Redesigning Places and Regions in the Planet: Version 1.0

This open, wiki book is a challenge to you to engage in creating wild designs for wicked problems, to transform places and regions in the planet for the extended present using common sense, synergetic designs, deep ecology, eutopian strategies, and thought experiments. The work starts out by examining human biology and culture, ecological economics and politics, religion and art, and then it notes human strengths, limits and weaknesses. It contrasts traditional design with ecological and regional design, and then uses regional design to propose ways of restoring optimum extents of forests, wetlands, pathways, and cities, using example habitat designs and arcologies (for Arizona, Mumbai and the Palouse). It includes discussions of techno-utopias and evolutionary conjectures, architecture and deep ecology, and the fitness of technologies in an evolutionary process. It uses thought experiments to create ecological corporations and trusts, as well as to set population, wilderness, and settlement goals for specific regions. It considers other approaches, from guessing to advertising, and addresses problems of regional water cycles, forest harvests, and urban growth. Finally, it suggests combining regional and global perspectives in a eutopian framework of guided change and design to resolve issues of the commons, monitoring, and planning, in order to minimize looming emergencies that result from problems and catastrophes.