A hub is a key nodal actor in its region—an entity or practitioner deeply embedded in a place and connected to its people, ecosystems, and ongoing initiatives. The hub serves as both a grounding force and a catalyst, holding the vision for what is possible rather than just reacting to problems. This step is about working with the hub to activate a regenerative design lens, recognizing place as a living system full of untapped potential.

Identifying a Hub

• Look for a community-embedded practitioner or an organization, such as a community center, local initiative, or place-based network, that already plays a connective role.
• The ideal hub has relational depth—trusted connections with diverse actors in the community—and the ability to coordinate across different scales (local, regional, systemic).

Seeing Place as a Living System

• Support the hub in adopting a “nested systems” perspective, recognizing how their place is interconnected with larger social, ecological, and economic flows.
• Shift from problem-based thinking (fixing what’s broken) to potential-based thinking (activating what wants to emerge).
• Use systems mapping, storytelling, or embodied practice to surface unseen connections and regenerative opportunities.

Identifying Place-Sourced Potential

• Work with the hub to see beyond immediate challenges and uncover emerging opportunities for transformation.
• Ask: What unique strengths, relationships, and resources already exist here? What new patterns or experiments could emerge?
• This step is about revealing what the place is calling for, rather than imposing external solutions.

Clarifying the Hub’s Role in Realizing Potential

• Once the potential is recognized, explore how the hub can best serve as an enabler of change.
• This could involve bridging relationships, hosting spaces for co-creation, testing regenerative models, or amplifying local knowledge.

Seeing the Hub’s Unique Contribution

• As the hub clarifies its role, it will begin to see the specific contribution it is called to make within the wider system.
• This contribution should be aligned with the hub’s existing capacities, but also stretch into new possibilities for self-organizing, collaboration, and systemic impact.

A contribution may take many forms. This needs to be something that comes from the heart of those working most committed and carefully with the essence of a place. It might be to reconnect two communities with broken history. It could be to introduce a new project that would help unblock energy and open up new directions. It could be to bring innovation and arts into a community losing young talent to foreign job markets. It could be to steer a river to steward its health long into the future.