New Blog for Geography, Planning, and Design Brainstorming

http://books.google.com/books?id=hwAHmktpk5IC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_slider_thumb#v=onepage&q=finger&f=false

              This blog was inspired after meeting Robby and Sequoia at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri.  Sequoia just finished his Masters in Urban Planning, and Robby is working on his PhD.    I realized that, with my new friend Alan & my good friend Greg, there were a large amount of people in my life studying how people plan for interaction with their surroundings on the city/human-scale (As opposed to micro-biology, nor macro-economic Herman Daly Green Economics type work here).  Greg is pursuing his Masters in Geography, and Alan his PhD.   I am pursuing a Masters in Urban Planning as well, in the first year of my program.  

          For the last few years I've been studying how groups come together to form Intentional Communities in order to form my own (see: http://greenintentionality.blogspot.com/ ). Three of the key projects I'm thinking about as I start graduate school are 1) How to bridge bring serious financial debate into green and progressive debate, 2) how sustainable can a city be?, & 3) what are ways to prevent an Eco-village from being merely a "Green Development"?

          In this blog, I'd like Greg, Robby, Alan, Sequoia and myself to have a chance to share and brainstorm about ideas concerning planning and human geography.  I take it for granted that this will in large part have to do with The Natural World.  

        The blog is named after a chapter in the book: A Pattern Language, written by a group of architects in the 1970's.     The chapter suggests that density should spread like fingers into the country side, rather than as concentric circles.   It suggests this would preserve the green space in between the fingers for farming, allowing dense human population to have easy access to green space from almost anywhere in the city.  

        This is one of the many concepts that Dancing Rabbit puts on the table in its design plans.   I think its a beautiful concept that, although admittedly difficult to retrofit, would provide large benefits to city planning world-wide.    (Not a bad platitude to start off with, no?)   
       
         This post acts as an invitation to speak/write their mind.   The posts need not be long, nor "publish-worthy".   This is just for us.  

please join,
thomas

http://www.dancingrabbit.org/


Robby's Blog:

http://www.evolutionarycity.blogspot.com/