Indigo Development
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Welcome to Indigo Development, the first consulting company to apply industrial ecology to the challenges of local and regional sustainable development, beginning in 1993.

If your challenge is responding to the current economic and financial crisis go directly to Recovery Now!

In these pages you can also learn about our related services: applying industrial ecology (IE), planning eco-industrial parks (EIP), promoting sustainable communities, supporting sustainable agriculture, integrating regional action planning, and helping agencies and businesses prepare for the impacts of climate change. 


The Indigo Development team works with clients committed to achieving major system changes in their world.



Since we first posed this question over a year ago, the word "crisis" has become too real for families, communities, and regions here in the US and around the world. We are in the midst of a profound financial and economic crisis. A financial bubble is deflating. A boom that has been growing most years since the 1980s has suddenly burst. Although some see "green shoots", especially in the financial markets, real unemployment is at least 17% and projected to continue through 2010 or longer.

We need an integrative approach to regional economic recovery now, as hundreds of companies and stores close, as workers lose their jobs, as towns and cities fail to meet their budgets. We can't just wait for Washington to fix things.

The Indigo team supports regional and local leaders in designing solutions to the financial and economic crisis at the regional level. This process builds upon our work in sustainable economic development, integrative regional action planning, and eco-industrial development. We believe that economic recovery will be strengthened by developing green ventures and jobs, responding to climate change, and other aspects of a high performance sustainable economy.

Go to
Recovery Now! for information on how we can work with you. 


Indigo Development creates systems solutions to meet the complex of crises we face through industrial ecology and integrative regional action planning:

  • Indigo's Recovery to What? web page gathers resources on a fully sustainable economy as the necessary goal for recovery from the recession that began in 2008
  • One of the most important topics for regional and national planning is preparation for the impacts of climate change. Indigo is now offering information and services to help agencies and businesses plan for climate adaptation and provides links to major documents in this field.

  • We believe industrial ecology is an ideal framework for designing an effective transition to sustainable agriculture. We have adapted the EIP concept to provide a support system for a sustainable supply of food and fiber. Agro-eco-industrial parks (AEIP) support farmers in learning and practicing sustainable farming. (See AEIP page.)
  • The eco-industrial park is a central strategy in the Chinese Circular Economy initiative, to which we have contributed since its inception in 2002. Our paper on Walter Stahel's work on product-life extension and the Service or Functional economy is important for any country moving toward a more Circular Economy.
Indigo Development is in the business of creating powerful solutions. We do this by linking strength of vision to pragmatic understanding of conditions on the ground, wherever we work. Industrial ecology and systems practice are our foundation.

Briefly, industrial ecology is an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial and other human systems as living systems that are interdependent with natural systems. We view public and private services, urban design, and agriculture as fields that can benefit from IE. Industrial ecology's primary goal is to balance environmental and economic interests within emerging understanding of local and global ecological constraints. To achieve this goal industrial ecologists must also coordinate with the social dimension of sustainable development.


Industrial Facilities in Dalian Development Zone, China

Chinese Development Zone

Contact Us | Copyright © 2009 Indigo Development | Last Updated: November 2009