permaculture

[Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>]

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.)