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  • From: Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Landscape Architecture
  • Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:09:15 -0700

Pardon me if I ramble...

I was talking with a MLA about a lake shoreline project, we were talking through different ways of increasing shoreline complexity and trying to think like fish and all the different kinds of fish and how they'd take to different scenerios, and it was getting really confusing because of all the interactions and the fact that it is hard to tell what is going on underwater... he joked... "thats what is so great about being a designer, I don't have to answer all the questions before I go out and sell my conclusions..."

, at least until I obtain certification and develop the other skills I need to start a professional practice.

I personally have found there's a lot to learn from working for someone else for a while... even if it is ideologically frustrating or constraining, it is the closest thing to apprenticeship we have.

Several suggestions allude to "environmental planning" or "land use planning" but I honestly have a tough time pegging these terms down exactly,

In the US, the planners that I know typically work at mid and low levels of government and use mapping and physical modelling techniques to evaluate politically valued but isolated elements of system preformance (transportation, water flow, electrical distribution, demographics, open space/habitat functions). Scale is typically based on the level of governance you operate in (municipal, county, state, federal, tribal) and you prepare reports to advise politicals on how to set funding and policy to achieve desired system perforance, either with taxation, subsidy, regulation, or contracting projects directly. Then your innocent babies are thrown into the merciless meat grinder of political review, funding and management.

Opportunities are in the ability to manipulate how collectivised societal wealth is directed, the potential for personal surplus cash income (AKA choices), an opportunity to educate people who hold power, and maybe one or two really good opportunity to screw up some greedy persons machinations.

Constraints abound in the form of often being limited to looking at only one part of the elephant, having your well laid strategies mutilated by political or budgetary compromise, having the level of complexity confined to your supervisors capacity to understand what you are talking about, having to work at a level of complexity that can be implemented by government, and working within institutional hierarchies that see the world through hierarchical goggles and have a hard time with organic, self-designing solutions, and working at a scale that is inappropriate to the process you are trying to control, and not having the legal tools to implement solutions, and having to produce products that may not reflect an effective intensity of analysis with limited time and resources.

I bet you can break into this world as a contractor, but I bet working on the inside you really help you play this role... you have to go toe to toe with the big boys to win a contract for municipal planning.

Above this scale I think you enter the world of ideas, policy and politics, which seems kind of weirdly non-dimensional in terms of its connection to real landscapes...

In my mind the next scale down is the developer and their planning assistants. People who swing deals to buy land in one condition, manipulate it, and then sell it in another condition. Where you get to work on the acres scale rather than the square miles scale. You may do just enough planning to put your project(s) in the right landscape position. And at this scale you are either the person swinging the deal (get some finance and real estate training and sharpen you venture capital skills) or you are a planner, designer, or project manager providing information and management services for people who are swinging deals. I have seen a real melting pot at this level, but in general it seems that engineers run the show, and sub to MLAs, or in the best of all possible worlds, run multi-disciplinary teams within their own shops... they are more linear than designers and get things done on schedule according to spec. In my region, using restoration money is the primary alternative to trying to develop/redevelop land for market value, and the majority of restoration money, and the bread and butter of stable private practice restoration work, comes from mitigation for projects that destory ecosystems (blood money...), or voluntary grant funded work.

In general I think the field of mid level planning/design to implement permaculture ideals is wide open, but it is a long brutal process that you have to have the stomach for... the only Permie I have heard talk about trying to break into this side of things is Larry Santoyo (likely on this list..) I'd be interested in hearing about how the rubber hits the road when you try to fit permaculture consulting with real estate development practice.

(PS to Greg, and perhaps of interest -- I work at a low level in US federal government completing tasks around money management and funding policy resulting in supplying grant funds to habitat restoration projects, and also work at the program/site scale designing and installing revegetation components of fish habitat projects, and working with local NGOs to build capacity and resources for long-term local stewardship of habitat sites (collective zone 5?). I get to play with self designing systems, but am currently limited in terms of creating system yield by ownership models, but get to do a lot of education along the way. I got a BA/BS in environmental design/ecology including some independant study of permaculture publications, and a MS from UW College of Forest Resource in a cross between 'environmental horticulture' and 'ecosystem sciences' and worked in private landscape industry, resturaunt, herb farming and restoration NGOs before gov't service.)





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