A Vision of the Eco-Village as the Future of Self-Sustaining Neighborhoods

James Ehrlich, Founder, ReGen Villages; Senior Technologist, Stanford University; Senior Fellow, Opus Novum; Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Stanford H-STAR Institute; DesignX Resiliency Team Member, Stanford Center for Design Research

After over 12 years of case study research on organic and biodynamic family farms, intentional communities, and resilient and regenerative design thinking, James Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages. At the forefront of automating thriving abundance for healthy families, ReGen is a Stanford University spin-off company which develops technology-integrated residential areas. Starting with pilot communities—one in Almere, Netherlands and the other at Summit Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah—ReGen Villages intends to reduce burdens on municipal and national governments, creating self-reliant neighborhoods that can power, feed, hydrate and digest their own organic waste. Ehrlich will discuss his inspirational research on farm-to-table communities, detailing his greater vision and plans to realize solutions for the next 2–3 billion people who will live on Earth by 2050.

As a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for 25 years, primarily in the video game and entertainment technology area, Ehrlich designed worlds that made sense. Recently appointed to the U.S. State Department’s joint task force on the nexus of food, water, energy and waste, the genesis of Ehrlich’s personal research came from over a decade of case studies on organic and biodynamic family farms and their connection to the strongest communities around the world.