Land Selection Framework
A bioregioning tool for communities seeking to belong to a place — and help it flourish over fifty to a hundred years.
Bioregioning means living within the grain of a place — its watersheds, its soils, its seasons, and the diversity and coherence of the living whole — in good faith with the people and lifeways already rooted there. That relationship is the whole premise, not an afterthought. The tool reads eight criteria, with sources, across twenty regions in Europe and North America, as questions about how a community might arrive in reciprocity and help a place flourish over generations. You set the thresholds; it filters, and never scores, ranks, or tells you where to go.
This is what we hope the tool can support — and we're glad to talk it through with anyone weighing where to put down roots.
A place is not a product. Arriving is a relationship.
This tool helps you see where a community could put down roots and regenerate a place over generations. It never tells you to go anywhere. Every region here is already someone's home — held in living communities with their own histories, lifeways, and care for the land. Reading a place well means asking what arriving would ask of you, and listening for the answer.
People before land. Still choosing where before you have the people you'd do this with? Find your community first →
Part of Regen Community Tools — honest tools for forming community.
What matters most for where you'd put down roots?
This is a bioregioning tool for communities hoping to belong to a place — and help it flourish — over fifty to a hundred years. Tap a starting point and the sliders set themselves, or move any slider to filter twenty regions by what matters to you. Every number names its source. Nothing is scored, ranked, or recommended — and wherever you land, arriving in good faith with who's already there comes with it.
Twenty regions, briefly named.
Illustrative, chosen because each tells a different story across the criteria. The map carries seventeen data layers across six themes — climate & water, land & soil, energy, hazards, people & access, and terrain — drawn from public services (WorldClim, WRI Aqueduct, SoilGrids, Global Solar Atlas, NASA, GEM, Global Forest Watch, and more). Toggle any layer on; stack a couple to compare.
The eight criteria, region by region.
Each card is one criterion from the framework. Drag the threshold to filter, regions that meet your criterion stay highlighted; others fade. The framework filters, it never scores.
New here? Start with a scenario, then adjust the sliders to taste. These are starting points, not recommendations.
Everything together.
The same data in one matrix. Read columns to see how a single region reads across criteria; read rows to see how regions compare on a single criterion. Filter results from above propagate here.
Reach The Collective.
If you want to talk about this work, the framework, the regions, the project as a whole, or how to join The Collective, subscribe to updates and we'll be in touch.
Read the deeper material , methodology, three regional case studies (Alentejo, Connemara, Transylvania), and the design tensions deferred to V2.
Read The Collective's invitation (PDF) and subscribe to get in touch — we'll introduce you to the group.