The use of nostalgia at the ideation stage of permaculture design: Opportunities for sustainability?

Permaculture is a form of systems design that mimics natural systems to produce ethical, closed loop, intelligent design interventions. As a contributory strategy to sustainability it is not very well known. Embedded within permaculture are several potential arenas of nostalgic compulsion. Nostalgia is a longing for or wistful emotional relationship with the past. It appears there is potential for nostalgia to be invoked and employed, to more or less conscious degrees, in using permaculture design for urban regeneration, with possibilities for greater engagement, participation, and integration. It is at the design ideation stage - when design is being conceptually considered in terms of a contextual application - that the use of nostalgia can be usefully employed in ways which might situate permaculture design to allow it to cohere more successfully with mainstream design practices. This paper aims to provide evidence from a current PhD study of how permaculture frameworks can be aligned with evidence from frameworks of sustainability to add consideration for nostalgia in permaculture design in sustainable urban spaces.