permaculture

[EFMonaco <EFMonaco@compuserve.com>]

I've been reading with keen interest the discussion about the Greens vs.
Dems.
Both have their place IMO.  Well, here's a real live one to chew on:
First some background and my bio:

As some of you don't know me, I live on the western side of the southern
appalachians in the Tennessee valley.
I am a Georgia Tech-trained civil engineer with 20+ yrs of construction
management experience.  I also studied engineering geology at Ga Tech.  I
took my 1st PDC in 1993 with Peter Bane in Tennessee, then took another one
in 1994 with Bill Mollison, Scott Pittman, and Larry Santoyo at Fossil Rim
Wildlife Center in Glen Rose Texas.  (Kirby was there, so was Kevin Topek,
among others).  I went back two years later for an advance course with
Mollison; and the next year did an advanced course with Scott Pittman and
Doug D. at Rodale's place in Eastern Pennslyvania.  I just completed the
teacher training at Earthaven.  I've also taken 11 week-long courses at Tom
Brown's Tracker School.  I've lived in East Tennessee since late 1992 and
tried a place in the country that ended in a relationship change.  I'm
still mostly focused on Zones 0, 1 and 5.  Now, I'm working mostly on a
natural health consulting business (herbs) with some permaculture
consulting along with some conventional construction management consulting
work.

I now live in a trolly-burb (1900's first ring neighborhood beyond
downtown) in Knoxville, TN (S. Knoxville), which is a 150,000 person
not-very-dense city within an even less-dense county (Knox County) of
300,000.  I have 3 kids, 2 at home and one in college.
Last year I married a woman who had spent 8 years on the Knox County
Commission from 1990 to 1998 and, although a democrat in a predominantly
conservative county, earned a reputation as one who considered the best
interests of the community before making a decision and casting her vote. 
Although folks might have disagreed with her decisionis at times,
nonetheless, they knew at their deepest level (their heart) that she had
considered all options and was not voting a certain way just because the
good 'ol boys had a deal cooking, which, by the way is very common in these
parts.  She is now running for Mayor of Knoxville.

I learned from her that its easy to be idealistic and dogmatic when you
don't have to govern, but much more difficult when you have the
responsibility to make something happen and you're in a sea of opposition. 
This sometimes means going along with somebody's scheme you don't
necessarily love in order to get them to later go along with something you
want.  While one could make the arguement for abandoning the cities and
starting rural-based ecovillages, one could also make the arguement for
working within the cities to make change.  Permaculture takes on many
fronts and you have to take baby steps.

In the last US presidential election, although the State of Tennessee went
for Bush, and Knox County, TN went for Bush, the actual City of Knoxville,
which has a separate government from the county, with a city coucil, went
for Gore.  There was an inner-city group that got out the vote.  So she has
a chance, a good chance of being the next Mayor of Knoxville, TN.  The
election is in late Septenber 2003.

I'm working with the campaign to develop the platform for Sustainability in
the City of Knoxville.  We are deeply committed to sustainability issues
such as clean air, clean water, waste reduction and recycling, improvement
of riparian zones, building soil health, increasing biomass and
biodiversity, urban forests and reafforestation, smartgrowth, sprawl
elimination, and urban permaculture to name a few.

We suffer from poor air quality due to automobiles in a sprawl county, plus
thermal inversion against the Great Smokey Mountains and huge amounts from
coal-fired power plants west and from the Ohio valley.  Our downtown is on
the verge of a renaissance but still looks dead from many angles.  The
county bleeding edge is sprawling but that is mostly outside the city
limits.

As part of our efforts to articulate the platform in both long form (for
the website under development) and short (for the bumpersticker crowd),
we're researching what other cities may have done, or at least what they're
thinking.  We're also interested in what the think tanks and academics
think and recommend.  Because many of these problems originate out in the
county or larger region, we're also looking for ways a city government can
partner with, support, or otherwise plug into and participate into larger
regional efforts so we're seen as a model city in, if nothing else, at
least spirit.

I'm taking the lead in contacting folks who we know of that might have
valuable input into these questions and thought of all y'all.
Is there anything y'all can share?  Is there anyone else y'all can think of
that might have some valuable input?

Gene Monaco
Knoxville, TN