permaculture

[Misha Gale-Sinex <mgs2369@attbi.com>]

Greetings, Gene...and interesting to hear from you.

> 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?

Check out the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, particularly the 
work of its founder and director, Daniel Kemmis.

http://www.crmw.org
http://www.crmw.org/Staff.asp?p=DanielKemmis

Daniel has a lot of insight into the issue of urban renaissance in 
mountain-proximate communities, both as the former mayor of Missoula, 
MT, and a renowned scholar of urban policy.

I haven't talked to him since I left Redefining Progress early last 
year, but my recollection is that he worked with a lot of the 
problems you discuss. He's hugely busy...but a delightful and 
gracious man. I always found him quite pragmatic, as well as capable 
of big-picture thinking, and his winning manner is a joy to be around.

See CRMW's Regional Economic Assessment Database, among other things.


peace
mish