[24][25] She always stressed that eco-positive retrofitting (remodelling) of cities and buildings was a priority due to for example, the material flows in both ordinary and green construction.

[28][29] In a nutshell, Positive Development theory and practice prodded regenerative design to go further: to increase the 'public estate' (environmental security, universal access to the means of survival, etc.)

[30][31] The logic underlying Positive Development theory led to unique proposals for sustainable forms of governance,[32][33] decision-making frameworks,[34][35] planning methods,[36][37] architecture,[38][39] design practices,[40][41] participation processes,[42][43] and assessment tools.

[59][60] Since then, she continued to refine the new "mindsets, models, methods, and metrics"[61] that, in her view, are necessary to transform the built environment into a generator of net (whole-system) sustainability.

[65] She also organized conferences, seminars and professional development courses to raise public awareness about proactive, positive solutions to diverse sustainability challenges.

[66] These combined educational, professional, academic and government perspectives prompted her critical reassessment of leading-edge sustainable design and development standards and strategies.

These included their failure to address planetary overshoot and its many repercussions, such as climate change, biodiversity losses, social disparities, environmental risks, etc.

[71] The current number of publications in the sustainable building industries, professions and academia that mention net-positive design and development - albeit in diluted forms - indicate a growing acceptance of the need to redesign the systems and concepts that shape the built environment.

In the 1980s, Birkeland applied an Ecofeminist lens to deconstruct the 'Dominant Paradigm':[72] a world view that reified a value system described as industrial, androcentric, mechanistic, reductionist, anthropocentric, power-based, etc.

[73][74] Ecofeminism was chosen because it addresses human-nature relationships but also explores the systemic roots of exploitative interrelationships at personal and political levels.

[82] STARfish shows how to assess crucial issues that are omitted by virtually all building rating schemes,[83] such as the need to increase equity, environmental security and justice, democracy, ecological space, nature, etc.

[84] To safeguard democracy as well as planetary health, Birkeland reasoned that institutional structures must be remodelled to prevent corruption and abusive power relationships,[85][86] as intended by the US Constitution,[87] and to increase social and natural life-support systems in absolute terms.

[90] In lectures and publications, Birkeland challenged what she considered anachronistic ideas in contemporary sustainable or regenerative design theory, practice and strategy.