This was the situation Regenesis was invited to address by Inmobiliaria Las Salinas, the developer of a 19 hectare, 400,000 square meter (47 acre, 4,000,000 sf), mixed-use project on a brownfield site in Viña del Mar, Chile.

There were at least 25 special interest groups (academics, neighborhoods, social activists) who were extremely negative towards the project. Because this was the only large parcel of land left in the urban zone, the special interest groups saw this as a last-ditch opportunity to fight against the steep downward trajectory of degradation of this garden city that had occurred over the last 30 years. The decline included social fragmentation, cultural decline from the accommodation of mass tourism, degradation of ecological system health; automobile dominance in the fabric of the region; disenfranchised neighborhoods; and political intractability.

The practice of “Regenerative Development and Design” takes its approach from the way living systems cooperate. Nature doesn't compromise - it adapts, reconciles and harmonizes relationships. It has been found that if people take the time to 1) experience and reconcile the core concerns and needs of the developer and community; 2) engage in an understanding of the way life naturally wants to ‘work’ in this particular ecosystem; and 3) engage in developmental dialogue that aligns the interests of the parties around reciprocal value exchange and benefit, decisions can made much more rapidly that add immediate and long-term value to the quality of life to the overall community, ecosystem, and developer.

In Viña del Mar, the developer heard of our regenerative practice from their master planner, Sasaki Associates, an international interdisciplinary design firm. ILS acknowledged the potential of years of court battles with no assurance of winning, so they retained Regenesis Group to lead the reconciliation process. Most of the people engaged on the project felt that it was a long shot that any process other than negotiations and trade-offs could work.

Over an initial two-week period, Regenesis investigated the patterns of life in the Viña del Mar and Valparaiso region; engaged and co-learned with the municipal government, the developer, and most of the community activist groups. This process of co-discovering the processes and inter-relationships that helped create the city they love is what we call a Story of Place®.

The unfolding of this Story helped to establish a common foundation of understanding from where it was possible to help the citizens paint a vivid picture of the potential of Viña del Mar. By reflecting on the place’s long history as a thriving and sustainable contributor to the region, the Story of Place articulated key patterns of health and resilience that, once restored, would enable the Viña del Mar to regenerate itself as a whole socio-ecological system.

The result was remarkable. Every group learned the seriousness of the developer in wanting to help the community align around united action. At first both the developer and the community were tentative, but as the process of Story of Place unfolded, an alignment emerged whereby the community and developer realized that 1) the developer was serious about the development process as a way to transform their own practice and relationship with the community, 2) the community stakeholders began to engage and collaborate with each other and the developer, 3) ecological health in the region could be improved with highly leveraged interventions, 4) the community would receive social, economic and environmental benefits that would improve the quality of life in the region, 5) a partnership of trust was being formed and a process implemented that would reconcile additional concerns as they arose.

Through this harmonization effort, ninety-five percent of the participants shifted from an extremely negative perspective (they universally called the developer “the enemy”) to being gratefully engaged. They were excited about the potential to bring back the health of their city. They were willing to commit to work together to find synergistic solutions.

The other side of this story is the developer also had to be willing to adapt their master plan to creating new potential in the community – such as restored ecological habitat connectivity, social re-integration, the quality of the formerly extensive tree canopy, and the restoration of a severely degraded estuary. One core issue, made clear to all the stakeholders, is that the developer had to be able to make a fair profit.

It takes the consistent engagement of a design team and community leaders and the real-time application of reconciling principles (a practice) to begin to understand what it means to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with each other and an ecosystem. Two months into the process, at the third workshop, the development manager, who was still quite worried about what he would have to ‘give up,’ made his first personal discovery. He actually stopped the meeting and announced that he “got it”. “Got what,” we asked? “Reciprocity. I’ve been holding the idea that we could only be in a transactional relationship with the community, trading this for that. This is a dance of relationship, a development of understanding of what’s important, at the core, for all the players.”

As the developer observed, “we see ourselves differently now; our company is transforming.” The benefits have been:

• Reduced time and cost

• Support of the community and a likelihood of a reduction in years of legal battles and cost

• The collaboration and unity of interest groups to harmonize formerly fragmented issues and problems

• Identification of leverage points to bring back a dynamic, healthy and vibrant city such as water, mobility, ecological system connectivity and enhancement, re-gardening the city, new business vitality, and neighborhood connectivity–

• Inspiration for how the master plan can influence and catalyze the social and ecological systems in the community and how the community can inspire the master plan

• The Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce for Construction and Development observed to our client – ten months after initially refusing to collaborate - “I don’t know how you are doing it, but this is the first time this city has been able to dream in 30 years. Count us in.”

• Two years into the project the neighborhoods and city are coalescing around actively engaging the issues of mobility, ecological connectivity, coastal restoration, and restoring the Margamarga Estuary – currently 80% filled as a multiple kilometer long parking lot.

There is new potential when we come together to learn from each other about the way life can thrive in our communities. The Master Plan design work is now evolving from this new understanding in a collaborative and harmonious fashion. True re-generation is now progressing in Viña del Mar with the continuous and on-going rebirthing of renewed and mutually beneficial relationships and new discoveries about how all of us can participate in the evolutionary processes of this place.