BioHubs: A Pathway to Regional Resilience
A BioHub is defined as a project with physical infrastructures — such as farms, campuses, or community centers — that have been developed to catalyze social, ecological, and economic transformation in the regions around them, generating value across scales.
Report link: BioHubs (2026)
In response to the current metacrisis, there is a growing movement that embraces a return to place. By creating pockets of resilience at the level of communities, landscapes, and bioregions, we can slowly stitch up the fissures between people and land, economies and ecosystems, minds and bodies, and each other. Landscapes host life again. Work is meaningful and rooted in real regional economies. Governance, food, and care systems are responsive to the people they serve. Cultural identity deepens rather than erodes trust.
The organizations working within this movement remain deeply under-resourced. Because "weaving" and "bioregioning" work is fundamentally relational (connecting, convening, knowledge-building, cultivating trust), it is difficult to resource through conventional revenue and market-facing models. Most efforts are caught in a cycle of dependency on philanthropic funding that is insufficient, unpredictable, and increasingly competitive, especially as the U.S. philanthropy landscape has been rocked by politically-driven disruptions. Philanthropy alone will never be sufficient to drive regional resilience at scale.
A 3-level financial architecture is explored in this report, generated by a review of 152 place-based initiatives in 44 countries:
- What the physical site itself offers: regenerative hospitality, education, housing, material streams from land stewardship, renewable energy, research.
- Value at the landscape scale covering the surrounding economy: bio-industrial value chain, corporate offtake, regenerative placemaking , real estate value uplift, community wealth building
- Regional-scale financial instruments: ecosystem service payments, outcomes-based finance, rights-based land finance, bioregional bonds, partnership with or hosting of a Bioregional Financing Facility
Lead researcher: Eva Gladek, Metabolic
Contributing researchers: Serena Joury (Metabolic), Amy Beilharz (Artistree), Analise Roland (Anura Capital), Nico Branas Michaelsen (Basin Collective), Nikita Joshi (Metabolic), Laura Martinez (Metabolic), Andrew McCue (Metabolic)