The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast

Despite being named one of the top ten landscape designers of all time, Mary Reynolds describes herself as an ex-gardener. That’s because after years spent designing award-winning gardens and landscapes across the globe, Mary was tired of fighting nature back to fit into the mold in which she originally designed. If you don’t know Mary Reynolds then you are in for a real treat. She is the author o...

Biophilia was first introduced as a term in 1973 by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness , which put forth that biophilia is “the passionate love of life and all this is alive.” The term was later used by legendary biologist E.O. Wilson in his 1984 work Biophilia , in which he proposed that humans tend to focus on and affiliate with nature and other life-forms because of a genetic b...

The world we design for is the world we get. That's why we are excited to share this episode with you featuring designer Ian Peterman. Ian's firm specializes more in the products that we fill our homes with than the actual design of a property, but the underlying design philosophy is one and the same: creating environmentally and socially just products, brands, and companies. In this epi...

The cutting edge of regenerative technology is aligning market incentives with regenerative land stewardship. This is an area that Gregory Landua and his colleagues with the Regen Network have been pioneering since 2017 as they began asking questions of how to scale impact and help farmers and land managers switch to regenerative practices. By focusing on what Gregory calls a watershed view, the R...

The world is beginning to go through an electric revolution, and real estate is at the epicenter. Sean Armstrong, principal at Redwood Energy , happens to be one of the revolutionaries of this movement and has designed over 10,000 residences in more than 200 developments that are 100% all electric, Zero Net Energy with many of those being low-income affordable housing. Sean is a rare combination o...

Passion, service, community, and curiosity are the threads that weave the story of Mark Voss. Mark is a consummate educator, farmer, and real estate professional residing in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the founder of Voss Organics and is a Latitude Change Agent .  Like many young people, curiosity and the longing for adventure first lured Mark to venture far and wide from his humble youth in the Mid...

At the core of every real estate project is finance. That’s why we are excited to share this interview with Eve Picker, founder of the real estate crowdfunding platform Small Change .  With a focus on helping impact-driven real estate projects get funded, Small Change represents a shift towards community-based finance. This is significant as federal regulations have historically barred the majorit...

Do you happen to be someone that thinks the dream of the white picket fence and the manicured lawn doesn't sound all that appealing? Maybe you are the kind of person that would rather live closer to nature? Or in a place with multiple generations living together with shared amenities? From off-grid and sustainable agrihoods to urban ecovillages and income sharing communes,  " intentional...

Do you feel like you have untapped potential to be an actor for positive change in this world? Then maybe you should consider becoming a Regenerative Practitioner. In this evocative and insightful interview, Pamela Mang of the Regenesis Institute shares her story and how her life experiences shaped her understanding of the role that humans can have in the co-evolution of our planet where all life...

Instead of looking for hope, look for action. That is what resonates with the story of Dan Miller, the founder of the regenerative agriculture crowdfunding platform Steward . Combining his background in the creation of one of the world's first crowdfunding platforms for real estate, Fundrise, with his passion for regenerative agriculture, Dan Miller set his sights on helping farmers and food...

"It's not about the product, it's about the process." This is the mantra that Adam Sgrenci extols when he talks about applying regenerative values and principals to the field of construction management. Adam's work as the co-founder of the Center for Infrastructure and Society often put him in project management roles to help advance large-scale regenerative projects aroun...

The infrastructure that our society is built upon is large and complex. Outside of roads, bridges, and buildings the we can see, much of the infrastructure is out of sight. We know that there is an electrical grid, sewer systems with waste water treatment plants, and hundreds of thousands of fiber optic cables, but most people don't know how it all works. That's where Steven Baumgartner...

Imagine a deep ecological  thinker that lives in the breathtaking Spanish Pyrenees in a 700 year old hand-built house that captures all of its own energy from the sun, harvests all the water it needs from the rain, and invites nature into the heart of the home. That is Emmanuel Pauwels.  Emmanuel is a Regenerative Practitioner through and through. From the way that he designs buildings to the rege...

What if real estate could be used as a force for good, rather than further degradation? It is no secret that the infrastructure our civilization is built upon is outdated, extractive, and harmful to our health and the environment. Buildings account for nearly 40% of all energy consumed globally and are notorious for wanton waste. One person that has answered that question is Aaron Fairchild, co-fo...

When the Living Building Challenge was first conceived in the early 2000's many people had their doubts. Lauded as the world's most rigorous and aspirational green building standard, the challenge was deemed almost impossible. And in many places illegal. Living Buildings have design and performance imperatives like the building needing to produce more energy than it consumes; all the wat...

In an ever changing and complex world, the real estate industry must change. The change needs to come from all levels: from designers and architects, builders and developers, planners and policy makers. This is especially true for real estate agents. The residential real estate industry has been pushing out repetitive platitudes for a long time. Agents tout that they can help a buyer find their dr...

For twenty-two years The Ecology School has been teaching people how to tune into and read the pattern language of nature. The school aims to transform how people think about science, food, the environment, and themselves through joyful, hands-on learning for all ages. They approach the science of ecology through wide-eyed, hands-on exploration of the ecosystems outside their doors, making nature’...

On this tiny spec we call home in the universe, matter is neither created nor destroyed. Every living thing is created from the Earth. Death and life are the two sides of the same coin. They are both constant and infinite, yet we experience them as finite. For the entirely of our species and those that we evolved from, our bodies have been nourished from the earth, and then returned to the earth....

As life has drastically changed for many of us in the past year, we begin to look at our spaces differently. We not only spend the majority of time within our homes, but also in the spaces between our homes. For most of us, however, these spaces were not designed in order to promote health and wellbeing. On this episode of The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, we take a deep dive into the life and...

Permaculture is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking informed by ethics and design principles. This approach seeks to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature and can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to ecological building, from appropriate technology to education and even metropolises. Andrew Faust is one of the premiere permac...

Across the globe we have witnessed mass environmental degradation take place. Along with the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide, desertification has also proliferated. Local economies, ecosystems, and populations are impacted by these shifting landscapes that turn fertile grasslands into barren wastelands. As we all collectively search for solutions to address the large, complex problems we are fa...

Living in Costa Rica close to the beach in a tropical paradise is a dream many people have, but seldom pursue. That's not the case for Justin Dolan, the visionary and developer behind St. Michael's Sustainable Community . Justin's story is nothing short of incredible. After sustaining a debilitating injury while on the job as a police officer, Justin turned to real estate as a path...

In a world with millions of rental properties, very few landlords are thinking beyond the single bottom line. The mainstream dogma of the industry teaches new investors to just focus on the numbers, yet ignores the potential impact that an investor can make by infusing sustainability into their properties and portfolios. Seth Nowak is a real estate investor that has a long history in the environme...

“Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.”  - Susan Statham Ashley Colby Fitzgerlad’s life is one in which passion meets purpose. She dared to take the road less traveled; the road that many of us only glimpse in bleary-eyed daydreams. To venture into the unknown, guided by a burning question of “What could be?” takes a leap of faith. It is an act that tests your resolve, questions your mo...

When we stop viewing nature as something we dominate, yet instead work with, transformation will happen. The land manager becomes a steward that is in partnership with nature to build soil biology so that life can flourish. This episode the The Regenerative Real Estate is a captivating life story full of passion and purpose by the enigmatic Hobbs Magaret, founder of Sisters Cattle Co . Once a prof...