Foundation for Redesigning Places Regions & the Planet

Reshaping the Constructs of Civilizations Through the Use of Ecological Design & Other Conceptual & Practical Tools, such as Common Sense, Deep Ecology, Totemism, Systems Theory, Metaphor, Holistic Science, Thought Experiments, & Eutopian strategies.The purpose of this book is to provide simple descriptions of the kinds of challenges and problems that are proving to be unmanageable in a globalizing industrial, urban civilization. The book also presents the basics of cultural categories, from technology and economics to politics and religion, that are being used to adapt human societies to a planet that itself is responding to various disruptive and deadly human pressures on wild species and ecosystems, as well as on the largest global geological, oceanic and atmospheric cycles.The weaknesses (and strengths) of traditional cultural responses and designs are outlined. Their results include failures, losses, and flatscapes. Their unwanted effects include dominance, inequity, slavery, and violence. Their paths may lead to traps and collapses.The following series of three volumes, Redesigning Local Systems in the Planet, Redesigning Regions in the Planet, and Redesigning the Planet, are an attempt to answer the challenges and problems through various levels of ecological design. Natural and traditional design are expressly compared to ecological and global ecological design. The basic tools of design, including metaphor, questioning, education, thought experiments, and forms of analysis and synthesis, are related to the important concepts of limits, scales and fields. General questions about humanity and the spectrum of cultures are raised, especially human patterns of living and whether a global culture is possible or desirable. Larger adaptive patterns, including agriculture, technology and urbanization, are examined for their negative effects and long-term sustainability. Serious problems, from abstract machine images to collapse, are also noted.For consideration by ecological design, the operations of nature are broken down into elements, processes, and flows. Communities, ecosystems, landscapes, cycles, and planetary spheres, including the hydrosphere and atmosphere, are also design factors. Many current problems, from water flow and atmospheric change to wilderness conversion and human slavery, are also discussed. Kinds of ownership, from private property to commons, are considered as design factors. Forms and functions of politics are related to ecological design.Design is based on properties and principles that are developed into standards and actions that fit the requirements of wild living systems as well as human cultural systems. Ecological design, placed in a eutopian framework, offers clues for good management and monitoring of these systems as well. It offers ways to avoid insurmountable problems involving drought, climate, crime, and globalization. Specific approaches, from ecosystem medicine to a global framework, are introduced, to be expanded in the remaining volumes.